We recently led an adventure trip to Hall Beach in Nunavut to see the walrus and whales during the summer break up. One of our clients brought his recently purchased iPhone 4 and took this stunning photograph of walrus hauled out on the ice pack. Its better than some pictures taken with a real camera!!

If you are interested in this trip (Bowhead Whales, Walrus, & Inuit Culture in the Foxe Basin) for next year, please visit our website: http://arctickingdom.com/trips/walbow01-2/

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The folks over at Brüdder have posted a great video of their encounter with a narwhal on their recent Arctic Kingdom-led expedition to Baffin Island.

It’s a bit shaky (understandable given the cameraman’s cold hands and the fact that the narwhal dove under the kayak!), but I think it really captures something essential about the one-on-whale encounter!

Kayaking with Narwhal from Brüdder on Vimeo.

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Seattie, one of the Inuit guides we work with, captured by a Brüdder photographer. Photo via Flickr

Yesterday, I talked a bit about the folks over at Brüdder, who recently came up to Baffin Island to work on their short film Anirniq.

One of the fun things for me (since I didn’t get to tag along on the trip) has been catching up on the team’s adventures in Baffin after the fact, via the travelogues posted on the Anirniq website. There are so many great little details about the teams’ experience. Take this video, for example, of the team packing for their trip:

Packing for the Arctic from Brüdder on Vimeo.

And of course this is just a prelude to the good stuff: The trip itself. The Brüdder folks are still posting accounts of their journey north, but here are some of my favorite highlights so far.

On the flight up to Pond Inlet:

From the air and through the breaking clouds we finally see the mosaic of melting sea ice resembling morning frost on a windshield. I imagine the elusive narwhal making their commute through the dark trails of ocean water below to our awaiting, Arctic film set. They are ready for their close up. Let’s hope we are.

The stewardess makes a hat out of the business section of the newspaper and places it on the head of a curious Inuit boy sitting in the front row. He has stopped fidgeting, intently watching the process. I wonder why he is in the emergency exit row and commissioned with my safety if – in the unlikely event – we plummet into the sea ice and must evacuate to life rafts. I suppose that is because of the Inuit belief that if you fall into the water you drown and so I would assume that theory likely extends to twin-engine aircraft. It is hard to argue that point. I relinquish my fate to the restless, fidgety boy.

From the journey across the pack ice:

Pulled by snow machines in our qamutiks we navigated the ever-changing surface of the floe edge like a game of chutes and ladders – miles and miles of frozen sea stretching across the wide inlet. With each passing week the ice was melting further and large cracks developed, dividing the massive expanse of ice into large sections that would inevitably break off and drift out to sea before melting in the summer months of July and August. To cross, our guides would weave from one shore of the inlet to the next looking for a narrow crossing that we could be safely pulled over. In many cases, the heavy qamutiks would need to be detached and pushed to the edge of the cracks by hand with the towline thrown to the opposite side. The guides would then throttle across the gaps, “skipping” on the exposed ocean water on the wider crevices and then reattaching the sled and heaving it over the cracks. The exposed sea was a mixture of salt and fresh water called halocline. The water below the first few feet could drop as low as -4 degrees Celsius without freezing due to the salt content while the surface water would rest around 0 degrees. The surface of the floe edge was mainly a thin layer of snow that in some places had melted into large, glimmering pools that radiated a fluorescent, aqua blue yet to be represented on any color wheel I had seen.

There are also some great observations about the Arctic Kingdom team. Here’s a description of one of the expedition’s Inuit guides (whose photo adorns the top of this post):

Seattie’s face and demeanor is warm and light-hearted. He is vibrant and full of energy with a keen sense of humor picked up through his broken English. Like most who make their living on the floe edge, he bares the tan line insignia around his eyes from sunglasses. It is incredibly reassuring – a sort of barometer of experience in the Arctic environment.

And here’s Thomas (whose energy, I’d say, is one of his defining characteristics) meeting the team as they arrive in Pond Inlet:

Touch down. The houses and buildings of the small town pepper a ridge overlooking the frozen sea. Thomas, from Arctic Kingdom and our lead guide for the trip is there to greet us on the dirt runway. He is the perfect mold of an adventure guide: coated in weeks of sun that you would generally find on an avid spring skier or someone who has been living on the sea ice for a month. He is energetic and friendly but in a passive, laid back matter. Although his eyes are red and blood shot they reflect the intrigue, vim and vigor of what we hope to experience in the week to come. He seems to be here because he wants to, not because he has to.

I could pull quotes for days, but you get the idea. And really, the best way to get this story is straight from the source.

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Last week, we featured some footage from the Spanish television show Desafio Extremo, which features travel adventures all over the globe. Arctic Kingdom had the pleasure of bringing the Desafio Extremo crew north for their Buceo Ártico episode, and we’re really excited with the moments they were able to capture on film.

Over on the Desafio Extremo website, they’re hosting a poll, where viewers can vote for their favorite trip from the current season. Personally, we’re partial to one episode in particular. But really, can you blame us?

In the video below (Jesús y María al final logran encontrarse con los narvales) Jesús and Maria encounter a narwhal at last. There’s gorgeous underwater footage leading up to it, but, if you’re too impatient, skip to 2:30 to see the whale!

Vote Arctic! Vote Often!

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Long-time readers of this blog might remember this post, where I mentioned that expedition Expedition Manager Tom Lennartz was up on the ice near Baffin Island with a then-unnamed Spanish film crew.

Well, the footage from that expedition — part of the series Desafio Extremo, or Extreme Challenge — is now online. And it’s pretty spectacular, capturing both the beauty and danger of diving beneath the Arctic ice.

Check out the videos online here, and if you read Spanish (or feel like cheating, as I did, with a free online translator) you can read Jesús Calleja’s account of the adventure on his blog, which really captures the adrenaline of piloting a snowmobile across the sea ice, as well as the combination of on-the-ice flexibility and strong infrastructure needed to pull off a filming expedition to the Arctic!

Here’s a teaser for the show. Visit the Desafino Extremo site for more photos and footage of the adventure!

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