Northwest Passage
Itinerary
Day 1-3
Three days. Two continents. One incredible journey.
Your journey begins in Anchorage, Alaska. Twenty-four hours later you will be in Anadyr, Russia, where you board the icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov. Please note that you will cross the International Dateline en route, losing a day.
Day 4-5
700 year-old whalebones, 10,000 year- old bridges.
Experience for yourself the centuries - old mysteries of Whalebone Alley on Yttygran Island. This sacred place for native whalers has a haunted feel about it even today. 10,000 years ago, North America's first peoples may have walked across the Bering Strait on a bridge of ice. Now, this narrow stretch of water separating Alaska from Siberia is a pathway for migrating marine mammals and seabirds. Small wonder that it's been identified by the World Wildlife Fund as being of biological and cultural significance.
Day 6-8
History's most fabled journey.
Our journey through the fabled Northwest Passage begins. Today you'll travel through the Beaufort Sea, also identified by the WWF as biologically and culturally significant past Point Barrow. The Arctic pack ice makes this route almost impossible to navigate. Just over 100 transits have been completed. As one of very few polar icebreakers in the world, Kapitan Khlebnikov makes it seem easy. Watching the vessel cut through ice can be as thrilling as the scenery that surrounds you. You will cross the International Date Line for a second time, gaining the day that you loss en route to Russia.
Day 9-11
Where the wooly mammoth roamed.
Herschel Island, once home to the wooly mammoth, and onto Franklin Bay. Gaze into the same luminous polar sky as Amundsen, who wintered at nearby King's Point. We'll take a Zodiac to Pauline Cove, a winter refuge for 19th century ships. Keep your eyes open - bowhead whales and polar bears could be spotted in and around Franklin Bay. Take a moment to soak up the vast and humbling northern landscape. Take in the wide skies looking over rolling hills of velvet tundra, colored with thousands of plants.
Day 12-14
Just like the great explorers, but comfortable. Through Amundsen Gulf. You're following in the footsteps of the great polar explorers, only this time you'll be better prepared - you'll have those warm Quark parkas, for one thing. And food. And beds. And soap. Early European adventurers must have been quite a sight for the local inhabitants. Dressed in cocked hats, tailcoats and buckled shoes, the first explorers were famously unprepared for the harsh Arctic environment.
Gaze upon the remains of Maud, Amundsen's three-masted schooner that he sailed across the polar basin in 1922-24. But first, watch for more whales, polar bears and musk oxen as we land on Victoria Island and travel through the Dolphin and Union Straits.
Day 15-17
Franklin's great dream comes to a tragic end.
Onto Victoria Strait, where the search for the remains of Franklin's expedition finally ended in 1859. Throughout your journey, you'll not only visit these and many other historic sites - our shipboard experts will entertain and educate you on the thrilling history that surrounds you every nautical mile of the way. Heading north, along the Boothia Peninsula via Larsen Sound and into Lancaster Sound, we'll watch for polar bears, the rare narwhal - the single - tusked whale, and inspiration for the legend of the unicorn - and much more rare and exotic wildlife.
Day 18-19
Your ending, however, will be in comfort.
Back to civilization, and a final night at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa. We'll give you our guarantee - that you now have enough stories to last a lifetime of dinner parties.
