2024 Polar Bears, Wolves, and Northern Lights
TREKKING WITH POLAR BEARS!
Polar Bears, Wolves, and Northern Lights
Dates: November 6-13, 2024
Details: 8 Spots MAXIMUM
Kaska Coast, Manitoba, Canada
Designed for avid photographers (from enthusiast to pro) to get gallery-worthy images of polar bears and wolves in the subarctic, as well as northern lights from our position on the dark tundra. This tour provides unique, eye-level photo opportunities as we trek on the ice of South Hudson Bay to photograph polar bears. You don’t have to be a photographer to join, but you must want to spend time in the field with wildlife.
Churchill, Manitoba has been called the Polar Bear Capital of the World, and with good reason. It is a special and fragile place, where polar bears fight to survive against climate change. On the barren tundra, these majestic bears gather in large numbers to wait until the ice freezes solid, so they can hunt again. While we’ll spend a little time on the road system in Churchill, our lodge exists and hour-flight south, in the middle of polar bear habitat, allowing us a front row seat to watch the bears play, spar, forage, and sleep. The flight provides unique opportunities for aerial images of polar bears walking on broken ice. At the lodge, a resident wolf pack, 15-members strong, howls and explores the area. Each day, we’ll take trips in open-air ATVs to find polar bears, as well as arctic and red fox, wolves, moose, ptarmigan, gyrfalcon, snowshoe hare, and other wildlife. We’ll then approach on foot, using a 30-year safety protocol that protects wildlife and humans. Guides have flares, sprays, cracker shells, and rifles, but no bear / human conflicts have been recorded to date. Hiking on the ice, we’ll be able to get low angle, intimate photography. However, some of the more intimate encounters occur as wildlife comes up to the windows of the lodge to check out the humans with cameras. At night, free of the light pollution in the town of Churchill, we’ll watch the aurora forecast for activity and the weather for clear skies to try to capture the colorful dancing of the northern lights.
Need more? We end the trip with a tour of the Inuit native town of Churchill, along with a stop at the polar bear jail, and enjoy some road-system wildlife image opportunities.
Your photo instructor on the excursion, Michelle Theall, is an award-winning photographer whose work has been published around the globe and in the US in over thirty titles, including Alaska, Backpacker, Outdoor Photographer, Sierra, National Geographic.com, and others. Her stock work is handled by several agencies, including Getty, and several images have been purchased for private collections and galleries. She’s been teaching photography for 12 years and prides herself on helping clients capture “the moment,” the unique miracles that happen in the field that take a photo beyond a snapshot to something more sublime.
Space is limited.
$19,500.00
4 SPOTS LEFT
