Expedition Kanadische Arktis & Nordwestgrönland

Reiseverlauf

Reiseverlauf abhängig von Wetter- und Eislage. Beschriebene Naturerlebnisse/Tiersichtungen sind mögliche Ereignisse auf den Expeditionen und nicht garantiert.

• Tag 1

  Pond Inlet, Nunavut
  Do., 8. August
  Abfahrt 20:00
  
  Located in northern Baffin Island Pond Inlet is a small predominantly Inuit community with a population of roughly 1,500 inhabitants. In 1818 the British explorer John Ross named a bay in the vicinity after the English astronomer John Pond. Today Pond Inlet is considered one of Canada's "jewels of the North" thanks to several picturesque glaciers and mountain ranges nearby. Many archaeological sites of ancient Dorset and Thule peoples can be found near Pond Inlet. The Inuit hunted caribou, ringed and harp seals, fish, polar bears, and walrus, as well as narwhals, geese, ptarmigans and Arctic hares long before European and American whalers came here to harvest bowhead whales. Pond Inlet is also known as a major center of Inuit art especially the printmaking and stone carving.

• Tag 2

  Cape Hay, Bylot Island
  Fr., 9. August
  Ankunft 06:30
  
  

• Tag 3

  Beechey Island
  Sa., 10. August
  Ankunft 06:00
  
  Beechey Island is a small island off the southwest coast of Devon Island separated by a narrow waterway called the Barrow Strait. Captain William Edward Parry was the first European to visit the island in 1819. His lieutenant Frederick William Beechey named the island after his father the artist William Beechey (1753–1839). Beechey Island played a significant role in the history of Arctic Exploration. During the winter of 1845-46 Sir John Franklin and his men camped on the island as part of their ill-fated quest to find the Northwest Passage. Mummified remains of three of Franklin’s crew were discovered giving a better understanding of what happened before the disappearance of the expedition. In 1850 Edward Belcher used the island as a base while surveying the area. Later in 1903 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen stopped at the island at the beginning of his successful voyage in search for the Northwest Passage. Subsequently Beechey Island has been declared a "Territorial Historic Site" since 1975 by the Northwest Territories government in 1975 and a National Historic Site of Canada in 1993. It now is part of Nunavut.

• Tag 4

  Creswell Bay
  So., 11. August
  Ankunft 08:00
  
  

• Tag 5

  Prince Leopold Island, Nunavut
  Mo., 12. August
  Ankunft 07:30
  
  

• Tag 6

  Devon Island (Radstock Bay)
  Di., 13. August
  Ankunft 06:30
  
  Devon Island is Canada’s sixth largest island and was first seen by Europeans in the early 17th century. The Thule culture had already settled there many centuries before and left behind qarmat homes made of rocks whale bones rock and sod walls and skins for roofs that tell a story of over 800 years of human habitation. Other striking finds in this area are the many fossils of corals crinoids and nautiloids that can be seen. Just across Lancaster Sound is Prince Leopold Island a Canadian Important Bird Area a federally listed migratory bird sanctuary and a Key Migratory Bird Terrestrial Habitat site with large numbers of Thick-billed Murres Northern Fulmars and Black-legged Kittiwakes that breed there.

• Tag 7

  Croker Bay, Nunavut
  Mi., 14. August
  Ankunft 06:30
  
  Croker Bay is a vast cerulean deep-water bay nestled on the southern coast of Devon Island which is in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. This 40km (24 miles) long Arctic waterway boasts rugged rock terraced mountains which sit atop two beautiful blue ice tidewater glaciers. Devon Island is Earth’s largest uninhabited island and is a breath-taking 55,247 km2 (21,331 square miles) patchwork of Precambrian gneiss, Paleozoic siltstones and shales. Known locally as “Mars on Earth” the dazzling otherworldly landscape offers spectacular views. The snow-topped ancient stone is dappled with rich hues of terracotta, red and blue. Devon Island is one of many islands that make up the picturesque Canadian Artic Archipelago and has a scattering of mountain ranges including the Treuter Mountains, Haddington Range and the Cunningham Mountains. Croker Bay was named in 1819 by the explorer William Edward Parry in honour of John Wilson Croker, a parliamentarian and Secretary to the Admiralty.

• Tag 7

  Dundas Harbour, Devon Island
  Mi., 14. August
  Ankunft 13:30
  
  Austere, remote and a rather severe, Devon Island is as close the closest thing to Mars on planet Earth. The rocky terrain, dry, cold climate and 14-mile wide crater on the north of the island have made it home for a team of research scientists from NASA, who live in the small research station during the Arctic summer. Other than these few men and women, Devon Island is completely unpeopled, and the largest uninhabited island in the world. There was human habitation as recently as 1951, when a Canadian Mounted Police post that had been on the island since 1924 to monitor illegal activities such as whaling closed.At 320 miles long and 80–100 miles wide, it is the largest of the Parry Islands. Dundas Harbour is found in the south of the island. Then island is set in the icy Arctic Ocean, south of Ellesmere Island and west of Baffin Bay. This make it Canada’s sixth largest island. Discovered by English explorer William Baffin in 1616, the island did not make it on to any maps until William Edward Parry’s exploration of the Arctic in 1820.Despite the desolate conditions, the island does show signs of having sustained human life as many as 3,000 years ago, with the remains of a Thule settlement dating back to 1000 A.D., including tent rings, middens and a gravesite providing testament to the fact. The island is named Talluruti in local Inuktitut language, literally translating as “a woman’s chin with tattoos on it”, as from a distance the deep crevasses resemble traditional facial tattoos.

• Tag 8

  Grise Fjord, Ellesmere island
  Do., 15. August
  Ankunft 10:30
  
  Nestled on the southern tip of Canada’s Ellesmere Island Grise Fjord is a remote and isolated wonderful wilderness. Located at the top of the world at 1,160 kilometers (721 miles) north of the Artic Circle you’ll gaze in wonder at the frozen beauty as you enter the fjord. The stunning ice-blue waters of the fjord are tucked between two towering snow-dusted cliffs. The land never thaws out even when the sun shines twenty-four hours a day from April through to August. Indeed, the fjord’s name in Inuktittuq means “the place that never thaws”. In 1899, Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup named the place “pig fjord” because the sounds of the local walrus called to mind a chorus of grunting pigs. Grise is the Norwegian word for pig. Today you’ll find a profusion of local wildlife: Ringed seal, Bearded seal and Harp seal, walruses, Narwhal and Beluga Whales can all be seen in the sea. The skies are home to Ravens, Ivory gulls, Jaegers, Geese, Gyrfalcons, Kittiwakes and Northern Fulmars. Polar bears and Muskoxen also roam the land of this northern wilderness. In 1953 the hamlet was formed at Grise Fjord by the Canadian government. They relocated Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec. This is the most northerly public community in Canada and is comprised of no more than 150 residents. This is one of the most cold inhabited places on the planet with an average temperature of a chilly -16.5 degrees centigrade.

• Tag 9

  Qaanaaq (Thule )
  Fr., 16. August
  Ankunft 12:00
  
  In AD 850, the Vikings established their parliament in Tórshavn, a name which translates as "Thor's harbor." It was named after Thor, the god of thunder and lightning in Norse mythology. The town became a center of trade for the island, and in fact was designated as the only legal place for the islanders to sell and buy products. This trade monopoly was abolished in 1856. Today it is the capital and largest city of the Faroe Islands, with fish-processing plants, a shipyard, and woolen products making up. It is considered to be one of the oldest capitals in Northern Europe.

• Tag 10

  Cape York, Greenland
  Sa., 17. August
  Ankunft 06:00
  
  Visit the arctic seascape of Cape York, Greenland. Located on the northwestern coast of Greenland in Baffin Bay, Cape York is an important geographical feature delimiting the Melville Bay at its northwestern end and Kiatassuaq Island at its other end. There is a chain of coastal islands that stretches between the two capes, most notably Meteorite Island, named for the discovery one of the world’s largest iron meteorites in Savissivik, a settlement on the island. The iron from this meteorite attracted Inuit migrating from Arctic Canada who used the metal in making tools and harpoons. Visitors to this region will see iconic drifting blue-white icebergs that are shrinking as the earth temperature rises.

• Tag 11

  Pond Inlet, Nunavut
  So., 18. August
  Ankunft 07:00
  
  Located in northern Baffin Island Pond Inlet is a small predominantly Inuit community with a population of roughly 1,500 inhabitants. In 1818 the British explorer John Ross named a bay in the vicinity after the English astronomer John Pond. Today Pond Inlet is considered one of Canada's "jewels of the North" thanks to several picturesque glaciers and mountain ranges nearby. Many archaeological sites of ancient Dorset and Thule peoples can be found near Pond Inlet. The Inuit hunted caribou, ringed and harp seals, fish, polar bears, and walrus, as well as narwhals, geese, ptarmigans and Arctic hares long before European and American whalers came here to harvest bowhead whales. Pond Inlet is also known as a major center of Inuit art especially the printmaking and stone carving.