Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Polar Bears. Update and Travel Day.

Polar Bear Blog
As I start this blog, I am waiting for my first flight in the Edmonton International airport. I just got word that United lost one of my colleagues’ bags. Hopefully it will only be a couple of days late and he will get it on the next train up to Wapusk National Park. Either that or we will be sharing clothing and doing laundry every couple of days.

From what I have heard about this polar bear season, they seem to be having a rough time. In the first 8 days they had only seen one mom and baby. They saw them for five days. One day it was too cold to go out (-56 degrees with the wind chill) and one day they had a blizzard. The other day they blanked. I haven’t heard what happened in the past week.

I am optimistic about our polar bear sightings as the weather is supposed to warm up significantly by our first photography day. They are calling for -20’s, which with wind chill should be in the -30’s range. That is balmy considered to what we are used to. In the past four years I think I only had one day that was in the -20’s. All the other days were in the high -30’s up to -50 with the wind chill. I am hoping that the warmer weather will encourage the moms and cubs to start moving. Just hopefully not all at once. Time will tell.

The train was delayed for almost 4 hours so we got into the lodge around 2a.m. The bad news is that the last group didn’t see anything in the past seven days. The good news is that the den that they are on has a momma bear and a single cub that came out of the den twice today. Looks like mom is anxious to get the show on the road. Hopefully we will see them tomorrow.


I will try to update my blog daily so come back and see what happens day to day or sign up to your right if you like. I only blog while on safari.

Til’ tomorrow…


Greg

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