Earth’s tenth largest island covers 75,767 square miles,
reaching beyond 83 degrees north latitude and stretching some 500 miles from
north to south. Temperatures range from a balmy 70 degrees F in the summer, to
a mind-numbing minus 70 degrees in the winter.
Polar
bears roam the ice pack or swim open waters in search for food
At the northernmost point of North America, beyond the
Northwest Passage, Ellesmere’s north coast lies abut 480 miles from the
Pole. Mild summers have created a startling phenomenon: a tourist season. Each
year, entrepreneurs fly a few travelers from Resolute on Cornwallis Island to
Ellesmere’s Lake Hazen, 44 miles long and framed by spectacular vistas. The
19th century route to the top of the world ran north through Baffin Bay and
Smith Sound into Kane Basin. In 1854 members of an American expedition led by
Ellisha Kane first set foot on the island.
Surrounded by the Arctic Ocean, some polynyas (open areas
in frozen seas) remain open all year round. They attract seals and waterfowl
and provide food for the wildlife which manages to survive in this barren
place. Prowling the ice pack, a polar bear hunts for seals during summer’s
thaw, or take advantage of the open water to seek food. That animals can eke
out a living here is a testament to biological tenacity.
The
graceful Beluga whale
Here in the Arctic the earth presents two basic faces:
light and dark. During the arctic summer the sun rotates around the horizon
each day and bathes the island with continuous light for four of five months.
It is a time of relative plenty. Caribou and musk oxen, both herbivores, enjoy
the fruits of the growing season. And newly born arctic hares provide prey for
arctic wolves. The curious bearded seal and harp seal birth their pups nearby
ice floes or merely bask in the warmth of the midnight sun. A little further
south, in Cunningham Islet, a pod of Beluga whales blow and laze on the
surface of the sea. These graceful but ghostly forms come into shallow waters
to rub away the yellowing outer layer of their skin on clean sand and gravel
bottom. When they emerge again they are once more a beautiful sparkling white.
A
lone Inuit still fishing in traditional kayak
Ellesmere’s Inuit population have integrated their
traditions with the white man’s materialism. Most fishermen often use
outboard motors in addition to their traditional kayaks, and hunt on
snowmobiles. Most will use rifles to hunt the musk ox and seals for skins. But
dog teams are legally required when Inuit lead visitors on spring polar bear
hunts.
How life manages to survive the ensuing four months of
darkness is the real question. So barren is the island that the nearest tree
grows some 1,200 miles to the south, below the Arctic Circle. Much of the
island is a mantle of ice more than half a mile thick. It receives only two to
four inches of precipitation a year, and consequently is classified as a
desert. Nearly as big as England and Scotland combined, this vast region,
lonely but spectacular, is hospitable to neither humans nor animals.
