September 2 A morning around Dundas Harbour

 

Dundas Harbour is on Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island on Earth and has stunning geology (which I wanted to see!, with flat-topped mountains and glacial valleys.  Where we were heading this morning is an abandoned Inuit settlement - there’s a long dark history there. And close by an abandoned Royal Canadian Mounted Police hut (RCMP for ease of writing). It promised to be an exciting landing made even more so because an injured bear had been sighted there earlier. Needless to say our scouts went out to check. Over an hour later we were given the green light to go ashore. The walk to the Inuit settlement as well as the RCMP hut was up and over a hill. So after a few pix on the beach beside huge ice chunks up we clambered. 

When Lindsay and I were only halfway up the hill, a cry went out “abandon site” - a bear had been spotted and we had to about face and hightailed it down the hill. My knee and hip were not very happy as I rushed down that hill - in gumboots! but we’re safe. That bear had appeared pretty quickly - it was downwind of us so probably thought we’d make a nice meal. It’s chilling to contemplate the potential danger we were in - bears can run as 40kph so it would have been right on the first person in 45 seconds! Three armed guards (our brave guides) distracted the bear. Thank you guys. (We never land without a bunch of armed lookouts.) It took 25 mins to evacuate the sight; probably too long but it seems that some foolhardy people were stopping to take photos - really!?! They potentially put a lot of people in great danger.

Back on board ship we hunkered down with warm soup and another episode in the NW passage story.