Northwest Passage Landing Sites

Yes, all of these optional activities are offered. If you are interested in specific ones, check carefully as each ship offers a slightly different activity programme.

Hiking, the Polar Plunge and photography workshops are all complimentary. Kayaking quite often carries an extra cost, which we can help advise you on.

Please note that paddle boarding, camping and scuba diving are not available on any ship.

Yes, there are. And these experts - each a specialist in their own particular field - are the backbone of the ship’s team, as they are your accompanying guides, interpreters and presenters.

While each expedition team is different and the individuals rotate around, you can definitely expect there to be a polar historian, glaciologist, local community guide, ornithologist and cetacean specialist on your voyage.

Expedition teams are each led by an Expedition Leader and they are typically between 13 and 30 guides, depending on the size of the ship and number of guests.

Although every effort will be made to follow the original itinerary, the short answer is 'no they're not'. While every trip will depart with a planned itinerary there are many factors that can impact the decision or ability to land at specific sites.

In the Northwest Passage ice is often the biggest factor and can, at times, cause an entire trip to be re-routed. Polar bears are another threat to landings – sighting one of these predators in the vicinity of a landing site will mean that no one is going ashore.

The decision to land or not is in the hands of the captain and the expedition leader, the former being in responsible for the ship and the latter for your safety. Wherever possible, if a landing site is missed, it will be replaced by an equivalent.

With the sadly increasing summer temperatures in the Arctic and resultant melting of the ice, successfully transiting the Northwest Passage is now all but guaranteed, in a way that it wasn’t 20 years ago.

This is a key question, and in the Northwest Passage there are several ways to think about it:

Firstly, you should consider what's most important to you, as there are trade-offs. A smaller ship typically lends itself to a more intimate experience, where you’ll get to know a greater proportion of your fellow passengers, and getting on and off the ship will be speedier.

However, the anonymity of a larger ship, alongside normally more on-ship amenities and a wider choice of dining locations (particularly on a longer voyage) can be attractive. There’s no right or wrong answer, it's simply down to personal choice.

The other way to look at it – given the relatively limited number of Northwest Passage itineraries and ships – is to focus on choosing the right trip first, as depending on which you choose, there may only be one or two ships from which to choose.

This is a tricky question to answer as there’s always a slice of luck involved when it comes to wildlife sightings. However, in our experience, smaller ships have a higher chance of better wildlife sightings because:

• Relative to a larger ship it's quiet through the water and less likely to disturb the skittish Arctic wildlife.
• The scale of larger ships can make wildlife sightings harder: you're higher up and therefore further from the wildlife (although elevation can also be an advantage, depending on how far away the wildlife is), and it takes longer to access the outer viewing decks.
• Choosing a larger ship doesn’t necessarily come with correspondingly larger outer decks which are capable of accommodating everyone when wildlife is spotted; smaller ships typically give everyone ample space so there’s no jockeying for a good view when that polar bear finals shows.

When it comes to landings, this is where having fewer guests on board carries a distinct advantage as it means:

• Getting everyone off the ship at the beginning of a shore excursion takes much less time, and avoids precious time wasted (and frustrations) waiting to get ashore.
• And less time spent ferrying everyone to and then back from a landing translates into having more time to spend on land, which in our book can mean a more satisfying overall experience by not feeling rushed and having the time you need.
• Fewer people, combined with a high guide-to-guest ratio, also means that the group sizes once you get on land will be smaller, and you’ll have more opportunity for 1-2-1 time with the experts.