Polar Bear Tours to Churchill, Manitoba

[Northforker]

We are in the planning mode for a 2024 or 2025 trip in October or November to Churchill, MN to see Polar Bears and the Northern Lights. In round numbers its $9000-$10,000 CAD per person for the 7 day trip from Winnipeg. It's a bucket list item! Alternate destinations to achieve this?

TIA

Anyone experienced this trip?

 

[folivier]

We didn't get to do this on our Alaska trip but sounds very interesting and much less expensive and less crowded: Custom Tours, Fishing Tours, Tours Guide kaktovik - Kaktovik Arctic Tours nik

 

[OldShooter]

I worked in Churchill for several summers when I was in school. No bear tours then, but the local radio station would announce any bear spottings. Typically at the town dump, sometimes along the shore. Queen Elizabeth came to town for the Canadian Centennial. The sole bear along the rocks was oblivious, but there were guys with rifles every hundred yards or so just in case the bear decided to run up the embankment and mug the queen. Quite funny, actually. The bears were viewed mostly mostly as somewhat dangerous pests.

Re northern lights IIRC we had to look more to the south to see them, but they are visible to varying degrees from the northern US up into the high latitudes. If that is your main interest there are lots of places easier to get to, connected by road. Lynn Lake or Thompson for example.

 

[Marc]

We did the seven day Churchill with Natural Habitat. We took the photo excursion which includes an extra day on tundra and it was well worth it. We just briefly saw northern lights; Churchill in November not the best place for northern lights due to cloud cover. I would almost do a separate northern lights tour to Norway in February.

 

[braumeister]

I would almost do a separate northern lights tour to Norway in February.

Best possible venue IMHO. We did that in early March a few years ago and it was awesome. Every night, several times. Hurtigruten runs Northern Lights trips with a money back guarantee if you don't see them.

 

[starry night]

Frontiers North - Tundra Buggy Lodge

We did this one in Nov 2019. Offered by Frontiers North. We did the last of the season departures which was a smaller group (half the volume of the standard group, so you got more private accommodation) and was staffed with naturalists from Polar Bears International as our interpretive guides as they were all so doing research for the end of season and videography and photography for their studies.
There was simply nothing else like it!! We slept out on the tundra watching bears and more from the high windows. Daily runs in the roving buggies with PBI group. Communal meals were great and fun with company of all our guides and researchers.
A few photos:







I’m not great at attaching files on this site, so didn’t manage captions for photos, but here you can see Tundra Lodge situated in Churchill Wilderness Area along Hudson Bay. It is like a train with sleeper cars, dining car, etc. Photo shows how we transfer from Lodge car to rover. The bears are curious…and BIG. The rover vehicle has horizontal markings above the tires..the top mark is at 9 feet, so that bear stands about 10 ft. Trudeau was at the departure site in the afternoon of the morning we went out. Missed him by “that” much!

 

[Northforker]

Thanks for the replies, Ill post my research results.