Into the Northwest Passage

Kangerlussuaq lies within a broad glacial valley between the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea. Its dry climate and unusually stable weather led to the establishment of an American air base here during the Second World War and continue to make it one of Greenland’s most important aviation gateways. The surrounding region has a much longer history as a place of Inuit travel and hunting.

After arriving by charter flight from Toronto, board the expedition vessel and begin the long passage through Kangerlussuaq Fjord. Mountains, glacial valleys, and pale meltwater mark the transition from Greenland’s interior to its western coast. Crossing the Arctic Circle, the route opens towards the long light and expansive waters of late Arctic summer.

Greenland’s west coast unfolds as a complex meeting of islands, mountains, sheltered waterways, and deep fjords. Late summer brings colour to the tundra, with Arctic cotton, crowberry, dwarf birch, and willow spreading across slopes beneath dark rock. Seabirds are active along the coast, while whales may be encountered in the waters offshore.

Human history here reaches back more than 4,500 years. Archaeological traces left by successive cultures, including Saqqaq, Dorset, and Thule peoples, speak to generations of movement and adaptation along this coast. Zodiac cruises, hikes, and time ashore offer different ways to encounter a landscape where the sea has long connected hunting grounds, settlements, and travel routes. 

At Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the world distills to ice and light. The vast Sermeq Kujalleq glacier sends its creations—crystalline cathedrals of blue and white—into Disko Bay, where they drift, groan, and fracture. Ilulissat means “iceberg,” and here the name feels earned. 

Walk the boardwalk above the fjord as thunder echoes from the ice below. Visit the Icefjord Centre to trace the stories held within this landscape: scientific, cultural, and deeply human. In town, wander through museums, cafés, and craft shops alive with colour and conversation—a vibrant contrast to the hushed immensity of the ice itself. 

Northwest Greenland is a far-reaching world of islands, narrow channels, sheltered bays, and deep fjords enclosed by steep mountains. Glaciers descend from the ice sheet, while the West Greenland Current carries immense icebergs north along the coast. Many began their journeys in Disko Bay, joining bergs released by glaciers farther north to form a great moving flotilla of towers, arches, and fractured blue faces.

Small communities occupy rocky islands and natural harbours throughout this intricate seascape. Fishing and hunting remain central to life, while boats connect settlements separated by water and rugged terrain. Explore the coast by ship, Zodiac, and on foot, following shorelines alive with seabirds and walking across tundra brightened by Arctic cotton, crowberry, and late-summer wildflowers. Long hours of daylight reveal a landscape of immense scale, where every channel offers a different arrangement of rock, water, and drifting ice. 

Baffin Bay extends between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, carrying currents, wildlife, and immense drifting ice between its coasts. Icebergs moving north along Greenland may turn west through these waters before joining the southbound current along Baffin Island. Whales, seals, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, murres, and dovekies also travel and feed across this vast marine ecosystem.

A day aboard offers time to watch the bay unfold from the decks and observation spaces. Presentations, workshops, and conversations with Inuit cultural educators, naturalists, historians, and other expedition team members explore the wildlife, geography, cultures, and exploration history of the region. Ahead lies Smith Sound and the entrance to the waterways of the High Arctic. 

Smith Sound forms a dramatic channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. Mountains and glaciers rise on either side, while drifting ice moves through waters connecting Baffin Bay with the waterways farther north. The scale of the passage is heightened by the clear, extended light of late summer.

Inuit have long travelled and hunted throughout this region. During the nineteenth century, Smith Sound also became a route for expeditions searching for Franklin and attempting to reach the North Pole. These histories meet within a landscape still governed by ice, currents, weather, and distance. 

Set between the mountains and sea of southern Ellesmere Island, Ausuittuq means “the place that never thaws.” Canada’s northernmost civilian community occupies a landscape of glaciers, vast tundra, and waters that remain covered by sea ice through much of the year.

The community was established in 1953 through the Canadian government’s relocation of Inuit families from Inukjuak and Mittimatalik. That difficult history remains an important part of Ausuittuq’s story, alongside more than seventy years of community life shaped by family, ingenuity, and cultural continuity. Hunting, travel on the nuna (land), artistic expression, and the rhythms of the seasons remain closely woven into life here. Time with local hosts offers a view of contemporary High Arctic community life within the immense landscape of Ellesmere Island.

Tallurutiup Imanga is the ecological engine of the eastern Canadian Arctic. Nutrient-rich waters and recurring areas of open water support narwhal, beluga and bowhead whales, walrus, seals, polar bears, and some of the Canadian Arctic’s largest seabird colonies. In late summer, marine mammals continue to move through the channels while birds gather along cliffs and shorelines before migration.

This National Marine Conservation Area is also an Inuit homeland used for travel, harvesting, and cultural practice for millennia. Inuit stewardship and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or Inuit knowledge, play an essential role in its protection. Inuit expedition team members and naturalists bring the relationships among currents, ice, wildlife, and human life into focus.

To the north, Devon Island rises in broad plateaus, glacial valleys, gravel plains, and open tundra. It is the world’s largest uninhabited island, although archaeological sites attest to centuries of Inuit and earlier human presence. Walks and Zodiac explorations reveal delicate late-summer vegetation, immense geological scale, and coastlines approached most naturally from the sea.

Beechey Island holds one of the most tangible chapters in the history of Northwest Passage exploration. Franklin’s expedition spent the winter of 1845–46 here before sailing onward and disappearing. Three graves, remains of the camp, and stone structures left by later search expeditions still mark its stark shoreline.

Beechey became a gathering point for those who came north in search of Franklin, leaving supplies, messages, and traces of their own journeys. A fourth grave belongs to Thomas Morgan of HMS Investigator, who died during one of these searches. In the decades following Franklin’s disappearance, dozens of expeditions entered the Arctic, charting extensive areas and extending European scientific and imperial attention across Inuit Nunangat.

Inuit testimony proved essential to tracing the expedition’s final movements and, generations later, locating its lost ships. Beechey Island connects Franklin’s failed voyage with its wider legacy, including expanded geographical knowledge, growing colonial ambitions, and an increasingly sustained southern presence in Inuit homelands.

Ikirahaq is a narrow, twenty-five-kilometre passage separating Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula. At its narrowest, little more than a kilometre divides the shores. Strong tidal currents move through the channel as the waters of the eastern and western Arctic meet.

Granite walls rise close to the route, while seals, whales, seabirds, and occasionally polar bears may be seen along the shore or among the moving ice. On the southern side lies Murchison Promontory, the northernmost point of mainland North America.

Ikirahaq has long been travelled by Inuit. It later became important to expeditions searching for Franklin and attempting to navigate the Northwest Passage. The English name honours French naval officer Joseph René Bellot, who joined two Franklin searches before his death in the Arctic in 1853. Passage through this confined and powerful waterway remains shaped by current, ice, weather, and careful navigation. 

The Northwest Passage opens westward into the low tundra, scattered islands, and distant horizons of the Kitikmeot Region. Wide sounds narrow into channels that weave among gravel coastlines, wetlands, and archaeological sites. Muskoxen and caribou move across the land, seals and whales travel the surrounding waters, and migratory birds gather before beginning their journeys south.  

The western Kitikmeot is the homeland of Inuinnait, a distinct regional group of Inuit whose language, Inuinnaqtun, carries the place names, stories, and knowledge of this region. Generations of harvesting caribou, muskoxen, seals, and fish have shaped distinctive clothing, tools, food traditions, and patterns of travel. Today, Inuinnait communities are strengthening the transmission of their language and culture while sustaining close relationships with the land and sea.

These waters also form part of the route navigated by Roald Amundsen during the first complete transit of the Northwest Passage. His success drew heavily upon skills learned from Netsilik Inuit while overwintering near present-day Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) in the eastern Kitikmeot. Over three days, landings, tundra walks, Zodiac explorations, and time along the coast bring the wildlife, cultural depth, and open geography of the western Arctic into view. 

Kugluktuk stands where the Coppermine River enters Coronation Gulf. Its Inuinnaqtun name means “place of moving waters,” reflecting the currents and rapids that have long defined this meeting of river, tundra, and sea.

The Coppermine has supported travel, fishing, and life on the land for generations. Today, Kugluktuk is a close-knit community known for its artists, strong connections to the surrounding country, and position at the western edge of Nunavut.

Here, the east-to-west passage reaches its conclusion at the mouth of one of the Arctic’s great rivers. After disembarkation, a charter flight carries guests to Yellowknife, completing the journey from Greenland’s glacier-carved coast across the waterways of Inuit Nunangat.