Tundra Lodge, Churchill: Sleeping among Polar Bears on Hudson Bay

Every autumn, polar bears gather on the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, waiting for the sea to freeze. Natural Habitat Adventures puts its guests right among them in the Tundra Lodge, a train-like hotel raised above the subarctic plain outside town, where bears wander beneath the windows by day and the northern lights can glow overhead at night.

Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world

Churchill is a small subarctic port, home to 870 people at the 2021 census, on the west shore of Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River. It calls itself the Polar Bear Capital of the World, and for good reason. Hudson Bay melts completely in summer, so its bears spend the ice-free months ashore, living mostly off the fat they stored while hunting seals. In autumn they move from inland towards the coast to wait for freeze-up.

Once the ice forms, the bears head out to hunt ringed seals, their main prey, stalking them on the ice or waiting at breathing holes. That makes October and November Churchill’s peak season, the window when the bears are most concentrated along the shore. Adult males weigh 300–800 kg, so the town takes them seriously: bears that keep loitering in town, mostly young ones, are tranquilised and held in a special holding facility until the bay freezes and they can be released.

Inside the Tundra Lodge

The Tundra Lodge is a custom-built hotel that Natural Habitat Adventures places in an area of high polar bear density at the start of each season, operating from October through November. Its layout borrows from a sleeper train:

• 32 rooms, each a single compartment with an upper or lower berth;
• six shared toilets and four showers;
• a lounge for watching bears and a dining car with sliding windows for photography;
• outdoor viewing platforms for close-up bear watching and the aurora.

Guests cannot walk around the grounds, for obvious reasons, so all viewing happens from the cars and the platforms. The appeal is round-the-clock access to bear habitat: instead of driving out from town each morning, guests wake up where the bears already are.

Watching polar bears from the lodge

Tour operators around Churchill use tundra vehicles, boats and aircraft to reach wildlife, and lodge stays are combined with guided outings on the tundra. At the lodge itself, the windows and platforms make photography easy, and when the skies are clear and solar activity is high, the same platforms become a front-row seat for the northern lights.

When GearJunkie reported on the lodge in December 2013, a six-day all-inclusive trip, including flights from Winnipeg to Churchill, cost US,595. Prices and itineraries change each year, so check the operator’s current departures.

Getting to Churchill and when to go

No road links Churchill to the rest of Canada’s highway network. Travellers either fly from Winnipeg with Calm Air or take Via Rail’s Winnipeg–Churchill train, a journey of about 40 hours that runs twice a week. The town is worth visiting in other seasons too: in July and August thousands of beluga whales gather in the Churchill River estuary to calve, and the northern lights are often visible in February and March.

The bears themselves face a changing bay. Earlier spring melt drives them ashore before they have built enough fat, and land foods cannot make up the shortfall, so the western Hudson Bay population is among those listed as likely to have decreased. Polar bears are classed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, with an estimated 22,000 to 31,000 animals worldwide.

Explore more: Churchill’s seasonal wildlife context; polar bears seen through a wildlife camera.

Related reading

• Gerda and Her Cub: Vera Salnitskaya’s Polar Bear Photographs
• Mark Dumas and Agee: A Polar-Bear Filming Relationship
• Andrew Manske’s Polar Bear Mother and Cubs in Manitoba
• Gordon Buchanan’s Close Encounter with a Polar Bear
• Churchill in Google’s Panoramic Imagery: Looking around the Tundra

Sources