Sea Day, a surprise, and the Smoking Hills, Northwest Territories, Canada

By Glen Bruels
This is part of a series called Northwest Passage et al 2024
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Today was another sea day on our trip. We generally like sea days because they provide an opportunity to relax, catch up on reading or writing, and maybe attend some lectures. But there is one thing that I truly appreciate about cruising on Hurtigruten — they have a science team in addition to their expedition team. They do a lot of education, lead citizen science projects, and do research on their own. Today was a typical science sea day — some of the team and passengers were out documenting anything from birds, to clouds, to whales. Some of the rest of us were on the microscopes looking at local water samples to identify and report on the phytoplankton and zooplankton in the area. In fact, one project that is being worked on is to identify some of the harmful plankton that have found their way into the area. It’s great to see many of the passengers engaged in this effort. You can see the excitement of discovery in their eyes. I sure love it and now am becoming a devotee of iNaturalist. In fact, there is a project that has been defined for our particular Northwest Passage voyage and many people have contributed to it already. It’s never too late to learn or to exercise some of those skills and passions from long ago.

Getting the microscopes set up. I had never worked on high end scopes and struggled a bit at the beginning.
One lonely zooplankton in a field of phytoplankton. On the other hand, the eating’s good!
BTW, read these numbers very carefully. Phytoplankton, these little microscopic critters, produce half of the world’s oxygen and yet we don’t give them a second thought as they are being negatively impacted by climate change. Think about that the next time you hug a tree.

The surprise came later in the day. There are two newer expedition ships in the Hurtigruten fleet — the Amundsen that we are on and the Nansen which is the sister ship. Today, we did a rendezvous with the Nansen — bow-to-bow. They were doing the same trip as us, but East to West, instead of West to East. The primary reason was to exchange some materials between the ships, but the fun reason was to see who could represent their ship the best with the biggest number of people on deck, the most flags, and the greatest amount of noise. Well, Nansen had more passengers than us and I suspect they threatened their passengers with some horrific punishment, because they were out there in force. We made a decent showing and did many renditions of “We Will Rock You,” with all of the necessary stomping and clapping. Sadly, we were pretty much blown off the track, but it was a great experience.

Our ship’s sister ship, Nansen, making its approach.
Deb capturing the meeting for posterity.
The idea was for each ship to get as many passengers on deck, making a bunch of noise to beat the other. How did we do?
Fail! They blew us out of the water.
Even though we lost, we still had a great time!
At least some people were doing some serious work — trading supplies at sea.

The last part of the day provided the most interesting experience — the Smoking Hills! While cruising along the coastline, all of a sudden we happened on these hills that go down to the water that are billowing smoke. Through a strange set of geological circumstances, there is a natural oxidation of local sulfuric minerals and pyrite and organic matter that is contained in the oil shale here. It happens when the rock weathers and erodes and then comes in contact with oxygen, resulting in spontaneous combustion and the release of a great amount of heat. As a result of the oxidation, the rocks turn red, black, brown, yellow, and white. What it’s what you don’t see that could kill you. Just below the surface, there are one meter deep caustic ponds that contain high concentrations of minerals like aluminum, manganese, zinc, iron, cadmium, and nickel. So you might ask yourself — is this something recent. It turns out that it was Sir John Franklin was the first European to discover the Smoking Hills back in 1825. Of course local tribes in the area have always called the hills “the place of soot” or “the place of coal.” As we made several passes by the hills on the ship, we were fortunate that the winds were blowing in the other direction as the fumes have a very sulfuric smell. I should mention that one of our resident geologists, Ulli from Germany, was very emotive about his theories and feelings about this area. Given the level of his zeal, many of us thought he should be a preacher. He definitely had the fire and brimstone going! Quite a way to finish the evening!

German geologist, Ulli, exhorting us on the dangers of the Smoking Hills. We believe he would make a great “fire and brimstone” preacher!
Approaching the Smoking Hills. From a distance, it almost looks like forest fires.
But as we got closer, it was pretty obvious that something else was going on.
While it may look volcanic, it’s actually just an ongoing chemical oxidation reaction — in essence, spontaneous combustion.
The burning changes the color of the rock. Much of it is red because of the ferric oxide, but there are also large areas of yellow, white, etc.
And it’s a good thing the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Breathing all that sulfur dioxide would not be a great thing…
This entry was posted in Canada, Cruising, Northwest Territories, Travel
Glen Bruels

I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.

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