As Bowhead Whales go, this was a small one – perhaps 10 tons or so. We had hiked approximately three miles from the village of Point Hope across the frozen Chukchi Sea to the camp where we had heard a whale had been caught. Locals had traveled by snowmachine and honda (snowmobile and ATV). There is always the danger of encountering a Polar Bear in this environment, and so we were armed. After snapping this picture I handed the camera to Barbra and took a place on the rope.

The open water in this picture is called a lead – an opening between two sheets of ice. You can see, across the water, the jumble of ice along the edge. Sea ice is often not the smooth sheet of white one might imagine. It continuously buckles, pushes up along pressure ridges, drifts apart and then presses back together. In a way, it behaves like the Earth’s tectonic plates, buckling, heaving, colliding, lifting. And so in order to make a whaling camp, trails must first be made through these places where jagged ridges of ice, individual chunks the size of cars, some much larger, must be broken through and smoothed out.

It is a lot of work to take a whale.