Northwest Passage

I wanna go on a cruise. Not just any cruise. In fact no cruise line has this route scheduled yet. I want to go on a cruise through the Northwest Passage. This trip has been a dream of sailors and cargo haulers since 1492 or thereabout.

A painting of a ship trapped in the ice. Most photos are of ships trapped in the Antarctic ice because sailors long ago learned not to fuck with the North Pole.
Photo lifted from http://www.gutenberg.org

Contrary to popular opinion, as long as there have been sailing ships people have known that the world is round. Columbus was trying to get to the Indies not only for a trading route but also in hopes of finding an easy way to get behind the front lines of the Muslim armies trying to fight their way North from Gibraltar. Instead he found this huge sodding land mass in his way. In the decades and centuries that followed sailors started trying to find a way around this worthless lump of dirt. The way to the south was open but it was a really long way. They tried taking the rivers across America but that didn't work. They really wanted to take the northern route over North America. But even at the height of summer there was still ship crushing ice. Eventually they gave up. The Panama Canal was built as an alternative to the Northwest Passage or the trip around South America.

But a week or so ago the European Space Agency announced that their satellites have shown that the Northwest Passage has cleared. The glaciers have retreated and the ices have thinned that much.

A photo built by the European Space Agency from their satellite footage showing the open route.

As excited as I am this is not a good thing. Not just for the polar bears that can't catch seals or find a place to stand. Forming ice on existing ice is fairly easy. Forming ice on salt water is much less so. Russia/Soviet Union is so large, in part, because they had no open waterways in the summer. They had to conquer down to the Black Sea. The waterways to the north would close during the winter. Or, rather they used to. Their northern border is almost clear, too. But it was glaciers moving in that closed the route more than just being really bitter cold. The glaciers no longer advance. The fact that the water is melt water and fresher than normal ocean water should help.

But since this has happened I want to do what history's greatest explorers never could. A cruise through the Northwest Passage gets put on my list of things to do before I die along with seeing a Space Shuttle launch, visit Devil's Racetrack, and see the Northern Lights.


In addition this past summer's melt from Greenland has spiked dramatically. It lost enough ice to cover the United States twice. I'm just not sure how thick a covering they're talking about.