The Environment
The Harsh Arctic
The Northwest Passage is located in the Arctic Archipelago, the series of islands located north of mainland Canada. The major islands make up the largest glaciers in Canada and can have mountain peaks that reach over 2,000 meters (~6,600 ft). The channels between islands can be up to 600 meters (2,000 ft) long and can reach a depth of 550 meters (1,800 ft).
Each winter, ice fragments, newly formed or from previous winters, will freeze with other ice fragments. This can create ice floes, which are large expanses of solid ice than can be miles long. During the coldest months, these ice floes can be up to 2 meters (6ft) thick. As currents and wind push ice floes together, the floes will eventually freeze together, creating one mass of ice. This is called pack ice, which is one of the major threats to sea voyages through the Northwest passage, even with today’s icebreakers.
The sun never sets for four months of the year, and it is eternal night for an additional four months. The weather is particularly dry, with less than an inch of rain per year on average, which has allowed some areas to be classified as polar deserts. The average annual temperature is around -20°C (-4°F), with some of the coldest temperatures reaching -62°C (-80°F).
The 1840s was a particularly rough time to go voyaging through the Passage. This decade was the tail end of the Little Ice Age, an approximately 400-year cold spell in the Northern Hemisphere that had some of the coldest temperatures on record over the past 8,000 years. This decade specifically had many record-cold summers where the ice did not melt and separate. This meant that pack ice from the previous couple of years remained, solidifying itself more with each winter and moving with the winds until colliding with other sheets of pack ice.
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