I know that people are curious about just how close we got to the polar bears. We never got closer than 30 yards and most of the time, we were much further away. Often times we were over 100 yards away from the bears. We mainly searched for the bears by boat which means that we were in the boat and they were on land. Sometimes we saw them swimming but we always stayed well away from the bears and out of their path. We did our best not to bother them beyond trying to enjoy watching them.

Still, I thought I would devote a post to give you a better idea of what it was like. You can see Vicky in the first photo. We were probably 40 – 50 yards from this bear at the time but only about 30 yards as he walked in front of us. We got plenty of photos and videos of this bear.

Many people have questioned just “how” we got such great photos. It was mostly due to good cameras and mostly due to my son Andrew’s great camera and his great photography skills. To give you a better idea, I have paired some photos of Andrew taking photos and then the photos that Andrew took. I hope this will best explain what we did and how we did it. Also, my photo of Andrew and his photo might not coincide exactly. We got closer to those bears during the time that we watched them, so his photos might have been from a time when we were closer, but you get the idea.

In the second photo, I was focused on Andrew so the bear is out of focus. But Andrew was focused on the bear as you can see in the next photo.

Again in the fourth photo, I was focused on Andrew but you can see the twin cubs up on the ledge of the hillside. Andrew got some great photos of these guys, like the last photo.

So rest assured, we were being safe and keeping a safe distance from these bears. As cute as they look, these are truly wild and dangerous animals and we respected their space.