In the Footsteps of the Ice Bear Incredible Animal Journeys

It was here, earlier this year that a female polar bear emerged from her den.

When she came out, she had a tiny cub with her.

Mother and cub set off in that direction, and have barely stopped since.

It's four months since she started her incredible journey

and now it's time for me to catch up with her.

Following in the footsteps of our polar bears will take us

deep into one of the most demanding and hostile environments on the planet.

This journey is going to bring us to within a few hundred miles of the North Pole.

The Arctic throws so many obstacles and dangers in the way

of anyone brave or maybe foolish enough to travel up here.

We will have to endure the extreme hardships of this unforgiving landscape, but as we go deeper

into the bears' extraordinary world, I wonder just how the mother polar bear I'm going to be following

will be able to keep her vulnerable little cub alive,

because the odds are heavily stacked against them.

I'll literally go to the ends of the Earth to follow their Incredible Journey.

Our polar bear, Aurora, like all polar bear mothers,

will have given birth deep in the shelter of her underground den,

where she holed up for almost six months of last year.

Right in the depth of winter,

around Christmas Day,

Aurora's tiny little cub would have been born.

The cub would then have spent the rest of the winter suckling from its sleepy mum,

putting on vital weight and storing up strength for the trials that lie ahead.

By the time they emerged in the spring,

Aurora and her baby were ready for an extraordinary challenge.

Amazingly, when it was born, this cub weighed about five hundred grams,

less than half a bag of sugar.

Tiny.

After a short stay at the den, this little family will start to walk...

and walk...

and walk.

It's the start of an epic journey, so tough only half the cubs will survive.

By following in Aurora's footsteps I hope we can discover

exactly what she's been up to as she tries to keep her cub alive.

No-one has ever tried to do this before,

and right now I've no way of knowing

how this journey's going to turn out

for me, and more importantly, for Aurora and her cub.

To follow Aurora, we're going to need my friend Jason...

Hey, Steve, welcome to Polarhav.

..Polar bear expert and Arctic survival guide...

It's huge. Absolutely massive.

-This is great.

-We've got one...

The factory deck down one.

It's like a maze, this place.

We need a special boat like this one, which is ice strengthened.

Come in and meet the crew. There's the mess hall.

And finally, a crew of Norwegian fishermen, used to working in these extreme waters.

This will be home for the next three weeks.

Our chart table.

-Cool.

-where we have to make a few decisions.

-At the moment we're in Longyearbyen.

-'So, where are we?'

We're way up north, only a few hundred miles from the North pole itself.

I'm in Svalbard, part of Norway, and it's polar bear heaven.

In the winter the whole place is locked in ice, the sea freezes over.

But in summer, the ice melts away, retreating back towards the North Pole.

This is a world of constant change.

To help us understand Aurora's journey better,

we've been working closely with scientists up here,

who've been studying the movements of polar bears.

Now, realistically we couldn't stick with them during the winter up here in the Arctic.

The terrain is far too harsh.

But we have been able to follow their movements

using satellite collars that scientists put on these bears four months ago.

And what those collars have told us is truly amazing.

The bears are covering enormous distances,

literally thousands of miles.

All of these tracks are mothers, with little cubs in tow.

Why on Earth are the polar bears making these incredible journeys?

I'm hoping that by following the trail of just one bear, Aurora,

we'll find some answers.

But first, I've got to get to grips with some of the very latest scientific technology.

Shall we, erm...

-plug that into the GPS and...

-Plug this in the GPS.

Aurora's wearing a radio collar, which regularly sends her position up to satellites.

We can download the data from the satellites to our on-board computer every day.

It's amazing for me to be in such close contact with Aurora all the time.

I can follow her every move.

-Lovely job. That's what we like to hear.

-Relatively...

It's going to be cold, I suppose.

-Is it?

-Mmm.

-The sun's out.

-The sun's out.

-'And now, we're off to find her.'

A few months ago this journey would have been completely impossible.

We're so far north that in winter, the sea freezes solid.

The sea ice can be up to two metres thick.

Despite the hardships I know lie in store, I can't help but feel elated.

What an amazing, amazing place.

I've already found out quite a bit about Aurora.

She's about 18 years old, which makes her an old lady.

In the wild, polar bears don't live much beyond 20.

She will already have had six, maybe seven cubs,

and the one she has now will probably be her last.

So that makes it particularly precious.

I know they're out there now, struggling with every mile.

A stark contrast with my journey so far.

We've been, erm, motoring now in the boat, steadily north

for over 48 hours, actually.

Erm... The last two days.

Erm... Things have changed quite dramatically outside.

It's got a lot colder, and so we're now starting to see ice in the water.

Although I haven't seen much because I'm in bed!

Get a bit of rest in before we really start working.

I'm preparing for what's going to be a very difficult journey ahead,

much like the bears do.

That's my excuse! So make the most of it, because I think

things are going to start getting a little bit more energetic.

Almost from the off, mother and cub start to pile on the miles.

Young polar bear mothers generally have two cubs.

Fortunately nature is a little kinder to older mothers like Aurora,

and they usually just have one.

For an older bear the strain of having two cubs to look after

might be just too much to cope with.

By studying the data, we can tell the first part of Aurora's journey

took her and her cub directly from the den down to the sea ice.

Now it's summer, the actual sea ice has melted away.

But there are still plenty of icebergs around,

and we're going to find out where all this ice is coming from.

They're quite small, all of these bergs.

There's nothing to worry about.

Any of the larger bergs we should worry about.

We have to be careful.

Icebergs and boats don't mix.

We just hit an iceberg.

Admittedly it was only that big, but I think it counts!

There are estimated to be about 25,000 polar bears in the world,

and around 3,000 of them up here in Svalbard.

< Ice bjorn.

He's shouting "ice bjorn".

I thought he was saying iceberg, but "ice bjorn" is "ice bear"

in Norwegian, which is what they call a polar bear.

It's just on the rocks.

It's a long way away, but fair do's,

first spot.

They're definitely here.

So, what has the first part of Aurora's journey shown us?

Well, if you add on the movement of the sea ice,

it's clear she's following it as it melts away in spring.

In fact, she's almost constantly near the ice edge.

So understanding the ice

is going to be key in unravelling the mysteries of her journey.

And when it comes to ice, Arctic survival guide Jason is an expert.

It's moving the ice forwards...

So the real clear blue stuff is where it's recently...?

And letting new ice out the whole time.

You see a few torquoise places

-where it's incredibly blue, like in the middle here.

-Torqu?

Torquise.

The colour torquise.

-Turquoise.

-Turquoise. OK, well get that...

-Turquoise.

-Cut. Take two!

-Turquoise.

-Turquoise.

-That's the bad lad.

-Yeah.

-The blue ice has got torquoise colour.

-Turquoise.

Turquoise.

-The dark blue ice we've got... You see the dark blue ice?

-Yeah?

That's where we've had fresh water melt during the summer in the crevices and in the ponds.

It's re-frozen as water, not as compressed snow, and now it's coming out as ice,

so it's a very deep blue colour.

That'll be really solid ice.

Very solid ice.

That's great!

'So this is where all this ice is coming from.

'It's constantly breaking off the front of the glaciers.'

If that's the noise from a tiny little drop like that,

when a huge berg comes off it must sound incredible.

It sounds death-defying.

You'll hear it from ten kilometres out in the fjord.

You can be lying in a tent camp and hear it calving.

How do these vast rivers of ice actually form?

It was formed as snowfall thousands of years ago

at the top of the inland ice, and has moved down here over time.

And the rock you see is the mountainside being picked up

and transported as a bulldozer pushing out all the rock surface,

eating away at the mountains slowly.

So if you come back in about 40,000 years, the mountains will be half the size.

That's insane.

You see, geography can be interesting, kids!

If we've got any chance of finding polar bears, we've got to get right in amongst the ice,

and if I'm going to go out on a small boat, an immersion suit is an essential piece of kit.

If I fell into the icy water, I'd be unconscious in a matter of minutes.

This suit would keep me alive long enough to be rescued.

Warm as toast!

Now, Steve, that we're in brush ice created from the glacier calving,

it's a great place to search for polar bears.

-They'll hunt in here?

-They'll hunt in here. They can't hunt on the ice.

The ice is too small. But they need the ice as a hunting platform.

-They'll swim up on seals?

-They'll swim up on seals.

As long as the seal's a bit dozy on the ice, they'll come up

with explosive power on to the ice and grab the seal.

-So real ambush tactics, then?

-Yeah.

So what am I looking out for?

I'm looking out for polar bears swimming between?

And also leaving. If they're swimming on the surface

they'll be leaving like a boat wake behind them.

They swim at about four knots.

-Oh, wow.

-That's their cruising speed.

And they don't use the back hind legs for swimming.

-It's all doggy paddle.

-It's all doggy paddle, and the back legs are just the rudders.

Jason's got a trained eye for bears, and he's sure he's spotted one.

-Oh, there it is. There it is.

-There it is. There it is.

Oh, look at that.

You can see the colour. They're not exactly white.

They're more of a cream. So they really stand out.

Yeah, you can see him nicely now. What about this bear here?

Is it likely to be a female, then, and could it have cubs out here?

Unlikely to have cubs in this place

because there's glaciers calving the whole time.

It looks like it's eating something.

Is there likely only to be one bear here, as well?

No, I think we could probably have a few along the glacier front here,

but in this ice...

The view is... We see nothing because the ice is bigger than the boat.

So we have to get up high on something to get a really good look.

It goes to show that it actually makes sense to hunt here

because he's got himself a big bearded seal.

There's a lot of good eating on one of them, I should think.

-There's another.

-There's another one.

There's another bear closing in on the young male.

He's picked up the scent and he's heading straight for the kill.

This is a fully mature adult male, and he means business.

If the youngster doesn't give way, this could really kick off.

Just look at the size of him.

Let's hope the young male sees sense and backs away.

Luckily, the youngster seems to know his place,

and he's retreated to the edge of the ice.

He must be desperate, cos he's going back for more!

That's an extraordinary sight.

You very rarely see two unrelated males sharing food.

It goes to show that there's a lot of food here.

These two, big, fat and healthy, and quite comfortably eating side by side.

Just look at the size of them!

HE MOUTHS

I might as well throw these away.

I never thought I was going to get anywhere near this close.

That is absolutely fantastic.

Male polar bears are huge,

and just look at their teeth and claws.

They're twice the size of a tiger.

They're not only the biggest bear in the world.

They're the biggest land carnivore on Earth.

Seals are the main food of polar bears.

And although these bears are eating a fully-grown seal,

Aurora would have been after baby seals.

With a cub in tow, an easy meal is crucial.

Seal pups have no idea of the danger they're in,

so their mums have to keep a constant lookout for polar bears.

Seals give birth on and around the ice.

At the time Aurora and her cub emerged from the den,

the ice would have been covered in naive young seals for her to hunt.

Seal pups are pretty slow and helpless

when they're out of the water.

Mind you, once they're under the water, it's a very different story.

Even a newborn seal pup like this one could effortlessly evade a bear.

So, as well as providing Aurora with an abundance of food,

the ice also provides excellent cover

for the bears to hide behind when they're stalking.

If there's no ice, there's nowhere to hide.

Sometimes the seal pups are hidden in dens under the ice.

But the bears use their extraordinary sense of smell

to find them, deep below the surface.

Bashing through snow and ice to get at seal pups

is just one of the skills polar bear mothers like Aurora

must teach their cubs.

So, the reason Aurora made her way to the sea ice

in the first part of her incredible journey

was because it was the best possible place to find food.

The only place to find ice at this time of the year are the glaciers.

They're gigantic ice-making machines.

The whole vast river of ice is on the move,

slowly, inexorably toppling into the sea -

sometimes in small lumps, sometimes much bigger ones.

Given that fact, it's obviously not that great

to be actually under the ice front with a broken engine.

ENGINE CUTS OUT

Sorry, guys.

ENGINE SPLUTTERS

What happened there,

we got hooked on a piece of ice and lost the fulcrum

between the underwater housing.

-Can we get out of here?

-Yeah.

ENGINE REVS

I don't want that in the boat.

How high do you reckon that is?

40, 50 metres?

Woah!

Feel the spray?

That is an enormous block, right at the top.

That whole front is going to go at some point.

CRACKING

Oh, my God!

Oh, my...!

I can taste salt water in my mouth.

That was amazing.

Look at the waves, look! Oh, my hat, as they say.

I want to see that again.

Oh, my God.

-So, they don't calve very often, then, these glaciers?

-No, it's extremely rare.

'It may be a great place for the bears to find food,

'but it's also a potential death trap.

'To be honest, that was just a bit too close for comfort.'

'It's time to check in with our polar bear, and see what she's up to.

'We're getting much closer now, but of course Aurora is constantly on the move too.'

-..That's about 50.

-Yeah.

'We've just got some remarkable new information about Aurora.

'Up until now, everyone thought she was 18,

'but the scientists have been working on samples they took from her,

'and it turns out she's 23.

'She's the oldest mother they've ever had.

'This will be, very probably, her last incredible journey.

'But meanwhile, she's still clocking up the miles.'

Aurora's track has thrown up a new puzzle.

She's certainly followed the ice to hunt seals, but once the ice melted

she stopped off in one particular place on the coast for quite a long time.

I wonder what she was up to?

We're going in to follow her trail and look for clues.

Well, Aurora's moved on now, but what a place she chose to stay.

Look at this.

Polar bears do live in some of the most beautiful and dramatic places on Earth.

So, this is where Aurora was for quite some time.

What was she living off all the time she was here?

Well, the obvious place you'd think she's finding food is at the front of this glacier,

but I don't think she has been,

because there's very little ice in that water for her to hunt off.

But take a look at this ridge.

Believe it or not, there's gold in them there hills!

There's bags of food for the bear that knows how to find it.

Guillemots. In springtime they come to the cliffs

to nest in their tens of thousands.

These guillemots have a curious bit of behaviour.

The chicks leave the nest before they can properly fly,

and glide down to the sea on stubby little winglets.

And they complete their development actually floating about on the sea.

The trouble is, if you can't fly properly

and you've got any distance to go, not everyone is going to make it.

It's a worrying time for the parents.

It's a bonanza for predators,

..like Arctic foxes or polar bears.

It's a feast.

Somehow Aurora knew where to go, and when to go there,

to feed on this avalanche of guillemot chicks.

She's managing to take advantage of any possible food sources.

She's older, but she's clever.

But now nesting's over.

The guillemots have moved out to sea and the food's dried up,

which is why Aurora moved on.

But I keep thinking,

was Aurora here on her own?

Or was her little cub with her?

So, where did Aurora go after the bird cliffs?

Well, she took off.

She's miles away.

Now we're playing catch-up.

We're so far north, up until now we've had 24-hour sunlight

every day.

But things are starting to change.

Well, it's about an hour to midnight, and tonight

is a very special night for Aurora and the rest of the polar bears

up here in the Arctic

because, after four months of continuous sunlight,

the sun, for the first time,

is going to dip below the horizon.

Winter is officially on its way.

The nights are drawing in.

Young polar bears have a lot to learn from their mums.

Cubs even have to learn how to hunt.

It's not instinctive.

In fact, there's so much to learn, cubs stay with their mothers

for a total of two and a half years.

It's a huge investment of time and energy for mothers like Aurora.

Little polar bears need a lot of looking after.

What makes polar bears cute?

What is it about polar bears

that makes you want to cuddle them,

that makes you want to pick them up

and just bury your face in their fur,

given the fact that they'd bite your head off for trying?

Is there some evolutionary advantage to being cute?

Do you reckon that early seals,

when they first saw white bears,

thought, "Oh, they're gorgeous,"

and subsequently ended up inside the polar bear's belly?

Probably not!

As we've travelled our way around the Arctic,

we've had a constant companion,

or constant companions, I should say,

cos it's probably not the same one, but it's the Northern Fulmar.

There's a couple behind the boat at the moment, and they're pretty much

written down in the books as professional boat followers.

They're an amazing bird.

One of the most impressive things about them

is the fact that they can live up to about 60 years old.

So that little bird there could be older than my dad!

There are tiny little huts dotted all around up here.

They were originally built by hunters.

Polar bears were hunted intensively up here for over a hundred years,

and because the mothers look after each youngster for so long,

they only reproduce very slowly.

So hunting had a drastic effect on polar bear numbers.

This was actually built by a friend of mine who lives in California.

-1971.

-Excellent!

'In 1973, polar bear hunting was banned, and since then their numbers have recovered.'

That's for bears, I take it, to keep bears out.

That's to keep bears out.

'The old hunters' huts can still be a lifesaver

'for anyone caught out by the extreme Arctic weather.'

There no, um, lock, I see.

-This is a modern converted cabin.

-Right.

-Get the door.

-So, who stays in these huts now, then?

Oh, mostly locals on weekend visits. It's cosy, isn't it?

Yeah, I'll give you that.

-Seen some action, this place, hasn't it?

-Yeah.

-Not just bear action...

-Oh, bear action.

You can see the glass is obviously smashed from the inside.

-Oh, yes.

-They had a bear in here recently.

You reckon inside the actual hut?

All the different panel boards on the wall,

these are all the different holes where bears come in.

I see they get repaired quite a bit, do they?

The stove would be a lifesaver, I suppose.

Actually, the smaller cabin it is, the better it is because it just warms up so quickly.

It must have been extreme for a bear trapper to be in here.

Would they spend the whole winter here?

-Most of the time they would put out during the summer.

-Oh, OK.

An expedition would be put out late summer, early summer,

and then be picked up hopefully the summer after.

But quite often, of course,

the drift ice would come in and wouldn't let the ships in.

The vessels trying to pick 'em up would be caught in the drift ice.

They'd be forced for a second winter, third winter.

-It's quite common.

-So people would be sort of

isolated in these huts for for years.

-Years.

-And would you be safe?

If we had to stay in one of these,

-would you be safe from bears from in here?

-Yeah.

You might get 'em smashing through the window,

but if you're really worried about bears,

you go and put up the covers on the window on the outside.

'Imagine that - being holed up in this hut,

'on your own,

'for three freezing years.'

I think I prefer our ship.

Life on board has suddenly become...a lot less comfy.

The calm weather we'd been having couldn't last.

This sort of weather's uncomfortable for us humans,

but it would have to get much, much worse to bother the bears.

They can handle extreme blizzards

and temperatures down to about minus 40 with no problems.

They'll scoop out a shallow shelter,

hunker down and let the bad weather blow itself out.

At last we're closing in on Aurora, but it's frustrating.

It looks like we're not going to be able to catch up with her just yet.

There's another, even bigger, storm brewing,

and in these uncharted waters

we can't be sure we can find a safe anchorage.

..Coming round this corner...

-The Captain's concerned.

-Yes.

The weather forecast for tomorrow says we've got a south-easterly,

from this direction,

gale or near gale.

Right. We can't anchor off here, either?

No, no. That's not possible under such conditions.

It's uncharted waters.

Right, OK.

How long is that supposed to last, or don't we know?

Ah, we don't know. But I think the whole day tomorrow.

-Oh, right, OK.

-So, maybe the day after, it could be calmer.

What do you suggest we do?

If we're going to get hit by this south-easterly,

we go around the south-east corner of this island.

-The options are that we just wait out the storm in this area.

-Oh, OK.

-Quite a good anchorage to wait it out.

-OK.

As soon as the weather clears we'll have about a ten-hour sail across.

OK. Oh, well, that sounds great.

At least we can do something while we're waiting.

We're staying with the sunshine in this sheltered anchorage,

whilst the storm blows itself out further south.

There's no point in mooching about on the boat.

This is a great chance to go bear spotting.

They're straight ahead, where the ice meets the land.

'Jason and I are taking out the kayaks to explore the nearby glacier.

'And there's not just polar bears around here.'

Yeah, we are surrounded.

There's some here. They are literally everywhere.

They're all over the place.

'Walruses are absolutely enormous,

'around a ton and a half.

'They remind me of hippos,

'and just like hippos, they're pretty unpredictable.'

-They're following us.

-Yes, they are.

-Quite inquisitive.

Popping up and having a look.

'Very curious.

'Perhaps just a bit too curious!'

You see it ahead, Steve?

On the beach? There's a bear.

-Where.

-12 o'clock.

There he is. He's looking at us.

-He's there.

-Oh, yeah.

He's just sat still.

'You know how most animals run away from us humans?

'Well, not polar bears,

'especially a big male like this one.'

We can paddle a little bit closer, maybe?

Oh, he's coming to have a look.

This is close enough, Steve.

This goes to show

how inquisitive the bears are.

He wouldn't know whether we were a potential food source or not,

and at this time of year it's worth investigating.

-Look at that!

-We back out.

I wouldn't like to get much closer without the outboard strapped to the back.

'Lone male bears like this are something Aurora's got to worry out.

'There's really only three things that can kill a polar bear cub -

'an accident, starvation or a big male bear looking for a mate.

'Males will sometimes kill the cubs

'so they can mate with the females themselves.

'All through her journey,

'Aurora will have been trying to avoid contact with male bears.

'If it's unavoidable, a mother polar bear has two choices -

'make a run for it, or try and drive the male off.'

This is a terribly dangerous situation.

You can see the male polar bear is about twice the size of the female.

If he chose to attack, she wouldn't stand a chance.

You can see how torn she is.

She literally doesn't know which way to turn.

Despite all the mothers do

to protect and nurture their little ones,

the odds really are stacked up against them.

Time to get back to the ship.

But first we've got to run the gauntlet.

This whole place is full of walrus.

That bear's still nearby, but they're not bothered.

They're far too big and well armed.

He's hot on your tail, Jason.

As well as being unpredictable,

they're sometimes uncomfortably inquisitive.

Just keep moving.

The tusks are a sign of rank.

The male with the biggest tusks is usually the boss of his group.

And they also work as ice picks,

when they drag themselves out of the water up on to the ice.

In fact, the scientific name for walrus means "tooth walker".

But of course they're also serious weapons for fighting,

slashing and stabbing.

They might look quite comic,

but these are animals you need to treat with a lot of respect.

I think we've been adopted.

Keep going, mate.

Time to get out of the water and let it clear off.

No, they could be territorial for the ice floes, mate.

-Oh!

-BLEEP

I think they could be.

I think that was a walrus.

Mate, that wasn't nice.

Behave. Now what do you reckon?

Now I think we stay on the ice floe

until we get picked up by our rescue boat.

Come, come, come.

-That's it, they're getting the idea.

-They're getting the idea.

WALRUS SNORTS

Yeah!

Could you do a circle and scare him away?

OK. We hop in the boat from here.

That was unpleasant.

WALRUSES BELLOW

-Go back.

-I just keep hearing sounds behind me and thinking,

"It's a walrus!"

I'm glad I'm in the big boat!

Let's see him try and stick a tusk in one of these.

'Right, we're on the last leg.

'We've finally caught up with Aurora.

'We're so close now.

'It's time to get the latest reading from her collar

'and then set out to meet our girl face to face.'

-How old is this data, do we know yet?

-Maximum of one hour.

Is it? Fair do's.

Something strange seems to be going on.

The information we're getting looks a bit baffling.

After being constantly on the move for four months,

Aurora seems to have stopped...dead.

It's confusing and more than a bit worrying.

Is she still alive,

and has her cub defied the odds and survived with her?

Do we think she's had a cub with her all this time?

We hope she's got a cub with her.

-Otherwise the cub's...

-It's hard to tell.

There's only one way of finding that out,

-and that's just going and finding her.

-Finding her.

From the very latest data,

we know she's around ten kilometres away from us,

which is quite a hike.

Once you start walking, there'll be a bit of sweat.

We're just basically scaring,

so we've got explosion signal pistol to scare it away,

we've got training hand grenades in here

which I can throw to scare it away, we've got pepper spray.

If the worst comes to the worst, we've got the old...

-Magnum.

-44 Magnum.

-OK.

-26 millimetre. An explosion to scare the bear.

-OK.

'I'd got so wrapped up in worrying about whether

'Aurora and her baby had made it

'that I'd almost forgotten she's still a very dangerous carnivore.

'She may be an old bear,

'but she's still one of the most powerful predators on the planet.

'We really do have to be careful.'

'This is the polar bear's world,

'not ours.'

Right, so,

the plan is to walk for about,

I think, about 11ks now, and it's in that direction now.

That's as the crow flies,

so we don't know exactly what we'll end up doing,

but we're all a happy bunch at the moment.

Let's hope it keeps that way!

Are we there yet?!

Of course, one of the things that we need to find out

is why Aurora has stopped so far inland.

Has she found a food source?

Is she hiding from a big male bear?

There are lots of possible reasons,

but there's only one way to find out,

and that's to try and find her.

Aurora has done everything she could to keep her cub alive.

She's hunted seals on the ice,

she's found new food supplies like the bird cliffs,

she's protected her cub from marauding males,

but have all her efforts paid off?

We're about to find out.

When you see the sort of terrain we've ended up in,

we've gone for six kilometres now,

so we're quite a way from the sea.

And we're in this valley that is just literally, er...

a shale field.

There's hardly a scrap of vegetation here,

and so you've got to start asking the question,

what is Aurora doing here?

What is she getting out of this environment,

because it's not your typical polar bear habitat, is it?

-We want to go down over there.

-Yeah.

Just wade bare-footed.

Yeah. OK. Ha, ha!

'I can't tell you what this feels like.

Glacier meltwater, ice water.

'It's just unbelievably cold.

'And to add to the experience,

'the riverbed is a mass of razor-sharp stones.'

Where is she?

We can see for miles down this valley.

I would have thought that a white bear

'would have been easy to spot, but there's not a sign.

'I'm starting to get seriously worried.

'We've got a satellite phone for emergencies,

'so I'm calling in to check the very latest data.'

It's 39 and 104.

'I'm just looking at the read-out, and nothing's changed.'

To be honest, we should be able to see her by now

so we're kind of a bit confused as to where she is,

and whether she's still going, really.

Um... Yeah, that's pretty tough.

We're...

We're right on top of where her last position was.

All the positions that we've got today have been, erm...

fairly inaccurate ones,

because the collar gives out various quality data,

but there was one which was very good at ten past seven this morning,

and that again was in this area,

so we'll just have to hope that she's alive and just sleeping,

or burrowed into something and we stumble upon her,

but not too close, obviously!

It's really not looking that good for Aurora and her little cub.

Right now I'm honestly not sure

we're going to find either of them alive.

Hold the bag, hold the bag!

I don't flippin' believe it!

Jake, get out of the shot!

(We walked within about maybe 50 yards of them.)

(She's got a cub. Definitely got a cub.)

I saw her collar. I saw her ear tag.

I can't believe it. We've travelled I don't know how far.

Just today we've walked for the last four, five hours to get here

and there she was.

She was a matter of feet away from us.

She was probably about 50, 60 feet away.

Just popped up over the ridge, there with her cub.

The thing is, she's travelled maybe 3,500 miles since April.

But even better than that, her cub has been with her all that time.

I didn't dare to believe it was going to be alive still.

But there it is. It's doing fine.

It's travelled all that way with her.

That is absolutely incredible.

Let's have a look at where she was sleeping off her time.

I can't believe that she was here all this time.

How long has she been here?

About ten days. Just plus or minus a couple of days, so...

I've got my theory what she's doing.

Yeah. And what is that?

-Well, she's done this incredible journey...

-Yeah.

..which was roughly about 3,500 miles up the coast of Spitsbergen,

-around out on the ice, gone off the drift ice all the whole time.

-Yeah.

And the ice has left now, it's late summer.

So she's come down to a valley like this, when there's no ice left,

and found a nice bed like this to lie out in.

-She's just chilled out.

-She's been chilling out.

God! Is it still warm?

'Polar Bears have an amazing ability to simply shut down

'when there's no food to conserve energy.

'It's a bit like suspended animation.'

She would have been laid up, suckling her cub.

The cub was in incredibly good condition for this time of year.

That distance there, where the other guys are,

was where we first saw her. She popped up.

She obviously heard us.

She may even have smelt us.

But she popped up, and there was the cub next to her.

Beautiful white coat,

cos I expected her to be dirty if we found her,

but beautiful condition, looked fantastic.

And then just sauntered off down there.

She's already around the first ridge,

which is a couple of kilometres away at least.

-Yes, no time at all.

-No time at all.

-That is amazing.

And we used five hours or six hours to get up here.

And another five, six hours to get all the way back!

Just reminding myself where I am. I'm nearly on the top of the world.

I'm nearly...right up there at the North Pole,

barely the length of the UK away from the North Pole.

Feet are killing me.

Don't care, though.

Wouldn't change this for the world.

Until they started fitting satellite tags,

no-one had any idea these polar bears undertook

such immense journeys in their endless pursuit of food,

to keep themselves and their little cubs alive.

But now we know polar bears undertake some of the longest journeys on Earth.

What we've seen of this land has just been amazing.

You know, it is completely unlike anywhere else, and it's...

it's got the weirdest array of animals here, you know,

from the big polar bears, big and beautiful polar bears,

to the comical and downright dangerous walrus.

Belugas, bird life -

it's just staggering.

It's an amazing place.

An amazing place.

Time to migrate south, though.

I feel a warm, stationary bed beckons!

Finding Aurora and her cub was more than I dared hope for.

To realise that somehow she's kept her baby alive,

protected it, fed it, taught it the fundamentals of survival

in this harsh environment,

proving herself to be a truly wonderful mother.

And there's still so much danger ahead of them.

When we arrived here a few weeks ago, it was 24-hour daylight.

But now, night has arrived in the Arctic.

In a matter of a few weeks it's going to be 24-hour darkness.

Times are going to be hard,

way too hard for us.

My journey may be over, but Aurora and her cub don't have any choice.

They're going to have to trudge on endlessly,

searching for the next meal.

For the next two years, if all goes well,

they'll be inseparable, mother and cub just piling on the miles.

Aurora has used all her experience to bring her cub this far,

and she'll continue to protect it

through the long and difficult road ahead.

So far, so good.

But as with all the animals in Incredible Journeys,

these polar bears are still writing their own stories.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2006

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