Quark Expeditions Returns to the Northeast Passage
DARIEN, CT (20 August 2007) Russia's Northeast Passage was closed to foreigners for more than half a century. Darkness for six months a year coupled with extreme ice and weather conditions continue to make the Northeast Passage relatively inaccessible to travelers. Quark Expeditions was the first polar expedition company to offer this voyage across Russia's Arctic coastline, aboard a polar-class icebreaker. Quark continues to be the only company to do so.
Travelers are flown from Anchorage, Alaska, the staging point for the 25-day expedition, to Anadyr, Russia, where they embark the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov. En route to Murmansk, the disembarkation point, shore landings are planned in the Chukotka Peninsula in Russia's Far East, Wrangel Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the islands of the New Siberan Islands, Severnaya Zemlya, Novoya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. Travlers are flown from Murmansk to Helsinki, Finland, where they spend the night before returning to their home countries.
The Northeast Passage is Quark Expeditions International Polar Year featured itinerary, to mark the 130th anniversary of the first successful transit of the Northeast Passage, the northern shipping route from Europe to Asia.