Thomas Kokta, a photographer from Issaquah, Washington traveled to the Canadian wilderness, braving icy cold temperatures of -67 Fahrenheit and strong winds in order to capture these incredibly adorable photos of a mother polar bear and her cubs.
His once-in-a-lifetime images show the exact moment mom and her babies emerge from their den.
The determined photographer had to spend over 11 days watching the den and waiting for the bears to finally emerge. He says he spent roughly 250 hours before it happened.
Kokta, who is originally from Hagen, Germany, was delighted when mother bear and her two-month-old cubs finally made their appearance.
He continued to capture photos for several days as they played in the fresh snow, climbed all over each other and got used to life outside the den.
The photographer told the Daily Mail, "Polar bear mothers and cubs are not seen by many at this stage. The cubs are only two months old and everything is new to them - at first they stayed very close to mom."
Slowly they began venturing away from her, playing with tree branches and snow, he said, explaining further, "But they always came back to her, playing with her big paws and climbing on her back."
"I have probably spent close to a full year of my life looking for and photographing polar bears. I love the cold, the snow and ice, and the occasional northern lights displays at night," Kokta added.
The bear family lives in the Wapusk National Park, located in the Hudson Plains ecozone, just south of Churchill in north-east Manitoba.
It protects one of the world's largest known polar bear maternity denning areas.
