Blogtober 18: There be Bears!

 

This is a repost from our trip to the Yukon in 2022. We were talking about bears and I rewatched the videos and admired the power and agility of these grand wild creatures. 

On our trip to the Arctic over the summer of 2022, we did not go to the American state of Alaska, other than for one 10-kilometre stretch of the Alaska Panhandle. The road to access several gold and copper mines in BC, Canada, runs through Hyder, AK. That small community is accessible by land only through BC.  

We stayed in the small town of Stewart, BC, and crossed the USA/Canada border there. Hyder, Alaska bills itself as the "friendliest little ghost town", and a ghost town it is. There is one bar, one gift store, and a fish and chip restaurant, plus a very few families and old-timers. Hyder's electricity and phone services are supplied by BC.

During the pandemic, when the border was closed, life was made doubly difficult for these few Americans who lived in Hyder. The only way out was via seaplane or boat. The few children in town attended a Canadian school in Stewart, but that ended abruptly. Residents would phone their grocery orders into the Canadian grocers, who packaged everything into boxes and left them at the border crossing for the Americans to pick up. 

This is a remote area of BC, with tall, steep, densely forested mountains lining narrow valleys where water rushes down, down, down to the sea. The main attraction of Hyder is just a few miles beyond the town at the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site. 

In the most beautiful, lush, green temperate rainforest, pools of water are home to many kinds of waterfowl, including the Common Mergansers seen above. 

In mid-August, summer is already drawing to a close, and salmon begin their long trek upstream to spawn in the many rivers and streams. The USA Fish and Wildlife Department constructed an observation deck alongside the stream. Here we watched salmon lay their eggs and die, bodies decaying into the water and soil. 

Exciting as the salmon run is, it was no match for another event that takes place at the same time - grizzly bears fattening up for winter. From the safety of the observation deck, on two separate days we watched grizzlies fishing for salmon. 

The first bear we saw was in the evening and we waited about an hour before he showed up. The next day, en route to the observation site, we saw another grizzly cross the road in front of us and head down into the bushes by the river. We quickly and raced in so as not to miss anything. 

The people who stood along the observation deck were mostly quiet as we waited for bears to appear. Once they did appear, everyone was silent, watching the amazing spectacle before us. It was like being part of a nature documentary, with the bear running back and forth in the water after the salmon. 

I have to confess that at one point several tourists began laughing and talking quite loudly and the bear was looking around at the noise. My teacher mode kicked in and I said, "Shush!" They shushed immediately. I did feel a bit bossy, but really!

It was an amazing experience to be so close to these bears, and they took no notice of us watching them from above. Notorious for their poor eyesight, they couldn't see us above the wooden barrier, but I would think they could smell us. Regardless, they paid us no attention at all. In the above photo, the bear was directly below me in the stream. 

I uploaded two videos of bears running in the water and splashing as they catch salmon to YouTube. Now after several years, I can still feel the excitement I felt seeing those magnificent creatures. 

Grizzly Bear in the Morning 

Grizzly Bear in the Evening 

This is my private channel, but the videos should be visible with the link. Searching for them on Youtube won't work. This is new technology for me, so I hope it works! Tim took the videos while I took stills. 

Memories are wonderful for reliving adventures such as this one.