What I found after traveling through Alaska's back country with naturalists and ending up in Katmai (National Park) was that living on bear time altered my view of the world. When a bear population (or a single bear) is in control of where you walk, when you walk, what you eat and where and the basics of your entire day, and you love it....well, the jumble of Manhattan simply loses credibility.
I used to wear a baseball hat in Katmai (National Park), mostly since it rains allot and once you're outside somewhere watching bears, you stay out....and just get wet. Ponchos are important apparel in that environment. I even have some rubber pants to slide on over my jeans...but I never wore them. They were just too geeky. But the baseball hat and poncho worked well with long sleeved garb underneath to stay warm. You can not bring something as simple as hot cocoa or tea into the wild with grizzlies out and about. A grizzly can smell food at at upwards to a 18 miles distance (if it's carrion) or so. Therefore traveling with food...not so good. One is not even allowed to chew gum in bear country, if you are not an idiot. I say this because some people, a good number of them, do weigh in on the idiot side of the spectrum and do take in food and bother the bears which is bad news for everyone else. These same idiots will walk up nearly to a grizzly bear and keep the rangers on their toes. The rangers are around to protect the bears. That humans enjoy the result of their do diligence is simply a plus.
Maybe I've mentioned this little story; can't recall. It was the trip I took on my own in 1998 or '99 (first trip was with a handful of naturalists in 1997 and I left NYC three months later). On the second trip I had a nice cabin on a ridge...just a 12x12 foot or so log cabin with a shower behind a drape with a toilet and sink and two bunk beds. I think it also had a small electric heater but I was always cold...reason to get up very, very early. I had the entire cabin on my own which was an enormous luxury (but very inexpensive). I'd asked to reserve this exact cabin and was surprised to find it available. One is allowed to remain in Katmai for a week or a bit less at one time. The housing is in very short supply. Many people actually tent in Katmai in a camp ground which is in some less bear traveled and more isolated area. I think tenting in Katmai is nuts, but hey some people just want to be on the edge...the literal edge when it comes to bear country. You remember the guy (and his girl friend) who was eaten by the grizzly in Alaska who had a major award winning documentary film Grizzly Man (which Werner Hertzog put together in 2005 posthumously) - that's Timothy Treadwell? All the naturalists and rangers pretty much considered Timothy a bit off. If you saw that film, that was Katmai. Timothy lived (for 13 years of summers) and died outside his tent. In the end I think his film did do a lot to education people about bears and what not to do. Plus it was beautiful...just beautiful.
The camp fills daily with day travelers to have a quickie experience watching bears. All the day travelers are float planed in from King Salmon, a little back water through which most travelers must go to reach Katmai. Katmai is a long stretch of land which is open to the sea (ergo the salmon are coming in to spawn which is why the bears arrive each summer) which extends down as an archipelago from the base of Alaska and into the sea. It is hundreds miles in any one direction.
Back to the story. I was returning from a day of bear viewing. I was walking by myself, hat on, sans poncho, head down watching my feet as I climbed up the slight incline, over roots in the path, to my cabin. My cabin was the third one in from the one closest to the main eating lodge. I heard a rustling. Hearing a rustling is never a good thing when you are walking alone on a path in bear country. I looked up. Before me was a moma bear on her hind legs with two cubs tearing apart one of the rubber doormats in front of the cabin. The moma bear was the equivalent of looking at a giant fur wall since she engulfed my entire field of vision. I was about 10- 12 feet from her. She stood up as I picked my head up. We looked at one another.
One never goes within 150 yards of a mother bear with cubs. Mother bears are much more dangerous than their male relatives who might reach 1500 pounds and do kill or maim one another over disagreements over something as simple as a preferred fishing spot. My proximity wasn't even a question...I was entirely too close.
Bears use the same paths as the humans at Katmai. In fact all paths were created by the bears eons ago. So it is a everyday occurrence to bump into bears on the paths...but one is never alone on those paths if you are on the human side of the equation. One waits for other humans to form a little posse of fellow travelers and to sing out "hey, bear" and clap all the way from one place to another. Bears at Katmai are used to this sort of behavior and so everyone generally gets along quite copacetically. Since even 11 years ago, I was forced to walk slower than other folks because my arthritic knees do not bend and recoil as quickly as most people like to walk on a bear path...that being the case, I used the "hey, bear" capacity of my brain and lungs to full advantage within a group of humans walking a path. Because I was always last in line on the path.
So back to moma bear. She was startled. I was startled. If one had to decide who would recover with best advantage it would be a toss up. Moma's bears eyesight isn't great but her nose knows. Maybe I could see fine but if I'd been a bear I would have known she was there from the other side of camp. Bears are pretty aromatic.
And her cubs where curious and double trouble. You might think..."how cute, two bear cubs." Unfortunately, not exactly correct. The two bear cubs where yearlings...meaning spending the summer after their first full year of life with mom....second summer at Katmai. Their first summer they would have been new Spring cubs in twins or triplets or even quadruplets and no one would have seen them except moma bear who'd have them hidden somewhere near where she'd feed (I saw two once...very adorable...now those are the cute cubs one thinks of when the word cub pops up.)
There is a rule at Katmai and any other bear infested area in Alaska and probably anywhere else with a similar mixed population of inhabitants. This rule is "no one can lock a door." No door even is equipped with a lock unless it is the food or fish locker. This rule exists for the person like me who had need to step into someone else's room and hide behind a bolted solid wood door from one or more grizzly bears (or other beasts.) Oddly, even though this rule does exist and even though the circumstances I found myself within completely justified the "no lock" rule...I hesitated at the door and knocked. As I did this, I could hear the cook banging her pot and could see the cub coming down the hill toward me at a pretty good clip undeterred by the pot noise. Something snapped in my mind. I opened the door and stepped inside, feeling a peeping Tom/home invader undercurrent to all the other emotions spilling out of me.
In this case, I knew I was lucky to be alive or in one piece and alive and not in some sort of horrible pain from a few bear bites and clawings. The people I've seen who have undergone that sort of experience are incredibly smart about bears for ever more but they remain obviously stitched back together with tremendous scars and damage to their bodies. It wasn't just luck; some combination of rules of bear behavior and rules of human behavior and rules of my own behavior and good bear karma saved that day for me. I also think the female bear was very intelligent and made a good decision. I can hear her thinking, "damn it's a fishy smelling rubber mat, not a pail of fish and now my cubs are going to rib this damn thing apart unless I find some reason for us to leave quickly...hey, who's that? Ah, my ticket out of here."
It turned out that a fisherman had left a pail of fish on his rubber doormat sometime that day. The bears smelt the fishy rubber and came to investigate and eat it. I cannot tell you what the rubber mat looked like later in the day when camp returned to normal. It was just a pile of scattered shreds and bits. This bear family had been approaching camp that day. The rangers showed up, interviewed me, told me how a big problem unfolds once a bear starts invading the camp to find easy food...they will not stop. The rangers used powerful noisemaker blasters (something like a NYC car alarm....just joking...louder, much louder) to send out intense disturbing noise in all the directions. So much for the extreme quiet and solitude of Alaskan back country. The park rangers also came armed with tranquilizer guns and regular guns. No ranger at Katmai wants to shot a bear. The rangers are there to protect the bears. Odd to think about that isn't it?
Joke:
Anyhow the grizzly bears (or Kodiak bears, or brown bears...name depends on where you are on the planet with them)...anyhow they are about 5 times larger than the black bears that sit under my feeder here. A black bear might weigh from 90-500 pounds and if you stood next to a 500 pound black bear...he'd seem quite big. I've seen a male that stood about 7-8 feet tall on his hind legs rubbing his back against one of my smaller (just a foot and half circumference) sugar maples up on the hill. But you don't see these guys regularly. They travel in a 150 mile area. A larger female black bear (average size is 90-300 lbs) on all fours she'd be about the girth of what appears to be about half a VW beetle if you include her legs. But that's black bears. These other nice fishing grizzlies weigh in at around 600 - 1500 pounds so you do the math about how big they are.
Katmai
I used to wear a baseball hat in Katmai (National Park), mostly since it rains allot and once you're outside somewhere watching bears, you stay out....and just get wet. Ponchos are important apparel in that environment. I even have some rubber pants to slide on over my jeans...but I never wore them. They were just too geeky. But the baseball hat and poncho worked well with long sleeved garb underneath to stay warm. You can not bring something as simple as hot cocoa or tea into the wild with grizzlies out and about. A grizzly can smell food at at upwards to a 18 miles distance (if it's carrion) or so. Therefore traveling with food...not so good. One is not even allowed to chew gum in bear country, if you are not an idiot. I say this because some people, a good number of them, do weigh in on the idiot side of the spectrum and do take in food and bother the bears which is bad news for everyone else. These same idiots will walk up nearly to a grizzly bear and keep the rangers on their toes. The rangers are around to protect the bears. That humans enjoy the result of their do diligence is simply a plus.
When you enter the Katmai National Park, every visitor is given an orientation session, with a film, a lecture and then a button is pinned on you that says "I've been told how to live with grizzly bears with a number) so each person can be easily identified. Without this button (and it used to be about 2" around - very visible), you could not walk around in the Katmai area.
Here's why:
Maybe I've mentioned this little story; can't recall. It was the trip I took on my own in 1998 or '99 (first trip was with a handful of naturalists in 1997 and I left NYC three months later). On the second trip I had a nice cabin on a ridge...just a 12x12 foot or so log cabin with a shower behind a drape with a toilet and sink and two bunk beds. I think it also had a small electric heater but I was always cold...reason to get up very, very early. I had the entire cabin on my own which was an enormous luxury (but very inexpensive). I'd asked to reserve this exact cabin and was surprised to find it available. One is allowed to remain in Katmai for a week or a bit less at one time. The housing is in very short supply. Many people actually tent in Katmai in a camp ground which is in some less bear traveled and more isolated area. I think tenting in Katmai is nuts, but hey some people just want to be on the edge...the literal edge when it comes to bear country. You remember the guy (and his girl friend) who was eaten by the grizzly in Alaska who had a major award winning documentary film Grizzly Man (which Werner Hertzog put together in 2005 posthumously) - that's Timothy Treadwell? All the naturalists and rangers pretty much considered Timothy a bit off. If you saw that film, that was Katmai. Timothy lived (for 13 years of summers) and died outside his tent. In the end I think his film did do a lot to education people about bears and what not to do. Plus it was beautiful...just beautiful.
This is Katmai National Park and Preserve. It has 4,093,000 acres. I have 12 acres. Interesting to always put things in comparison. You can just make out the green box in the center left(not the one almost on the left edge of the map, the other one)...that's the location of Brooks Camp on Naknek Lake and Brooks River. Katmai is down the archipeglio of Alaska...not too far down. Not much is in this area in terms of "civilization." It is remote.
Everyone homo sapiens arrives at Katmai by float plane. Day trippers or others don't even get off their planes without being greeted by a few of Katmai's curious brown bears. The pilots have learned to land without disturbing the ursine obstacles in their water runways.
The camp fills daily with day travelers to have a quickie experience watching bears. All the day travelers are float planed in from King Salmon, a little back water through which most travelers must go to reach Katmai. Katmai is a long stretch of land which is open to the sea (ergo the salmon are coming in to spawn which is why the bears arrive each summer) which extends down as an archipelago from the base of Alaska and into the sea. It is hundreds miles in any one direction.
It takes an hour and half of flying time to come in to Katmai's Naknek Lake from Anchorage via a stop over someplace in which you change to a float plane and the time you are on land for that change is not counted in the hour and a half of flying time. More commonly, folks fly in to King Salmon from Anchorage on a hour plus regular small plane trip. Then you hang out at a dock and wait for the pilots to arrive at their float planes for an couple hours while your one bag is hoisted on and then you are hoisted on. Then from King Salmon on a small float plane for another 25 minute trip with up to four people on board (depending on how much you all weigh--you have to weigh in to get to Katmai...that will keep a good number of people out thankfully.)
To get to Katmai is not easy; it's what's considered remote and yet it is a major visitor area in Alaska. Go figure. Planes are booked long in advance and space is limited on each leg of the trip. Even the number of day travelers into Katmai is strictly limited. Standing in line with about two hundred fisherman with ice chests filled with salmon (when the salmon have thinned out enough for the fisherman to quit- they never know when this will happen and so they book one way in to Katmai with no return flight)..standing will all these fish and fisherman who want to fly out of King Salmon airport on standby is an entirely different but interesting story. My first trip, somebody forgot to book our flight out so I got very familiar with the fisherman and the little hanger of an airport. I was there for hours.
My little cabin faced an enormous expanse of river and watery march from the vantage point of a hill. This enormous far vista spread out in front of me from one side of my vision and beyond to the other. The distances are deceptive in the enormous open space of Alaska. It was miles I was looking off into from the hill on which the cabin stood. I saw a moose down there eating in the march one evening (remember the sun stays out for 21 hours in an Alaskan summer and as a result your body just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny...it's remarkably neat to have that much energy.) Anyhow I saw a big bull moose munching marsh grass and he was only about 3" tall in the vista...so you can interpolate how enormous the scale and distances were from the vantage of the cabin. By the way, if you stood next to a bull moose in full antlers he'd be about 7 feet tall at the shoulder and his antlers would span 6 feet...a big guy.)
This is probably the exact cabin I had at Katmai.
My little cabin faced an enormous expanse of river and watery march from the vantage point of a hill. This enormous far vista spread out in front of me from one side of my vision and beyond to the other. The distances are deceptive in the enormous open space of Alaska. It was miles I was looking off into from the hill on which the cabin stood. I saw a moose down there eating in the march one evening (remember the sun stays out for 21 hours in an Alaskan summer and as a result your body just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny...it's remarkably neat to have that much energy.) Anyhow I saw a big bull moose munching marsh grass and he was only about 3" tall in the vista...so you can interpolate how enormous the scale and distances were from the vantage of the cabin. By the way, if you stood next to a bull moose in full antlers he'd be about 7 feet tall at the shoulder and his antlers would span 6 feet...a big guy.)
Between the river and marsh, the hillside was covered with brambles and shrubs and the entire area was canopied in log pole pines...high up in the sky with their branches...but just telephone type tall poles of bark for about 10 feet or more from the ground. The area behind the cabin which was one of three or four in a row (and which I noted on the first trip to Katmai where inhabited by the professional photographers who'd reserved them about a year in advance for obvious reasons)...anyhow the area behind the cabins was a hill slanting in the reverse direction, a slight decline with open land and then a long cabin of attached rooms with a small covered porch from the overlap of the slant of the roof - at the front running the length of the 30 feet or so long building. That's where everyone else stayed in communal bunk or four person bunk rooms, even the small staff (all except the rangers who had their own cabin way out in the woods on the other side of the river). The big attached cabin building sat in the clearing and was devoid of all but the woodsy view of all of Katmai. No part is very far from the lake, river or woods. The cabins on the ridge were very special. My little cabin had a little covered stoop and a bench to one side with a nice big rubber mat in front to wipe one's constantly muddy feet.
Here's why people come to Katmai - Brooks Falls' Bears
the quintessential bears at Brooks Falls photo.
The bear viewing platform at Brooks Falls. To reach the platform, you must pass thru 2 1/2 miles of woods on a bear path which brings you up to the platform. On a given day, I've seen 18 big male bears eating on or just below the falls. The upper photo shows 7 male bears....so imagine the population, space, crowding and tempers which 18 big 1500 lb. bears (that would be like 18 VW beattles wouldn't it?) evoke among themselves. The number of humans crowding on the platforms sometime becomes so dense that one is allowed to stay on the platform for only a short span of time. The next people who've walked the 2 1/2 miles and wait outside the platforms gate have to wait for people to leave for them to have space enough to get on the platform. No one is are allowed to hang out at the Falls without being on the viewing platform. You are in transit to or from or your on the platform. No exceptions.
This sort of density of bears and people is true of July, not of Sept. The professional photographers take up a lot of space and since they pay a heavy price to use the platforms at Katmai for every roll of film they shoot they must pay a fee (how this computes to digital photography, got me). As a result of the fees they pay for the privilege of taking pictures they'll sell, they get to remain on the platform longer. Plus they are trekking heavy camera equipment along on their hike to the Falls so that gives them the "poor me" advantage. But many amateur photographs are also so endowed with all sorts of outrageous photo gear. I left my cameras behind on my second trip and simply recorded events the old fashioned way.
Back to the story. I was returning from a day of bear viewing. I was walking by myself, hat on, sans poncho, head down watching my feet as I climbed up the slight incline, over roots in the path, to my cabin. My cabin was the third one in from the one closest to the main eating lodge. I heard a rustling. Hearing a rustling is never a good thing when you are walking alone on a path in bear country. I looked up. Before me was a moma bear on her hind legs with two cubs tearing apart one of the rubber doormats in front of the cabin. The moma bear was the equivalent of looking at a giant fur wall since she engulfed my entire field of vision. I was about 10- 12 feet from her. She stood up as I picked my head up. We looked at one another.
"Hey, Bear!"
One never goes within 150 yards of a mother bear with cubs. Mother bears are much more dangerous than their male relatives who might reach 1500 pounds and do kill or maim one another over disagreements over something as simple as a preferred fishing spot. My proximity wasn't even a question...I was entirely too close.
I cursed my hat, I backed away. I whispered "hey bear"....one is taught (or you think you are taught until you have to use the lesson) to firmly say "hey, bear" and raise your arms above you head to appear larger, when you are walking the paths from viewing spot to viewing spot so the bears know you are a human and not another bear approaching or walking by (or at least think you are a big human if you meet at a stand still.) I was aware of my arms hanging like dead weights on either side of me as I stood before moma bear and her two cubs. Lessons are only as valid as a body willing to comply. There was no way that I would appear anything more than a puny human in moma bear's eyes.
Katmai corner at Brooks River.
A group of people wait to cross the bridge (because a bear is on it) or gather to join forces before trekking up a path or to cross the river on a pontoon floating bridge with a railing on both sides and a latched entrance gate which is a little bit to the left of this photo. Sometimes you can wait at this corner for a long time while bears play on the bridge or under it. The railings have limited ability to keep a determined bear off the bridge. It's part of life at Brooks camp.
Same corner, different trekkers.
The travelers on the path have changed from Homo sapiens to Ursus arctos. Same path, slightly different time frame...but note the sun and shadows...not a significantly different time than the photo with humans above. This corner is at the edge of the "residential" camp and just across the river from the lower river viewing platform...meaning it is relatively safe ground. So this is what I mean by sharing the paths. This is a mother bear and her cub, an older Spring cub.
Pontoon Bridge over Brooks River.
Talk about a gated community; in this case the bears are supposed to be on the outside of the gates but yearling and two year old cubs play in the sun on the ONLY bridge across the river all day long. Mostly mothers and cubs are down river at this location
waiting for salmon bits to float down from the big males greedy and lavish fishing and eating habits 3 miles upstream.
Why fish if you can simply wait for your meal to float by pre perpared? So who's the smarter bears? Sounds right but it isn't. Not enough makes it down river. A bear has to fish to gain enough weight to make it thru the winter. So mother bears at the pontoon bridge are only on a break. They end up in the water after food for hours too. The cubs simply hang out at the bridge waiting for them. One might say the bridge is the bear's babysitter.
Viewing platform, other side of Brooks River over the pontoon bridge.
Bears use the same paths as the humans at Katmai. In fact all paths were created by the bears eons ago. So it is a everyday occurrence to bump into bears on the paths...but one is never alone on those paths if you are on the human side of the equation. One waits for other humans to form a little posse of fellow travelers and to sing out "hey, bear" and clap all the way from one place to another. Bears at Katmai are used to this sort of behavior and so everyone generally gets along quite copacetically. Since even 11 years ago, I was forced to walk slower than other folks because my arthritic knees do not bend and recoil as quickly as most people like to walk on a bear path...that being the case, I used the "hey, bear" capacity of my brain and lungs to full advantage within a group of humans walking a path. Because I was always last in line on the path.
I probably looked a lot like this fellow below as I trekked up the path to the Falls.
All the Katmai paths are the original bear paths. The area has had inhabitants of humans for 9,000 years...bears longer. That's enough time to get a good path established.
Every visitor walking on Katmai's paths is also on the look out for bears lounging or sleeping (or running) in the woods on either side of the path as one walks the paths in bear country. Since a running bear is apt to take to the path (it being their's to begin with and the shortest distance between two points and because a running bear is usually in pursuit or being pursued by another running bear), the self same path you are waking upon - knowing when to surrender ground and hop to either side of the path into the woods is part of diplomatic foot travel in Katmai. All of which is a rather intense activity which takes full concentration and better mobility than I even had then.
It is unusual for bears to show up "in camp." The camp is full of fisherman who fish the river for salmon just like the bears...except the humans use tackle and the bears use its earlier version -claw and tooth (and are still better at it.) But fisherman are NEVER allowed to bring fish into camp. All fish are stored in a raised fish refrigeration room that is on the edge of camp. The smell of raw fish is not allowed in camp (apparently stewed or other such cooked fish is not all that appealing to bears...thankfully.) All smart and logical rules. And of course, as rules, they are broken by the idiot humans who don't give a shit.
The reasons formal strict rules are part of the overlapping cohabitation of the bear and human space is because the humans are the visitors. The bears have convened at Katmai all summer for centuries to feed. They have a biological and hormonal imperative to feed intensely for three months and then travel back to the 500 or so square miles which they solitarily inhabit to their dens and sleep through a rather horrible winter.) The amount of fish the grizzlies consume will determine if they survive another year. So they are not fooling around. They are eating 24/7. Grizzly bears are not buddies with one another. They tolerate one another in varying degrees of success at Katmai and other locations where they convene to feed for the duration of the Alaskan summer which begins in July and ends in September. On both sides of that window, one can expect it to snow. Nice summer huh?
Sockeye Salmon on their way to spawn.
Sockeye salmon change to bright salmon red with a greenish head as they travel into fresh water from sea water on their way to spawn. After they spawn...they look lifeless...since they are barely alive. Bears like to eat them in any variation and will consume upwards to 90 lbs of salmon a day...and bears are not only carnivorous, they also eat veggie each day if they get out of the water. That's a lot of sockeye. Can you imagine how much weight they gain in a summer of eating like this?
It is unusual for bears to show up "in camp." The camp is full of fisherman who fish the river for salmon just like the bears...except the humans use tackle and the bears use its earlier version -claw and tooth (and are still better at it.) But fisherman are NEVER allowed to bring fish into camp. All fish are stored in a raised fish refrigeration room that is on the edge of camp. The smell of raw fish is not allowed in camp (apparently stewed or other such cooked fish is not all that appealing to bears...thankfully.) All smart and logical rules. And of course, as rules, they are broken by the idiot humans who don't give a shit.
The reasons formal strict rules are part of the overlapping cohabitation of the bear and human space is because the humans are the visitors. The bears have convened at Katmai all summer for centuries to feed. They have a biological and hormonal imperative to feed intensely for three months and then travel back to the 500 or so square miles which they solitarily inhabit to their dens and sleep through a rather horrible winter.) The amount of fish the grizzlies consume will determine if they survive another year. So they are not fooling around. They are eating 24/7. Grizzly bears are not buddies with one another. They tolerate one another in varying degrees of success at Katmai and other locations where they convene to feed for the duration of the Alaskan summer which begins in July and ends in September. On both sides of that window, one can expect it to snow. Nice summer huh?
Standing bears
Here you get an idea of bear size when standing tall. The bear on the right might be a female but probably this is a real argument of two males, one clearly superior by a foot. Who knows who ticked off who.
So back to moma bear. She was startled. I was startled. If one had to decide who would recover with best advantage it would be a toss up. Moma's bears eyesight isn't great but her nose knows. Maybe I could see fine but if I'd been a bear I would have known she was there from the other side of camp. Bears are pretty aromatic.
Bears in camp
She was in camp with two cubs which made something wrong with the picture. There was some reason why she was not fishing with the other female, cub and male bears up at Brooks Falls or below the falls. Females generally feed with their cubs down from the Falls to catch all the salmon meat, skin and guts the males allow to flow down river in their haste to catch yet again another salmon. And maybe the males do this to help feed the females and cubs. One just doesn't know. However, male bears will kill cubs so a mother will breed again..which her body can not do if she is nursing cubs...just like cats and kittens. So mother bears and cubs generally keep their distance from the big males at the Falls preferring the salmon dregs than the danger.
The other activity the bears convene in Katmai for is breeding but this is accidental and not the purpose for their journey to the Brook River (as far as I know.) Anyhow something was wrong if this mother was in camp. Perhaps she was injured or ill. Well, you couldn't tell by looking at her. She was lookin' good if one can fairly judge the appearance and health of a grizzly bear from 10 feet in a split second. I was clearly at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Moma bear ferries a Spring cub across Brooks River or in Naknek Lake which the river joins at Brooks Camp.
And her cubs where curious and double trouble. You might think..."how cute, two bear cubs." Unfortunately, not exactly correct. The two bear cubs where yearlings...meaning spending the summer after their first full year of life with mom....second summer at Katmai. Their first summer they would have been new Spring cubs in twins or triplets or even quadruplets and no one would have seen them except moma bear who'd have them hidden somewhere near where she'd feed (I saw two once...very adorable...now those are the cute cubs one thinks of when the word cub pops up.)
Look closely; mother bear is followed by four slightly older Spring cubs, in the first summer at Katmai. Bears are born in a female's den in January or February and nursed there until April or May. Once the family leaves the den, the cubs follow their mother where ever she goes. Bears are not weaned until they are two and a half years old, then they are on their own and leave the mother's den. Females breed at 3 1/2 years and males at 4 1/2 years. Bears begin eating salmon along with nursing probably at the end of their first summer.
Yearling cubs are about the size of a black bear. Not a big black bear but easily a 150 pound and counting bear. In this case, I became a bit more interesting than the fishy smelly rubber mat. So while moma bear viewed me from her impressive height, baby bear decided to come over and give me a sniff. A closer up sniff would not be tolerated by moma bear (with me in one piece) but baby bear apparently did not know that. Undoubtably I was closer to the cubs than any other human had ever been, seen or smelled. This was a big day for the cubs. Me too.
One does not run from a grizzly bear. A running thing is prey. Humans back away from grizzly bears and shout "hey, bear." I think shouting "hey, bear" in close proximity is not a normal thing for one's vocal cords to execute. But I do think I got out a "BEAR"...which was fairly loud as I backed away. Luckily, a cook was outside of the main lodge, about 100 feet or more away, from which I was walking. It was in the other direction. A big open room with a kitchen for eating communal meals of wonderful versions of salmon this and that. And a cook was outside washing out a pot. She heard me, she saw the bears and she began to bang on the pot she was washing with a wooden spoon, making a nice loud enough clanging sound.
One does not run from a grizzly bear. A running thing is prey. Humans back away from grizzly bears and shout "hey, bear." I think shouting "hey, bear" in close proximity is not a normal thing for one's vocal cords to execute. But I do think I got out a "BEAR"...which was fairly loud as I backed away. Luckily, a cook was outside of the main lodge, about 100 feet or more away, from which I was walking. It was in the other direction. A big open room with a kitchen for eating communal meals of wonderful versions of salmon this and that. And a cook was outside washing out a pot. She heard me, she saw the bears and she began to bang on the pot she was washing with a wooden spoon, making a nice loud enough clanging sound.
And the cubs' two sets of eyes and the moma bears eyes quickly turned from me to the pot banging. This allowed me the time to back track and move down the hill to the bigger log cabin. It was a 30-40 foot back walk, down hill. The span of time to do this was a couple of minutes. It seemed like an hour and a half with each second, distinct and separate and held as if in a big glob of Plexiglas like those dandelion puffs that one sees sold as a paperweight. I couldn't get to my cabin or any of the other single cabins since the bears were a convincing traffic diversion. I had to go toward the large building of connected cabins and so I did. I wasn't walking slowly. I realized that moving in reverse from a wall of fur was not possible to do in slow motion. I was moving much too fast. I was not shouting "hey, bear." I doubt that I was breathing.
Keep Your Doors Unlocked
There is a rule at Katmai and any other bear infested area in Alaska and probably anywhere else with a similar mixed population of inhabitants. This rule is "no one can lock a door." No door even is equipped with a lock unless it is the food or fish locker. This rule exists for the person like me who had need to step into someone else's room and hide behind a bolted solid wood door from one or more grizzly bears (or other beasts.) Oddly, even though this rule does exist and even though the circumstances I found myself within completely justified the "no lock" rule...I hesitated at the door and knocked. As I did this, I could hear the cook banging her pot and could see the cub coming down the hill toward me at a pretty good clip undeterred by the pot noise. Something snapped in my mind. I opened the door and stepped inside, feeling a peeping Tom/home invader undercurrent to all the other emotions spilling out of me.
I stood behind that bolted door for some time. I began to breath. My heart was racing. Something way beyond everyday fear filled my blood stream. The dose of adrenaline which continued to spurt into my system was more than I have ever had the misfortune to have felt in my lifetime....and I have been in some pretty dicey situations in the past. I felt both very alive and made out of something other than flesh and bone. Odd.
Just to justify that I'm not a whimpy scaredy cat...I've had my share of close calls. Hey, I lived in NYC of 16 years. Go figure. But I recall being alone, on the side of steep mountain in a rental non four wheel drive car on a dirt road that suddenly disappeared with no way to turn around except to retreat in reverse up the mountain, in isolated Navajo country somewhere in New Mexico as night settled in. That was scarey. I on a short cut from one area of weaving to another during my textile designer years. Lesson learned: Maps lie.
Or trying to get up and out of an extremely steep gully about 50 feet down to a dry river bed where some sort of crystal rock or other was supposed to be located for which rock hammer type gear was in my pack as well as all the rocks pulled from the earth. And finding that the wall of the gully was pulverized stone which just kept sliding you back to where you began...the bottom. I tried to get out of that gully with my partner for a very long time (as in hours), until some good samaritan stopped his vehicle, seeing our car by the side of the road with no persons visible. This was someplace on some mountain road in the rockies and but for the good samaritan, I'd still at the bottom of that gully.
These sorts of bad news experiences had provoked adrenaline rushes which helped me survive but nothing compared to meeting a grizzly in close encounter.
Luck or Something Different
In this case, I knew I was lucky to be alive or in one piece and alive and not in some sort of horrible pain from a few bear bites and clawings. The people I've seen who have undergone that sort of experience are incredibly smart about bears for ever more but they remain obviously stitched back together with tremendous scars and damage to their bodies. It wasn't just luck; some combination of rules of bear behavior and rules of human behavior and rules of my own behavior and good bear karma saved that day for me. I also think the female bear was very intelligent and made a good decision. I can hear her thinking, "damn it's a fishy smelling rubber mat, not a pail of fish and now my cubs are going to rib this damn thing apart unless I find some reason for us to leave quickly...hey, who's that? Ah, my ticket out of here."
It turned out that a fisherman had left a pail of fish on his rubber doormat sometime that day. The bears smelt the fishy rubber and came to investigate and eat it. I cannot tell you what the rubber mat looked like later in the day when camp returned to normal. It was just a pile of scattered shreds and bits. This bear family had been approaching camp that day. The rangers showed up, interviewed me, told me how a big problem unfolds once a bear starts invading the camp to find easy food...they will not stop. The rangers used powerful noisemaker blasters (something like a NYC car alarm....just joking...louder, much louder) to send out intense disturbing noise in all the directions. So much for the extreme quiet and solitude of Alaskan back country. The park rangers also came armed with tranquilizer guns and regular guns. No ranger at Katmai wants to shot a bear. The rangers are there to protect the bears. Odd to think about that isn't it?
That this mother and her cubs would either have to be destroyed or removed somehow, was now clearly a necessity unless she learned a lesson. She didn't learn from a pot banging or from me and was long gone by the time the rangers arrived. I was in camp for the rest of the week. I can't remember what I heard about this bear family. I know I must have blocked out the end of the story. Killing a bear is intolerable to me. And, of course, the reverse is equally true (meaning being killed by a bear.)
Naknek Lake at Brooks Camp. A bear playing with a stick. Note the view. geez.
Joke:
A fellow stumbled into a local sporting goods store in Alaska and asked,
"You got any bears around here?"
The clerk replied, "Yep."
"Big bears?"
"Yep."
"Mean bears?"
"Yep."
"Black bears?"
"Yep."
"Grizzly bears?"
"Yep."
"Got any bear bells?"
"What's dat?"
"You know, them little dingle-bells ya put on yer bakpack so bears know yer in the perimeter so's they can runs away..."
"Yep. Over yonder..."
"Great. I'll take one fer black bears, and one fer grizzlies. Say, how'd you know if yer in black bear country anyway?"
"Look fer scatt*."
"Oh. Well, how'd you know if there's Grizzlies?"
"Look fer scatt."
"You just said that."
"Yeah. But grizzly scatt's different."
"Well now, just what's IN grizzly scatt that's different?"
"Bear bells."
* scatt is bear poop.
At Katmai, no on wears bear bells. The bears wouldn't know why you were making the noise. In Denali National Park, people do sometimes wear bear bells. On the other hand, I've heard them referred to as "meals on wheels" in Alaska. I have them on my doors here at the rose cottage and the bears definately know the sound when I open a door. So do all the other wild animals who visit. I like to give every body a head's up when I'm coming outside. I'm sure this has avoided some conflicts. And they sound nice. Mine are from a sporting goods store in Alaska. Where else?
1 comment:
Thank you for using my brown bear photo. It looks like you had an amazing trip. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
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