The Bare Bear Facts (08-31-14)

So, Hyder Alaska is all about the bears and yes, we did see two bears. 



This is how it works.  The U.S. Forestry has a boardwalk set up along a creek that is frequented by bears- both brown and black bears.  Everyone is very quiet while they stand around waiting, so the bears won’t get scared away.  







Paul and I donned our full rain gear, since of course it was raining, and stood there on the boardwalk for about an hour or so.

We talked to the rangers and to other “watchers”. Some people had elaborate plastic bag set ups to keep their cameras dry.  We had an umbrella. Finally, we saw a black bear, across the street, eating berries in the bushes.  Nice, but not what we came for.

We were thinking of leaving but the ranger told us it was just getting to be the time of night when the bears will show, so we waited.  Soon enough an enormous brown bear came waddling down the creek.

Just look at the size of the belly on this guy.  He is an older bear, so not as skittish with the large audience he had while he ate his dinner. The ranger says older bears are not as much fun to watch because they are so experienced at fishing that they just stomp on a fish and eat it, whereas the younger bears haven’t figured that out, and they chase the fish. 

This guy just ambled down through the middle of the creek, picking up salmon as he went.  You can see all the dead and dying salmon all over the stream.  It’s late in the season and many salmon have spawned and died so the bears have been feasting and are pretty full,  allowing them to be fussier about what they eat.

It was extremely difficult to get decent pictures because it was getting dark, and still raining pretty heavily.  You can see that this guy’s fur is soaked.

So that was our bear experience at Hyder.  We felt lucky because many people hang around all day and never get to see a bear.

Our luck got even better the next day- after we left Hyder.  We were continuing our trip down the Cassier Highway when Paul said that the guy we had just passed had made a motion towards the nearby bridge, as if to say there was something to look at.

It’s pretty common for people to share information that way, so we stopped to look. 

There were two brown bears fishing in the creek!  They were both pretty young, not huge.

 


 

This guy climbed up some debris in the middle of the stream, to take a break from fishing.  There weren’t as many dead fish in this area, so these bears were working a little bit to get their lunch.

  

We watched them for about 10 minutes before they went around a corner and out of sight.













This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip- to have the chance to watch  the bears just going about their business.

One of the things we noticed in Alaska, is that sometimes the bears would be called Brown Bears and sometimes they would be called Grizzly Bears.  Of course we asked about the difference between Grizzly and Brown and we found out that although they are technically the same species- there are differences.

A Grizzly bear lives inland and lives on berries, plant roots, and small animals such as ground squirrels.  A Brown Bear is a Grizzly Bear that lives on the coast and feasts on mostly salmon and berries. Brown Bears grow bigger because they have a more plentiful food source. 

  The shoulder hump is actually a muscle, and it’s usually bigger on a Grizzly- they use the muscle more to dig out their food than Brown Bears do.

Black Bears don’t have a hump on their shoulder at  all. That’s one of the differences between black bears and grizzlies. Which brings up the question- what are the other differences between a Black Bear and a Grizzly Bear?  When you’re hiking in bear country, it’s really good to know which bear you encounter because how  you should react depends on the type of bear it is.







The color of their fur means nothing.  A Black Bear can be anywhere from black to cinnamon in color. 










A Black Bear’s ears are wider apart and actually bigger than a Grizzly’s. Grizzly ears are also more rounded and not as pointy.

The shape of their snout is different.  A grizzly snout is curved and a black bear snout is straight, from ears to nose.

Their paws are shaped differently, and a Grizzly's claws are bigger (not that I plan on getting close enough to distinguish the difference!).

It would come in handy on the trail to know who has been on the trail before you. This was in Yellowstone, obviously an old print, but fun to find.

  Black Bears and Grizzly Bears also have somewhat different habitats.  Black Bears are found more in the woods and trees and Grizzlies prefer the open fields.

When we’re  hiking in bear country, we’re always alert for signs of bears on the trail.  One of the ways to avoid a bear encounter is to make noise while you are hiking.  I tend to sing, or call out “ here, kitty kitty” just to be goofy.  It doesn’t matter what you say, just that you make noise.  Some people wear bells on their backpack, so their noise is made without them having to talk.  One of the signs of bears that we might come across is bear scat (poop), and the scat is another difference between the two types of bears- Grizzly Bear scat has bells in it. 

I’ve heard that joke about a hundred times, but it does point out one of the major differences between blacks and grizzlies-  attitude.

Black Bears tend to be more afraid of people and will be less likely to attack (unless there are cubs involved!)  Grizzlies are more aggressive.

These Black Bears were on the hiking trail in Yosemite.  The mama bear was well aware of the many hikers and was fine with sharing the trail as long as no one got too close.

That’s probably more than anyone wanted to know about bears, but I really enjoy seeing the animals in their own habitat so I got carried away- plus, it’s raining again and I am bored.
We have been moving pretty quickly through British Columbia, headed towards the border.

Western Kenai Peninsula-Part 2 (08-03-14)

  We wandered around Homer enjoying the good weather while trying to decide what we wanted to do.








The views of Kachemak Bay were gorgeous with the mountains in the background.  Many people take a water taxi across the bay to hike to the nearby glacier, and many more people fly across the bay to go watch the grizzly bears.





The company we would have wanted to fly with was booked solid- one of the downsides to not planning in advance is that we sometimes miss out- so we decided not to look for bears. 

Once that decision was made, we decided it was time to leave Homer and we headed back up the coast towards Anchorage. We stopped along the way to do several hikes- the first one was a 6 mile hike to Skilak Lake. Nothing spectacular, but pretty views, anyway.

Our second hike was to the Russian River.  We had heard that bears frequent the area but the only bears we saw were along the road. Many salmon swim up this river to spawn.

 

They all congregate after having made it up the river this far.  They still have to leap over all the waterfalls in order to get to where they can lay their eggs. Look carefully and you can see two salmon making the leap over the falls in this picture.

With this picture I cheated and took a still from a movie I took, but you can clearly see the salmon jumping over the falls.






Our last adventure on the Kenai Peninsula was a visit to the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center.

The AWCC takes in animals that can not survive in the wild.  We saw quite a few moose, several Lynxes, and, of all things, some Musk Ox. I’ve never seen one of these, to my knowledge, but they sure were interesting looking. 

My favorite was the grizzly enclosure. It was so hot for the bears that they were mostly sitting in the water when we saw them.  One just plopped himself down in a puddle.

He rolled around in the water until he was soaked.

There are 3 grizzlies in here, and they each have a story.  Two of the bears came here as cubs.  One day a man saw that a grizzly had killed a moose in his back yard.  Being worried that the bear would kill his dog, the man killed the grizzly- which is perfectly legal up here.  What he didn’t realize at the time was that it was a sow, who had two small cubs sitting up in the trees.  Two of the bears here are those two cubs.

One of the other grizzlies was hanging out in the bigger pond, gnawing on the bone of some animal.

We watched him for quite a while.  He worked hard, using his claws to get to the marrow in the bone.

Eventually he had had enough of the water and the bone, and he meandered off- and when he did, so did we.

On our way out we passed by the black bear enclosure, where the bears were being fed salmon.  We listened to a short presentation by the ranger about black bears.  While we were there, someone dropped their iphone into the bear enclosure and the rangers were discussing how to get it out. They were hoping to get it without going into the enclosure, although if they had to go in, they could, when the bears were elsewhere.  Mostly they were worried about the bear trying to eat the phone.

Grizzly Country! (Grand Teton National Park) 06-15-12

    Knowing we were entering bear country, I started reading up on the subject of Grizzly bears VS Black bears, and how to handle ourselves while hiking in Grizzly country.  I found out that bear spray is more effective as a Grizzly deterrent than a bullet.  That’s good to know, since it’s easier to buy the bear spray- which we did.  Apparently, even if your hands don’t shake too much to actually hit the bear with a bullet, it could take 3 shots to bring a Grizzly down.  No thanks.  Of course, your best bet is to not get in a Grizzly’s face to begin with.  People hike with “bear bells” that are supposed to warn the bear that there are people in the area, but experts say the sound doesn’t carry far enough, and some say the Grizzlies just think they sound like the dinner bell.

 

The distance at which a hiker typically encounters a grizzly is when they are a mere 15 feet apart.  Most people do not make enough noise, and they look down at the trail too much, not looking to see what’s around them. As surprised as I would feel, I’d hate to think how surprised the bear would be. A startled Grizzly is a dangerous Grizzly.  Rather than bells, they suggest you hike in groups of 4 or more, the theory being that you will be talking, and your voices will carry enough to send the bear in a different direction.  With that in mind, we took our friends Avril and Dave along as our bear bait.

Along the way we discussed the “rules to live by” of a bear encounter.  Don’t Run is rule #1.  Don’t climb a tree to escape a bear unless a) you climb very quickly, and b) you can climb higher than 31 ft up the tree, because bears can climb 30 feet. Don’t drop your backpack- for two reasons.  First, if the bear does get a chance to swipe at you, the pack will protect your back, and second, if the bear gets it and the pack has food in it, the bear has just learned that if he attacks someone, he will get food. If bear spray doesn’t work as a deterrent ( or if you were silly enough to go hiking without it) laying down flat and playing dead, with your hands on the back of your neck to protect it is your best bet, as long as you don’t move until the bear is long gone, because any movement will be perceived as aggression by the bear.

Using our friends as bait must have worked because we did encounter a Grizzly on one of our hikes.  He was quite far away, so the picture isn’t that good, and we were lucky that Dave happened to look back and see him, because we had already passed him.  Of course, after that, we all spent a lot of time looking over our shoulders.

The hike we were on that day was a trail around Two Ocean Lake, with a side trip up  to “Grand View”.  Turns out we couldn’t go all the way around the lake because the trail was closed (we found out later it was due to nesting Bald Eagles) so we had to turn around and go back the way we came.  All in all it was about 8 miles.  We enjoyed the walk but I liked the hike we had done the day before better. 

Our first hike with Avril and Dave was into to Cascade Canyon, via Observation Point.  To get to the trailhead we took a boat across Jenny Lake. Once we got past the short climb to Observation Point, the number of hikers on the trail thinned out

and the 8 mile hike was really enjoyable.

Although there were quite a few snow patches along the way, the air temperature was perfect and the scenery was great.  With the snow melt from the nearby Tetons, there were plenty of waterfalls.

Just about everywhere we went, the Tetons stood in the background. What makes them different from most mountains is that they have no foothills.  They very abruptly rise up from the relatively flat ground that surrounds them.

I would love to go boating with that backdrop!

Of course, one of our primary interests in the Tetons, in addition to hiking, was the wildlife. We headed to the visitor center to learn about the park, and find out where the best wildlife viewing spots are. I really enjoyed one of the of the exhibits- patches of actual animal fur, so I could feel what wolf and bear fur feel like. Throughout our visit, we did see a fair amount of wildlife-in addition to Pronghorn Antelope and Bison, we saw quite a few moose:





Well, I took that picture before we actually saw real moose:

While driving down Moose Wilson Road, we came across a moose jam.  It seemed like cars were strewn everywhere as their occupants tried to get their own pictures of Bullwinkle.

Along the road to our campground turned out to be the best spot for finding moose, and many times when we drove by, they were in the area: 

Yesterday we took a very long drive down a  dirt road along the river, and managed to spot a Bald Eagle flying above the water,  but I didn’t have much time to get the camera set up, so the picture isn’t the best.  Hopefully we’ll see more in Yellowstone.

Naturally, Dozer wanted to see his share of wildlife. Squirrels, mice and other small creatures were abundant in the campground and it wasn’t long before Dozer had a baby squirrel in his mouth, making a beeline for the trailer.  We did get him to drop it, but he immediately went back on the hunt.   A small mouse managed to get into the trailer one night, and Dozer did his job as a mouser and took care of it for us.

Today we spent gearing up for our 3 week stay in Yellowstone.  We did laundry, bought food, and washed the truck. We ate lunch in the small town of Jackson Hole at an excellent restaurant, and wandered the very expensive shops without buying anything.