Bear viewing at Grizzly Camp
Every day that I was at Grizzly Camp I was up at around 7am for breakfast and then out to one of the bear viewing spots by 0830am. It sounds late for being out wildlife watching, but in fact there are bears everywhere, so whether it was up at 5am and out at 6am, or up at 9am and out at 10am, it seems that quality of bear viewing and the number of bears around are likely to be the same. Some days of bear viewing were better than others of course, and overall the bear-viewing was probably better in the evening actually, but every day was excellent and all the sightings were superb.
In addition to watching the bears from the deck at camp - which is undoubtedly one of the prime locations for bear-viewing - there are two up-river spots that alternated between each day. Cameras and binoculars in hand I sat (with a knowledgeable bear guide) patiently waiting and watching, careful to be a couple of metres away from the trail that the bears are known to use in order not to upset the bears trails with our scent.
Just to be sat on the deck, coffee in hand (or maybe a beer if was early evening), listening to the river rushing and watching a bear strolling past, unconcerned about me, looking for easy salmon to catch, and ambling upstream and downstream is an extraordinary privilege. It is ‘other worldly’ and somewhat humbling. It is a piece of ‘wild’ that it seems almost unrealistic - something from a bygone age that simply doesn't happen in the 21st century… and yet it does and I spent four days watching it play out in front of me.
Mum, Tom, Little Tom, Ozzy and Sunshine were regular visitors to this stretch of river, I saw them all and none of them seemed perturbed by me being there. They ambled past, jumped in the water hunting for salmon, played, sparred and explored and I saw it all happen.
Sunshine, a smallish, beautiful blond four year old bear, was the undisputed star of the show though. She is a bear of coquettish good looks with a twinkling eye, a ‘Paddington’ kind of bear that could melt the most hardened of hearts.
Finding a largish salmon by the side of the river she would take a little time to eat it before walking up the trail to the deck and opportunistically sniff what was on the barbecue for lunch. But she sniffed with her nose a few centimetres from the barbecue itself as if she owned it, not from a more ‘respectable’ distance! Finding that the salmon steaks we being cooked for our lunch rather than hers she went to the small tree nearby (no more than three metres from the deck) and very satisfactorily rubbed and scratch to her hearts content - sometimes for five or ten minutes at a time. First she would rub her back, back and forth, back and forth, then her bottom, and then once they were scratched she would stand up and, hugging the tree, rub the top of her head, then her cheeks and her nose.
That done, and still standing up, she would turn round and lean against the tree, and then Jungle Book-style, would rub her back by repeatedly bending and flexing her knees. And, with onlookers firmly besotted, she would wander off, strolling upriver to find another salmon to heat.
This was a scene that was played out daily - sometimes more than once a day.
There is a strict protocol here which says that it is alright to be sat close to the bear trails as long as you don’t walk on them and imprint them with human scent. One morning I was sat by the fast-running river about two metres behind a 15 metre fallen tree that was lying parallel river itself. The fallen tree was part of the time-honoured bear trail.
It had been a fairly quite morning with only a few ‘distant’ sightings of bears and I was preparing to move to another spot when there was a radio call to say that Sunshine was heading upriver on my side. She appeared a few moments later walking along the river bank, then onto the gravel spit that I was sat on and towards the fallen tree. Instead of walking along the fallen tree as she would normally do she took a slightly different route and paced between me and the tree, perhaps a metre away, slowing down as she passed, to cast a sideways glance, walk past me and then climb up onto the fallen tree and continue on her way.
Sunshine is a bear with a cool sense of humour and being below the eye-level of a fully grown female grizzly that is barely half a metre away is one of life's most humbling of experiences.
But Sunshine is not to be messed with. She is a truly wild bear that lives in a truly wild place. In fact she lives in a protected area of some 5 million acres, criss-crossed with streams and rich with spawning salmon, accessible only by air, and only available to a few people each year. This is her place and we visit on her terms.
Get up close and personal yourself with the bears at Grizzly Camp on a trip of a lifetime.
