Wednesday, August 28, 2002 -- Bishop Bay to Khutze (continued)
After the excitement of the dog rescue, you'd think the rest of the day would be a letdown, but in fact not at all. Khutze is an absolutely gorgeous inlet/estuary. We found ourselves in Khutze with just enough time to head up the river in the dinghy. There was an incredible mist on the water, and the sky was absolutely littered with eagles. Actually, since it seemed to be molting season, the water and land were littered with eagle feathers, as well.
Bald eagle in Khutze
Dave and Deb had been through here a couple of weeks earlier on the way up to Ketchikan, and they were able to spot their landing site from the previous trip. A bear had very kindly deposited a fish right at the unloading spot. We managed to make it a bit further upriver before the current won out, and got out of the boat.
Purple Aster
Up to this point, whenever we went ashore or up rivers or estuaries, we had been quite silent so we wouldn't frighten off any bears. However, Dave planned for us to walk past and through the woods, following bear trails, so we could go up the river. This is a situation where you don't want complete silence. Nothing worse than a surprised bear, whether brown (grizzly) or black. Dave also briefed us on the latest guidelines for dealing with bear close-encounters. For both brown and black bears, you should make yourself as big as possible, spreading your arms out, and talk to it. You want the bear to know that you are not a bear yourself. You never want to turn your back and run. If you are both sharing a bear path through the woods, you can sort of sidestep off the path--facing and talking to the bear all the time.
I had asked Dave about this the night before, and questioned whether you would want to avoid eye contact with a bear, so it didn't think you were trying to be dominant. He mentioned that if you were close enough to have eye contact, you were probably in trouble. This is also the point where your behavior might be different, depending on if you were facing a brown or black bear. With a grizzly, you want to maintain your confident posture up until the point where it is actually deciding to charge you. If it gets its paws or teeth on you, that's when you play dead. If it really is determined to eat you, you might have to fight, but you try playing dead first. Black bears, however, aren't going to get that close unless they are planning to eat you, so you are supposed to hit it or throw at it anything you can think of, and fight from the very start. Good to know! Actually, people who have spent a lot of time around bears have rarely been charged, so as long as you don't surprise one, you probably will never get to that point.
So we bushwhacked up the river, following a bear trail the whole way, and periodically saying, "Coming through, bear!" This begs the question: if we'd said, "Coming through, weasel," would the bear think, "They don't mean me"? No close encounters, although we did see quite a lot of sign, and even a wolf footprint in the sand. We also had a good time looking at all the torn-up spots where the bears had been excavating for good things to eat in the spring.
After the big bushwhack, Khutze
After we got back into the dinghy (we had to use the landing spot conveniently marked by the dead fish this time, since the tide had gone out a bit), we followed the river around toward a high waterfall on the other side of the valley. We weren't really sure that it would end up being an area where we could get back out into the bay (without backtracking), but it turned out to be a wonderful detour.
Black bear in Khutze
Note eagle feathers floating on the water
There were salmon all over the place, and a little ways up this smaller river, Dave whispered, "Bear!" I looked through my camera, and the first thing I saw was the prototypical bear head with round, fuzzy ears, popping up above the tall grass twice in quick succession. It looked like it was doing jumping jacks. Of course, we had actually startled it a bit, and it was running up an embankment to put some distance between us.
Bear climbing up on a log
We followed it up the estuary for a while. It was aware we were there, but it didn't seem too worried about us. Loren stayed with it for a while in the kayak, and saw it scoop a fish out of the river. Dave mentioned that he would never have followed a grizzly. I asked if that was because the griz might take our heads off, but it turns out that grizzlies are not able to adapt to human encroachment very well. Black bears seem to be able to cope, but if a grizzly gets too stressed, it will just leave the area.
"I'm ready for my close-up."
Click to view a larger image (opens in new window)
Another fun bear fact: I had asked if one ever saw grizzlies and black bears in the same area. Dave told me it was extremely rare, because grizzlies prey on black bears. (Grizzlies can prey on whatever they want, if you ask me!) So you might see one or more black bears, or you might see one grizzly, but if you see a griz, it's unlikely you'll see much else.
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last modified: September 6, 2002