Sunday 9/2
Last night as we were getting the Admiral safely docked in the rest area at the Nass River, we noticed a promotional sign extolling the virtues of a side trip to Stewart/Hyder. Included in the list of things to do and see was “Grizzly Viewing” in Hyder. We checked our guidebooks, and sure enough, Hyder was cited as a great place to observe Grizzlies. How the heck did we miss that? I guess the Grizzlies must have been hiding behind the saloons. Upon further review, we learned that the bear-viewing site is about 10 miles BEYOND Hyder, and we’d just turned around too soon. Nuts!
This morning we ponder our alternatives: Continue our southeastward journey hoping to find a place for another rafting adventure but knowing we’re drawing closer and closer to the end of our trip; go south and then west to Prince Rupert which also is purported to have Grizzlies; or return to Stewart/Hyder, and see if their Grizzlies are out and about.
The decision is not difficult. We disconnect CJ, backtrack to Mezadin Junction, and turn down the Stewart/Hyder spur.
I vow to drive to Hyder without photographic interruptions—after all, yesterday we took pictures of virtually every mountain, glacier, waterfall, river, lake, tree, and rock along the road.
We agree that we’ll stop to shoot (pictorially) any black bears along the way, and we’re expecting that after yesterday we’ll see a few; but between the junction and Stewart, where we saw eight yesterday, we see ZERO today. It reminds us again how serendipitous it is to sight a bear.
We bounce through the potholes on Hyder’s main street and head out the road toward the Fish Creek Wildlife Preserve and the bear viewing area. The guidebooks have told us that here we can expect to see both Black Bears and Grizzlies feeding in the same salmon stream—a rarity.
The potholes are bad in “downtown” Hyder, but worse on the road to the preserve. If holes this big were on the surface of the moon, they’d be named after presidents. At the outset, we’re paralleling the Salmon River on our left. It’s a typical wide, shallow, silty-blue, braided river. A couple of miles before the preserve we angle away from the river and follow Fish Creek. This narrow, very-shallow creek abounds with salmon, and the fish are easy pickings for the bears. We get only brief, limited views of the creek, which is thickly lined with birch and pine trees. Because there are so many bears in the area, parking along the road outside of the preserve is prohibited.
As we round a curve just before the preserve we get a glimpse of a bear as it lumbers across the road from right to left and disappears into the trees. It’s pretty big, but more black than brown so we assume it’s a Black Bear. We learn later that the local Grizzlies often have this coloration, and, that given the size, this was probably a Grizzly. The bear is here and gone before we can get a picture.
The preserve viewing area is a narrow strip of land that encompasses Fish Creek at the south end and a small tributary in the north. The whole thing is probably 1/3 of a mile long. The main viewing platform is a boardwalk built 6’ to 10’ above the streams. Bears come from the woods on both sides of the creeks—often walking through the parking area and ducking under the boardwalk to get to the water.
We’ve read that there’s a little bit of a theme park atmosphere to this place, and we can detect it. The well-maintained boardwalk is punctuated with graphic signs explaining the flora, fauna, and bear lore. There are several “naturalists” on duty, one collecting a “modest fee” and the others making sure that everyone gets a good look at the bears without being part of the dinner plate. There’s even a sign with an up-to-the-minute log of bear sightings. There are probably 20 other tourists on hand. “You just missed a BIG one”, one naturalist says. “It was here for about an hour—just left—walked into the woods over there”, she reports as she points. Honestly, the informational signs are interesting. One describes the lifecycle of salmon and how important their lives and deaths are to the ecology. Another shows the key differences between Grizzly/Brown and Black Bears. When Grizzlies walk, the highest point on their bodies is their pronounced front shoulder hump. Black Bears don’t have this shoulder hump, and their butt is the top of their profile. Grizzlies have a shallow depression or dish in their faces. Black Bear faces are flat.
At this moment, there are no bears, so we spend time observing the salmon and gulls. It’s near the end of the salmon season, and there are scores rather than thousands of fish—some are REALLY BIG—all are showing clear signs of having worked exceedingly hard to get here. A few are still spawning—big, colorful, hawk-nosed males churning and splashing next to the females. Most have finished the grand moment—their battered bodies are undulating slowly against the light current—holding their positions—waiting for their inescapable demise. There are many dead salmon—some skeletons or remnants on the bank—some bodies lying on the bottom lodged amongst the rocks. Most of the gulls are scavenging, but a few stand above tired fish swimming in place and peck away at their backs as if to urge them to be done with it all. The patient fish occasionally object in a flurry of splashing but then settle back into the current and await the inevitable.
Soon…BEAR! A Grizzly crosses the road with a salmon in its mouth. It scrambles under the boardwalk and mostly disappears into the forest to devour the fish. We can see just tiny glimpses as it chews away. The bear is blacker black than the emptiness surrounding it and moving a little—so THAT must be the bear. By now, all of the tourists have moved to this section of the platform—all craning for a view and snapping away with their cameras. Before we continue the bear saga, a brief respite to talk about “LENS ENVY”. Prior to the trip we bought a big, new, professional-grade 100/400 zoom lens for my Canon digital camera. Several times on the trip men have shown blatantly overt “Lens Envy” when they’ve seen my equipment. “That’s a BIG one,” they’ll say. “Wish I had one that BIG!” Now, on this platform, there are at least 3 other men with the same lens, but one who has the MUCH bigger 200/600 lens. It is like a cannon and swathed in macho, camo cloth. The air is ripe with testosterone.
Back to the bear—it’s in the woods and barely visible. So I head to the other end of the platform and begin photographing gulls, salmon, and scenery. While I’m gone, the bear finally finishes the fish, crawls out of the woods into the stream below Nancy and begins to work downstream looking for an easy kill. She is very close to the bear. It’s just a few feet below her. Nancy and the rest of the tourists are following it like paparazzi—some of them with sophisticated cameras zooming in for close-ups and some shooting with their cell phones. Finally Nancy breaks free and hurries to get me so that I can see the bear. We watch this bear for ½ hour. Mostly, it is focused on the possibility of salmon, but sometimes it looks up at us with mild confusion as if to say, “What Are you doing up there? Can’t you see I’m working here!”
After this bear, we wait, and wait for another and then decide to do some exploring elsewhere. We head up the road toward Salmon Glacier. Almost immediately we see three Black Bears, a mother and two cubs, cross the road and head toward the stream. After a few miles, we decide the remaining 15-mile drive to the glacier on the horribly pockmarked road will be too punishing, so we turn left onto a narrow dirt track. For a couple hundred feet we’re in a tunnel through the trees, then a view of the Salmon River opens on our right, and we find ourselves paralleling the river heading back toward the preserve. We sense that at any moment a giant Grizzly Bear, the largest predator in the Americas, could lunge from the trees just a few feet in front of us.* Suddenly we see movement. There, ahead of us in the grass along the road—what IS it? Is it a…bug…hopping strangely toward us? No…not a bug…a…SHREW! Not only A shrew, but, we think, a PIGMY Shrew—the polar (hopefully you’ll excuse the pun) opposite of a Grizzly bear because the Pigmy Shrew is the smallest mammal in the Americas—small, but mighty and fierce. They eat 60-100% of their body weight per day and will even attack and eat larger animals (let’s see a Grizzly do THAT). Like bears, shrews are cannibals, but nastier. Put two shrews together and one will kill and eat the other. Shrews look a little like mice, but they’re not related. The shrew is a completely unique species. Some shrews are venomous and most secrete a pungent repugnant musk that discourages predators. We watch this guy for 15 minutes or so, as he hunts along the path and ducks under rocks and leaves. He’s cute and fascinating, but we keep the car doors closed because we know he’s wild and deadly.
Finally, the Pygmy Shrew gets bored with us and hops into the forest. Do the creatures therein know the peril that now stalks them? Will the Shrew find an unsuspecting mouse, or bunny, or deer? Do even the Grizzlies tremble?
In this same area we also see the first amphibian of our trip. We’ve been confounded by the apparent absence of frogs and toads. Now we see a wee, spotted, brown frog bound across the road. I try frantically to photograph this guy. The result is an unDisneyesque series of shots of the grass where the frog used to be.
We return to the bear viewing area with hopes of experiencing another Grizzly encounter. We are not disappointed. A new bear is working along the creek in the same manner as the bear we saw earlier. We are astoundingly close to the bear as it slowly wades downstream.
As we leave Fish Creek, we see another Black Bear cross the road. Then we bounce back to and through Hyder. We pass a cursory inspection at the Canadian border control point. The border agent is the same nice lady who was on duty yesterday. We’re wondering whether she thinks that being assigned to this post is a GOOD thing or a BAD thing—probably depends on her career aspirations.
Despite the fact that we saw no Black Bears along the road on the way in, Nancy challenges me to guess how many we’ll see on the way out. I guess three—we see none. Yesterday in and out we saw 8—today 0. This reinforces our sense of how special the prior day was.
Back at the Nass River by about 6:30 PM, we reconnect CJ and are on the road again. Moments later, a Black Bear bounds across the road! 30 miles or so south we stop for the night in a roadside pullout near Cranberry Junction. It has been an exciting and wonderful day.
*There’s an ongoing debate about whether Grizzlies or Polar Bears are the larger. Apparently, on average, Polar Bears are bigger, but the LARGEST bear ever recorded was a brown/Grizzly bear standing 12 ½ tall and weighing 1,600 pounds.
