A Bearly Alaskan Adventure, part 2

By Karen J. Laubenstein

Last week, Karen wrote about winning a coveted permit to observe grizzly bears in the McNeil River Falls Wildlife Sanctuary in August, her arrival at the camp, and setting up house. Today, she writes about the bears.

Every morning we'd gather in the cook shack and learn what time the tide would be low for us to journey out into bear country.  I was outfitted in blue Caddis waders with Merrell waterproof hiking boots, Cabela's silk pink underlayers and black heat leggings, wool socks, Land's End shirts in layers, and a floppy hat.  I am a robust woman and found these in women's sizes.  In my backpack, I had trail mix and protein bars, dehydrated fruit snacks, water bottle, camera gear and extra batteries, raincoat, and a Sony handycam. 

Every day we hiked out into bear country, though our routes varied and some days we hung out at the mouth of the river for awhile before going up to the falls.  Every day we left at low tide and then returned to camp late in the evening, around 7 PM, and either waded the mile across the lagoon and another mile along its shores back to camp, or rode in a skiff across the lagoon and hike the half-mile spit back to camp.

We followed the armed guide single-file on trails full of bear, fox, bird, and rodent prints and scat.  We could see bears in the distance across the lagoon where they fished along the mouth of McNeil River as we hiked along the opposite shore.  The first day, we took the 'cliff trail' and it was torturous.  I slid on the muddy banks, on slippery rocks, on the edges of the narrow paths, trying to avoid the sharp Devil's Club or itchy welts from Wild Parsnips, and my bifocals made me teeter wildly as it was difficult to gauge depth and height.  I did not have the strength for high steps and cliff climbing, and the guide or other  photographers lent a hand or I went flying, until I began carrying a walking stick everywhere.  My new caddis waders quickly became covered in mud and sand. 

We walked 2.5 rugged miles to Mikfik Creek that first day, then along the cliffs for another mile around the lagoon.  We then climbed the cliffs for another 1.5-mile hike to the falls, where tundra and mountains stretch out as far as you can see and only three trees in all that wild country are visible.  Bald eagles, ravens, gulls, and terns swooped and perched along the trails.  To protect this environment, long parts of the trail to the falls have narrow boardwalks, but long sections do not, and there it can be thick mud, deep puddles, pebbles, and infrequently mushy fresh bear scat.

After that first day, we took a different route, wading across the lagoon at low tide, with the water higher than some folk's hipboots, making me glad of my waders.  It was easier going and I was grateful.  The waters are incredibly clear.  When hiking, though, everyone watches the trail and boots in front of them, for if you look around, you trip and fall.

En route to the falls, there is 'pee rock,' the last vestige of privacy, for it isn't safe to hike off the trails and into the shrubs.  At the falls, our toileting had to happen right next to everyone adjoining the gravel pads and we had to pack it out.  We saw fat and healthy ptarmigan and ground squirrels, wild berries, and sunken overgrown pithouses of ancient peoples about 1,500 years ago.  We also would see bears.

Bears were everywhere!  We had them in camp, a fresh print showed up right in front of my tent the second morning I was there.  A blur of bear ran into the underbrush from the outhouse one morning, as I was capturing the sunrise over the mountains in front of me.  When we hiked to the falls, we learned to stand along the top of the cliff for a few moments, watching the bears below, so they could watch us and become accustomed to our arrival.  Then we would hike down to the banks of the falls and that gravel pad, quietly, and again, stand for a few moments before unlocking the little cache that held the folding camp chairs.  We spent the day with our armed guards, sitting on those chairs or standing as the wild bears came and went, fished and ate, fought and roared, napped, swam, defended territory, and do what bears do.

Over time, we came to know the individual bears.  Rocky who loved to do bellyflops, and Mouse, a sow, who took a lot of abuse from the males stealing her fish and chasing her away from the falls, only to come back again and again and catch her fish and defy the boars.  Some bears had cuts and gashes.  Some bears were blonde or light brown, while others looked almost like leather or had very soft, thick, brown or black fur.  Some had long snouts and one was almost pug-nosed.  One had a missing ear, others had missing claws.  Some weighed 400 or so pounds, while the dominant boars were 1,200 pounds and up.  Each bear had their own fishing style, its usual fishing area, and some unique habits.  Every time a new bear approached the area, dynamics would go into play, and we'd watch anxiously to see if the bear would stake its place, or if it would get driven out or challenged by the other bears.  Sometimes the younger bears tried to steal the chum salmon from the older bears, and they'd race right at us.  We had bears walk down our trail right behind us, within two or three feet, often too close to photograph them with a zoom lens.

We saw a mama bear and her three cubs—the first time our guide said he had known them to come to the falls—and this was his 13th year at McNeil.   At the same time, the guides warned McNeil bears have accepted the presence of humans, but never should we expect wild bears anywhere else to be this way.  We traveled paths worn down by humans for the last 60 or so years, if not all those years since the pithouses 1,500 years ago, studying the bears.  We used the same viewing pads, we climbed the same cliffs, and we did what thousands had done before.  Most of those adult bears come back to McNeil every summer, and have had humans watching them their entire adult lives.  The guards said they have never had to shoot those bear guns nor have any humans been harmed at McNeil.  Never did we forget they are wild and potentially dangerous.  Never did we roam alone beyond those boundaries. 

It was hard that last evening at the falls, standing to go and looking at these magnificent animals.  I had to stay with the group, but for just a second, I lingered, and whispered, "Yo, Bear.  Hey there, Buddy," and realized I was leaving a little bit of my heart behind, as we began the long hike back to camp.

A Bearly Alaskan Adventure, part 1

By Karen J. Laubenstein

Now in her second half-century with new bionic ears after being profoundly deaf for more than 40 years, Karen is President of Arctic Cliffhangers (Alaska Chapter of Sisters in Crime); Alaska State Writer-Editor, US Department of the Interior; passionate photographer; author; former speechwriter and ghostwriter for President George H.W. Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy; and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Benin, W. Africa); wife and mom; and, an inadvertent adventurer from Anchorage, Alaska.

Sometimes the results of impulsively grabbing an opportunity can be terrifying.  An hour before the deadline, a Facebook friend, Coby Brock posted information about a photo-opportunity-of-a-lifetime at the McNeil River State Game and Wildlife Sanctuary lottery. The sanctuary hosts the largest concentration of wild brown (grizzly) bears in the world and offers a lottery for 185 individual permits for a four-day period each year to visit and photograph the bears.  I quickly found the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website, completed the online permit application, and paid the $25 lottery fee. The odds were not good with thousands of people world-wide applying; I promptly forgot about it.

My first reaction a month later on learning I had won a permit was not exultation or a sense of victory, it was fear!  I have always associated grizzly bears with danger unless they were safely housed behind electrified fencing like at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center or the Alaska Zoo.  While bears are usually in the local news on almost a daily basis throughout the Alaskan summer months when they're not hibernating, the few wild bear sightings I've experienced I could count on one hand, and most of those were from inside a vehicle or train.

This is how I ended up flying August 6 on a small green and white Beaver-type floatplane after paying more than I could afford to haul enough food and gear to be self-sustaining in a tent for five- to-10 days.  As we rose over the town of about 5,000 and flew over Kachemak Bay and Cook Inlet in the direction of the Mt. Augustine steaming volcano, my heart recaptured the terror that began with the email and letter announcing I had won. As many as 144 individual bears have been observed at McNeil River through the summer, with as many as 74 observed at one time.

As the plane reached the land of McNeil River behind the volcano, snuggled between Katmai National Park and Preserve and Mt. Iliamna National Park, the sun turned the cliffs golden, the water glistened with many green hues, and the pilot flew low over McNeil River Falls as he circled around to the lagoon, and I got my first sight of wild bears!  They were furry blobs scattered around on the rocks, banks, and in the water at the Upper and Lower Falls.  I also saw a small group of humans with camera equipment sitting on a gravel pad right in the midst of the bears! 

I never felt even a jolt taking off or landing in that floatplane!  We taxied up to a half-mile long, high spit of gravel that separates the lagoon from the ocean waters of Kamishak Bay, and people stood there with luggage piled on rusty wheelbarrows waiting for their ride back to Homer.  Men in hip boots pulled the plane flush with the sandy shore.  Soon, I was standing in the midst of blooming fireweed and tundra shrubs with my bags and camera gear around me in front of the cook shack, choosing one of the empty tent sites to set up.  There were enough mosquitoes to be annoying, but not enough to call it bad, unless you've never lived in Alaska.  Small sparrow-like birds flitted through the underbrush, and sounds of people laughing came out of the cook shack beyond.

I opened my new tent and began setting it up, feeling odd not to have my husband or son helping, and hoping I was going to be able to do it alone.

"See the bear?"  A man smiled, pointing northwest at the spit.  Sure enough, there was a beautiful bear, its coat shimmering light brown in the sunshine; it ignored us and walked up over the spit we had traversed only moments earlier.  I fumbled for my Nikon to capture the moment.  My first McNeil bear!  A wild bear!  Only about 100 yards away!

That was the beginning of what became the adventure. 

I managed to set up the tent, realizing it wasn't high enough to fully stand in, but large enough for three people to sleep comfortably and thus fit all my bags and framed backpack.  We had to put any food or things with odors—face lotion, waterless hand cleaner, bug spray, sunscreen, breath mints, gum, etc.—on a shelf in the cook shack.  We transported water from a creek about one-quarter mile away in five-gallon jugs via the wheelbarrow.  We had to treat it or boil it for 10 minutes.  Everything I brought was dehydrated backpacking food, so water was crucial.  My military water filter was too slow, and tablets took too long, so I boiled. 

The cook shack has six propane burners with outside tanks, and Friends of McNeil River provided cookware and teapots.  The building has an extensive library, two large tables with benches, a wood-burning stove, and some gear, like 'crazy chairs,' which fold flat and are used daily on the trails when we stopped for bear viewing or waiting until it was safe to proceed. 

During an orientation and tour, we saw a sauna beyond the tent areas near a lily-pad pond.  Two outhouses stood a LONG way from the cook shack and tent area beyond a cache built to store food supplies, and the two staff cabins with their solar panels stretched beyond that.  From a lookout deck adjoining the cook shack, we learn the invisible boundaries that made up camp; we were not to go beyond those boundaries without the guides and their bear guns.  We could use air horns if we saw a bear in camp or to take to the outhouses in case a bear trapped us out there.  We learned to call out, "Ho bear!  Hey there, buddy!" in brushy areas or when coming around a boulder or where bear trails and fresh scat showed up.

Karen’s adventure continues next week. Her fear was well-grounded. A grizzly bear killed a hiker in another Alaska park shortly after Karen returned from McNeil River Falls.