The Bear Experience

It’s always nice to be joy riding back to camp after a pleasant day of internet surfing and shopping in town, when you happen to look up and spot a rather large, brown blur galloping across the sand 200 feet in front of you. As you slow down the ATV and your brain has a chance to process what you’re seeing, you piece together that a Mamma Grizzle bear is hauling ass up the beach embankment and disappearing into the Tundra. It‘s only natural that the first two words out of your mouth are, “F**k!” and a few seconds later, “F**k.”

Everyone at camp likes to tell tales of their bear encounters. They round a corner and see one on the Tundra or they have to sneak around it as it’s lounging by the river. They always sound like it’s no big deal when you run into a bear, just keep riding up wind and you’ll be fine intermixed with horror stories of friends and Nome locals getting their faces ripped off and their tongues eaten. One of the participants even joked to her husband that she wanted to bring a 22 pistol to camp and the husband was like, “why would you want that? I’m bringing the 357.” The wife replies, “so I can shoot you in the leg and get away.” Ah, true love.

About a month ago, there was a Mamma Grizzle and her 2-year-old cub playing at the Cripple River. We managed to capture some blurry imagines of them on camera, but we didn’t feel like getting too close. After that there’ve been sightings of the 2 bears up at Dredge Camp and out where prospectors metal detect. The bears haven’t come back towards main camp since…until 2 nights ago when the baby cub was spotted along the far shore of the Cripple, trying to fish the salmon. From where I was standing, Mamma wasn’t in sight. Not good considering how protective she is of her baby.

A crowd gathered to watch the cub play but then it moved into the Willows and we’d all thought it had run away. Not 5 minutes later, the cub prances out of the trees on the camp side of the Cripple, right at the entrance to where everyone drives across the river, 200 yards from where I was. Right behind baby, Mamma’s head pops up from the bushes; she’d been on our side of the river the whole time. The two of them start sniffing the air and then head up river through the Willows…or so we thought.

You might have seen from the previous pictures that I posted, John standing over a dead, headless 8-foot whale half buried in the sand. The whale washed ashore last Friday, 20 yards from the A-frame. Apparently Mamma Grizzle and her cub could smell an evening meal and came exploring. They rounded the corner of an outer placed Hooch and started towards the A-frame, the last anyone saw of them that evening.

When I went to breakfast the following morning, the crew asked me if I’d heard the gunshots. Mamma and baby had been back at the river fishing and the men had to fire over their heads to scare them off. I’d slept through the shots. Neither John, nor I thought of the bears again as we went into town to hang out for a few hours. It wasn’t until we were riding back to camp, speeding along the beach, I just happened to pay attention to my surroundings and Mamma Grizzle was galloping across the beach, up and over the tundra.

She’d been having a mid-afternoon snack of whale when the noise of our ATV’s frightened her into the Tundra. I stopped once I spotted her and turn to John, who barely realized there was a bear on the loose. “What do we do?” I asked. I had no idea if we were down wind from the bear or not and if we should play it safe and head back the way we’d come or continue the last mile to camp. John replies, “Just go and don’t stop.” I put the ATV in 5th gear (the highest) and sped along the rough terrain, alternating between watching the Tundra for Mamma and the giant, gravel speed bumps in front of me.

Surprisingly I wasn’t scared. My heart rate didn’t go up and my palms weren’t sweating. It was just a natural reaction of “F**k!” when I first spotted the bear and then driving by, hoping the thing didn’t come back. A little ways past the A-frame, the dead whale, and the bear, I spotted a lone prospector braving the cold weather. John and I stopped and when the guy wandered over to me, I told him to watch out because there was a bear and her cub feeding on a dead whale not a 5th of a mile from where he was standing. The guy looks at me and says, “Oh, that was a bear? I thought it was a dog.” Maybe I should have just kept going and let the moron get eaten.

I came back to camp to alert the staff that the bears are hanging out near the road to town, but no one seemed to mind. They just said not to get in the way of Mamma and her cub and you’ll be fine. Some of the prospectors were packed in a truck headed to town; instead of worrying, they all got out their cameras. It’s definitely a different breed of people out here.