In search of Timothy Treadwell (day 2)
Day Two
Despite only having a couple hours of darkness at night, I slept like a
rock that first night. Having worked through the previous two weekends and
worked an eighteen hour day (yes, you heard me correctly) and pulled two
all-nighters that week, I was tired. The the mossy bed at the edge of the
north meadows made the most fantastic sleeping area, that I had little
desire to rise. Until the hot Alaskan sun came blazing up over the short
little trees and my tent became unbearably hot. Time to face the mosquitoes
that had collected between my tent's rain fly and the mosquito-proof inside.
Even though the sun had been up for hours, it turned out to only be about
7am and the tide was still very low. Low tide in Halo Bay exposes sandy
tidal flats hundreds of meters out from shore so this was a good opportunity
to go explore them. I grabbed my camera, ate a couple dried papaya spears
and went for a walk (what else was there to do but hike around and
explore?).
There were a few bears wandering around the flats, but I was content to
leave them far away. I had all weekend to see bears. My laid back agenda
for the day was to hike down to the southern most river to scout it for a
potential route to Halo Glacier. On the map it was labeled as "Halo Creek",
however stemming from a glacial outflow, it looks like a classic Alaskan
wild river of wide gravel bars and ever-changing channels. Having hiked
along several such rivers (
one for four days straight, out and back) I know that these river can
make great foot corridors. And I wanted to get a closer look at the glacier.
Unfortunately, many folks whom I met in Halo Bay went to great lengths to
discourage me from doing so. "The alders are too thick", "the river is too
swift to cross", "it's an overnight trek", "there's a better day hike up
this mountain back here", "the bears up there aren't habituated", were all
given as reasons, and all of which were soundly convincing. However, I at
least wanted to hike down south and see the river for myself, before I threw
in the towel. Additionally, I knew that one of Treadwell's main camps (next
to the den of Timmy the fox) had been down in a set of conifers on the south
side of the meadows, and I wanted to see that before the end of the weekend.
I hadn't really had breakfast, but the tide was low and it seemed like an
opportune time to cross the middle river. I set off south.
Strolling down through the meadows, I happened upon a group of folks whom I
had seen unloading from their skiff a few minutes earlier. They were set up
with what appeared to be photography gear just about 50 meters from the
beach, watching a beautiful, blonde sow grazing on the sedge grass. For the
readers not aware, it turns out that a very larger percentage of the coastal
brown bear's diet is vegetation matter (i.e. grass). This set of bears
rounded out their diet with berries, clams, puffin eggs, and salmon in the
fall. But all of those exciting pictures that you see of bears growling and
fighting? You see those because their exciting, not because that's typical
bear behavior. Typical behavior is more like cattle... sitting around and
grazing all day. Not that sexy, I know. But that's the reality.
Walked up to the group and snapped off a few photos, before the leader
of the group, Dan Cox
approached me and introduced himself. We had a cordial chat ("Oh, you
guys are the ones on the boat anchored out in the bay!"), exchanged
bear stories, and then I sat around shot photos of the nearby bears, and
listened to Dan giving photography advice to the eco-tourists with better
camera gear than I would ever have. I did have to laugh at the ironic point
when the photographers were unable to shoot because the bears wandered too
close to the 1000mm lenses! Daniels' work looks amazing, though.
After an hour or so of hanging out with the photographers and watching the
bears graze I bid farewell to my temporary friends and continued south down
to the middle river. The middle river creates a fairly large, protected
inter-tidal zone on the interior of the beach. During high tide, it's a
favorite spot for the float plane pilots to land during rough seas. But
during low tide, it's long wide mud flats make for easy (albeit boring)
hiking. I crossed the unexpectedly deep (waist-high) river and walked
across the mud flats heading south. There was a bear down in the creek, and
deciding to give it a wide berth, I headed to the high ground and picked up
a network of bear trails across the high meadows and brush.
I was starting to come to the river, but the going was becoming increasingly
boggy. Eventually the bear trails petered out onto what was the largest
marine debris pile that I have ever seen! Approximately one hundred meters wide and
three hundred meters long lay a giant pile of tangled drift logs that was so
far from shore (over one kilometer) that it would have take a massive,
massive storm to deposit all of this wood so far in shore. I stretched my
imagination trying to envision what it would have been like in the area when
that weather hit and I remain awe-struck. Perhaps there's another, more
peaceful explanation for them then a giant tsunami wave, but I'm having
trouble thinking of it. In any case, I picked my way across the logs and
then followed one final bear trail to get to the shore of one of the river's
side channels.
The river bank was exceedingly sandy, inviting and easy to follow. Looking upstream just a ways, I could see a number of trouble spots, that could probably be avoided with a little wading. As I continue to look at the satellite photos, I'm still not convinced that the river is not hike able. But at the time, I was satisfied with my mini-trek; especially given that I had not taken any food or water on what had already proved to be a three to four mile hike (nothing like a seven mile hike before breakfast, to get the body in shape!).
Downriver, towards the beach, I spotted what appeared to be another campsite
and I surmised that it was the other film crew in the area of which I had
heard rumors. As I strolled over to visit with them, I saw them looking
towards me a little curiously and pulling out the binoculars.
When I arrived at the camp I was greeted by Chris Morgan, bear biologist, filmmaker and self-filmed movie-star. He is apparently working on a film named BEARTREK where he rides around on a motorcycle, looks like a bad-ass and visits endangered bears. It's still in production, but there are some early cuts of it. Chris had been very surprised to see me coming from up river on the west side of the meadows having not seen many humans on that side of the mid-river (he should check out the other side where all of the planes are landing). Chris and I exchanged greetings and worked out the small-world concept as it turned out that he lived in Bellingham, WA. He also asked if I was insane for coming out to Halo Bay for "only the weekend" (and it made more sense to him after I explained that I had been in Kodiak for work already. As Chris and I spoke, though, he seemed to express some concern for either my safety, or the safety of the bears, or at least a desire to preserve the delicate, unspoken human/ursine truce of Halo Bay. Not knowing otherwise, and explicitly assuming me to be bear-retarded he gave me his "Dealing with Brown Bears 101" crash course to which I was happy to listen. After the lesson, and asking him where to find the best bear trail heading north ("you'll find a luxury trail just over there *point*"), I wished him well and departed to cross mid-river again before the tide came up any more.
On the return hike back north, there was a pretty strong off-shore wind, as
there normally was when the tide was coming in. While crossing up wind of
the south meadows, I passed a bear that was grazing. Watching it closely
as I crossed it at a normal angle to the wind, I immediately saw its nose
go up. It stopped eating and looked straight at me. I stopped too, looking
straight at it. It felt tense at first, until I remembered my experience
from the day before, and that some bears can't see for shit. I sung, "Hey
bear, ho bear" out to the bear, at which point I saw it visibly relax and go
back to eating its grass. The main message from this bear was that it
didn't care if humans are around. I (and humans in general) had no
intention of threatening its food source, and it was smart enough to realize
that. Tension diffused, I continued back toward camp.
I met one other group of three scientists along the way, one of whom worked
for NOAA! They were apparently on a charter, studying clam habitat (and
other opportunistic work) in the area and dropped in for a quick visit with
the bears. I was thirsty as hell (mental note: take water for my next seven
mile hike), so I continued back to camp.
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By this point it was well afternoon, so I took a little lunch on the beach, read a little, and then bedded down for an afternoon nap. Before the evening set in I headed out to the meadows for another bear view. I could see the film crew on the west side of the meadows, so I decided to hike over there and join them for a) safety in numbers and b) they were probably watching the interesting things in the bear world.
As I approached, it appeared that they were watching a number of bears in
the creek that was between us. All of a sudden a mother bear (with two
cubs) reared up on her hind legs and made a mad dash down the creek with the
little ones. At first I thought that I had scared her off, but
then I saw a big, dark, chocolate brown bear walking around the corner.
Occasionally, male brown bears practice infanticide (though some reports
state that it's grossly over-exaggerated), so sow mothers are
extremely cautious with their cubs for the first two year of their
life.
I joined the film crew, and they seemed happy to have me tag along with them. They were pretty excited about the footage of the female that they had just shot and were hopeful that the big chocolate bear next to us would manage to score with the female that he had been courting for the past few days (all while the film crew followed them around). We watched them for a while and it didn't look promising so we walked a little ways down the creek to watch the mom and the cubs for a while. All of a sudden we looked behind us and the male bear had started to mount the female! It was happening! After days of following those two around, they were starting to mate! I snapped off a couple long-range photos, and Rob tried to get the his giant professional-grade video camera and tri-pod set up, but the moment had passed. The sow apparently wasn't in the mood, because she shrugged off the male and they both went back to grazing on sedge-grass. Still no story for film, unfortunately.
After watching them a little while longer, we decided that it was late, and
time to call it a day. We made the hike back to camp and the mosquitoes were
bad so I ran to my tent and wished the film crew well for the night. I
needed some rest, because I had plans to explore the next day...
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