A mother and cub in the wild. Photo / 123RF
As the old joke goes, when you’re face to face with a grizzly bear in the wilderness, it’s comforting to know that you could outrun at least one person in your hiking group.
In my group, there’s me, our Canadian guide Eddy Savage (who looked pretty quick), and two English guys, both of whom were 20 years older than me and one had a dodgy knee. Sorted.
We’re on a rainforest walk in Glendale Cove; part of our stay at the stunning Knight Inlet Lodge, in British Columbia.
The plan was to have a walk in the rainforest, with Eddy telling us a bit about flora and fauna along the way. It’s bear country, but we weren’t expecting to see any.
“You might see a bear out here one time in 20,” says Eddy.
When we’re not chatting among ourselves, Eddy talks to bears that he can’t see.
“Ay-oh bear,” Eddy says in a gentle sing-song voice. When you’re walking through bear country, you have to announce yourselves to the bears. You don’t want to yahoo and be too loud, but you don’t want to sneak up on them either. You really don’t want to sneak up on a grizzly bear. So Eddy keeps talking to bears he can’t see.
“Ay-oh bears,” he says every minute or so.
“We’re just walking through the forest, bears.”
Later: “We don’t want to bother you, bears.”
Seriously, if the bears are as polite as the Canadians, no one’s in any danger at all.
“Ay-oh bea ... ” Eddy freezes. Whoops. We’ve snuck up on a grizzly bear.
She’s about 15 metres ahead of us, behind a large tree trunk. Hearing us, she’s stood up - seven-foot-and-then-some of grizzly bear checking us out. Bigger than the biggest All Black and hairier too.
“Ay-oh bear (guys, come stand next to me) ... we’re just over here, bear (move slowly guys) ... we’re not meaning to bother you, bear ... ”
She’s standing side on, which is good (Eddy tells us later that when they stand front on, they could get aggressive).
Eddy has reassured us that we’ll be fine if we see a bear. We want to stand in a tight group, so we look big and tough; but we have to make no sudden moves.
For protection, we have Eddy’s can of pepper spray. Worryingly, he’s only fired it once - when he tripped over, years ago, and accidentally got a blast of pepper spray in his own eyes.
I’ve never felt more reassured by an Englishman’s dodgy knee.
But, inevitably, the bear is more spooked than we are. She darts off into the woods, a cuddly little cub scampering behind.
These grizzly cubs are cute as all hell. You just want to pick one up and cuddle it. Give it the greatest, biggest, loveliest cuddle in the world - of course, it would have to be the greatest cuddle in the world, because it’d be the last thing you ever did. The mums are never far from their cubs.
When the bears have departed, we look around and find fresh prints. Eddy holds his hand over a paw mark; the bear’s mitt dwarves his. They leave a stench of dead salmon and poo.
Later, after we’ve had lunch at a river bend, we’re returning down the same trail when we encounter the same two bears at the same spot. They dart off into the woods as I freeze, fumble for my camera and take two photos - one of the back of Eddy’s head, the other of some trees.
This bear-watching business is frantic.
A couple of minutes later, we spot another bear - this time a lone male - on a nearby creek bed. So much for seeing a bear on this walk one time in 20.
There’s still 15 minutes of trail to walk before we get back to our boat. With so much “bear activity” in the area, Eddy asks us to talk constantly and in a steady voice the whole way to the boat, making sure the bears know we’re coming through. Obviously this makes us somewhat nervous.
The two English blokes - both of whom had earlier asked me about the All Blacks’ prospects at this year’s World Cup - are either too startled by the bears or too polite to master small talk, so I fill the silence with a 15-minute exposition on the failings of English rugby.
After all, if you’re going to be eaten by a grizzly bear then you might as well die doing something you love.
“How’s your knee, mate?” I inquire, politely.
Later, when we’re back on the boat, I ask Eddy the burning question. Who’s tougher, a polar bear or a grizzly bear?
“A polar bear might get a good challenge from a Kodiak bear [a really big grizzly]. They’re pretty big. Pretty tough.”
Sometimes in life you’re the bear and sometimes you’re the salmon.
Perched on a viewing platform, we’re watching a grizzly bear sitting in the middle of a river as thousands upon thousands of salmon stream past her.
Parked in the middle of this flowing smorgasbord, with a solid current of salmon brushing against her, she plucks fish out with her sharp claws, holds them up and sniffs them. She throws the males back. When she gets a female fish, she sucks the roe out of it and chomps the head, before chucking the rest of it back into the water. The roe, brain and eyes are the best sources of protein and with so many fish to pick from, mama bear is spoilt for choice.
She prefers the dead ones; it takes less energy to grab them.
When you’re the top of the food chain, you can afford to be this lazy. Life is good for the grizzly. Bad luck, salmon.
Of course, it’s always been hard to be a salmon; last summer’s dry spell makes it harder.
Waters are low so the creeks and rivers are warmer and there’s an algae in the fresh water. The algae consumes oxygen in the water, making the salmon’s lot even more difficult. So more salmon are dying before they get the chance to get upstream to the spawning grounds.
Hundreds of dead salmon float just beneath the surface of the water, their white bellies catching the sun. Thousands more living ones glide beneath them, waiting for the rains that will increase the water level in the rivers, making their final journey to the spawning grounds possible. Sitting in the middle of them all is the contented bear.
Seagulls pick at dead salmon along the side of the river. Out in the sound, seals blast through salmon schools, breaching the water as they catch their lunch.
The salmon is the lifeblood of the ecosystem, from the seals, to the grizzlies, to the insects that feast on the dead fish, to the lunch menu back at the Knight Inlet Lodge. Everyone eats salmon. The lucky ones live long enough - just - to spawn some eggs upstream before they die of exhaustion.
Truly, it sucks to be a salmon.
On the drive to the viewing platform, we are told the rules of bear-watching in the wild. We must whisper and make no sudden movements. Bears will have heard our bus coming, so will not be surprised to see us roll by on the road. But, even in the bus, a loud shout and sudden movement might startle them away. So, if you see a bear, stay very quiet and make no sudde ...
“LOOK!” screams an Aussie guy in our group, slapping both hands against the window.
He’s spotted a grizzly in National Geographic-approved crouching pose, a salmon between its teeth. The bear drops the salmon and darts into the nearby bush. Nice one, Digger.
When we get to the viewing stands, two bears are playing about 200 metres upstream from us. Our guide, Brian Collen, recognises them. Their mum is called Naena - the guides know her best by the scar above her left eye. But they come to identify bears by their behaviour and the places they hang out, too.
Naena soon makes an appearance, wandering in from the trees and plonking her backside in the waterway where she chomps salmon as the kids playfight.
“They’ll eat 40,000 calories per day,” says one of the guides, Moira le Patourel. “Forty Big Macs.”
Male grizzlies are more wary of humans, so with the abundance of food around at the viewing stands, it’s become something of a nursery.
We hear a loud crack as a stick breaks in the woods near our stand. With a rustle of leaves, a giant grizzly ambles into the open spaces. She sniffs the air. We freeze. She looks at us. We freeze a little more.
After a few minutes, two cuddly bundles of cuteness tumble out of the bushes and down the small slope leading to the water.
For half an hour, we watch as the cubs swim awkwardly in the river about 15 metres away from us. Mostly they flap at each other and chase one another around.
We’re getting used to the smell of dead salmon, heavy in the air.
Knight Inlet Lodge floats on the waters of Glendale Sound, a stunning fiord on British Columbia’s rugged Pacific coast. Visitors fly in aboard a classic Otter seaplane, buzzing in from Campbell River, half an hour away.
Each day you get up and check the noticeboard to see what activities are on and what trips you can join - boat trips to the nearby estuary or out towards the ocean to see orca, trips to viewing stations or nature walks.
You come here to see wildlife. Principally bears; and mainly of the grizzly variety. Their smaller, distant cousins, the black bear, are around, but the real kudos comes from encounters with the big grizzlies.
Black bears and grizzly bears are genetically different and can’t interbreed (though grizzlies can mate with polar bears). The black bears are smaller than the grizzlies and will avoid them whenever possible. Grizzlies reign supreme.
There’s a buzz about seeing grizzlies - a buzz which is boosted by the fact the staff can’t guarantee you’ll see one. When groups converge back at the lodge, we recount tales of grizzly spotting. In the hierarchy of wildlife spotting, a grizzly sighting trumps the black bear.
The hulking grizzlies are gorgeous. The staff at the lodge say they’re misunderstood; they’re angered that the provincial government allows hunting.
The staff don’t carry guns, just the pepper spray, and by accessing the wilderness carefully, they and their guests are safe in grizzly country.
Still, it’s pretty freaky when you see one on the path ahead of you.
Sometimes, the bear is the salmon. The apex predator can be suddenly powerless. Each year, 300 bears are killed in licensed hunts by foreign visitors. The permit to shoot one bear costs $26,550. BC residents can buy a permit to shoot a bear for the bargain rate of $212. Conservationists say poaching is unchecked. Fancy shooting a wolf? Fill your boots - there’s no limit and no fee.
No one is exactly sure how many bears there are in the Great Bear Rainforest, stretching from BC all the way up to Alaska. Conservation groups estimate about 6000, while the BC provincial government - remember those guys? The ones who sell the hunting permits? - say it’s more like 16,000-17,000.
It’s the bear’s mix of nobility and fearsomeness that makes it the target of trophy hunters. That most over-used of words, “awesome”, sits comfortably on a grizzly. Once shot, their hides, paws and heads are removed. Photos of bear remains record an awful sight.
They never used to be hunted. Before European settlers arrived, First Nation communities seldom ate bears, probably for the very good reason that they’d be pretty hard to kill without guns.
Staff at Knight Inlet Lodge are committed to campaigns against trophy hunting.
“You want to come here to Canada for the nature,” says Brian.
They reckon the Glendale area, where Knight Inlet Lodge is based, can support 50-60 grizzly bears.
Dr Mel Clapham, a zoologist from Lancashire University with an interest in bears, has joined the lodge’s staff to study the grizzly community. She pays her way by taking tours and she takes me out into the woods to look at a “rub tree”, where grizzlies arriving in an area will rub themselves, and scratch and chew the bark to leave a signal, announcing their presence to other bears.
She’s studying social behaviour of bears and says the purpose of the rub tree isn’t clear.
“Maybe it’s a signpost,” says Mel.
“Who’s in the area? How big and tough are they?”
At a guess, I’d say very big and bloody tough.
Some bears will arrive, she tells me, have a sniff of the tree and, perhaps wary of the bears that went before, they’ll opt not to leave their own mark on the tree.
There’s an automatically triggered camera focused on the tree. Mel shows me photos of bears - some standing eight feet tall - rubbing themselves on the tree that we’re standing next to. Hello, bear ... we’re just over here, bear ... looking at photos of how freaking big and tough you are.
Mel assures me bears are unlikely to come while we’re at the site. They don’t like people. She’s got some of that pepper spray, but she looks like she could run faster than me. Like all the staff here, she’s relaxed in bear country; it’s the only way to be.
With little known about the lives of bears, Mel compares DNA from fur samples with those from other areas in the Great Bear Rainforest to find out which bears are around and how they might be related.
She’s joined in research by John Kitchin, another Brit, who is doing a PhD on bears. He focuses a lot of his work on a bear they’re calling Gary. If you’ve got a minute and want to see a bear taking a selfie, go to John’s brilliant website and have a look at the footage of a GoPro being destroyed.
Sometimes I’m the bear; nature’s lucky winner. I join Moira the guide for a trip in a small motorboat along the shores of the fiord and we hit paydirt. With just the two of us in the boat and the battery-powered engine humming in near silence, I count 17 grizzlies in total. When they’re in the long grasses, you search for the brown hump of their backs, or a rustle of the greenery.
From treetop perches, giant eagles watched us watching the bears. One more hunter after salmon.
Mostly mums and cubs, the bears lounge in the long grasses alongside the water’s edge and tumble in the shallows, scoffing salmon and playfighting. The good life.
When it’s winter, the bears hibernate and the staff head away to other jobs. Moira goes north, where she works on guided tours to see polar bears out of Churchill, Manitoba.
I ask her which is toughest, a grizzly bear or a polar bear.
“I’ve never felt edible here,” Moira says. “I’ve felt edible there.”
I didn’t feel too edible when we met the grizzly on the hiking track with Eddy - after all, I knew I could outrun the Englishmen. But on my last outing at the lodge, a kayaking trip to the estuary, I definitely felt the shudder of edibility.
From our kayaks, we’d been watching a mama bear with three cubs, before they all tumbled off into the long grass. We’d been paddling for an hour and a half, for one last grizzly-spotting buzz. We turned in the shallow waters and started paddling back to the fiord, heading for home.
I was slow to turn, then faffed about, adjusting my lifejacket straps to make it more comfortable. Eddy and another guide, Janet, were about 20 metres ahead of me, with two other guests.
That’s when mama bear stood up from the long grasses, I reckon about 15 metres from me. Five metres closer than Eddy. And with no one around for me to outrun.
She stood; she checked me out. We had eye contact. Shared a moment. I tried to get Eddy’s attention, but lost the ability to whistle. No loud noises, no sudden moves. Instead, I blew dry air over my lips and clenched my butt cheeks.
After a few seconds, mama bear, perhaps deciding - quite reasonably - that I was no threat to a seven-foot tall fanged powerhouse, ducked back down into the long grasses, heading off to be with her kids.
I eased the kayak along, one eye on the grass.
Back out on the estuary, salmon slapped against the underside of the kayak, harbour seals chasing them from beneath.
I joined Eddy and the gang, paddling over massive boil-ups of fish, my paddle clipping some of the unfortunate, doomed salmon on the way through.
Now those guys are edible.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Air New Zealand flies direct from Auckland to Vancouver. Knight Inlet is located 80km north of Campbell River.
Accommodation: Knight Inlet Lodge in Glendale Cove hosts a range of tours on which guests can see bears, rare birds, orca and other wildlife.
Further information: See hellobc.com.
The writer travelled as a guest of Destination British Columbia.
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