Hey Folks,

So here’s the beginning of where this trip gets fun.

This is one of the last photos I took this particular evening. The day had turned into a gorgeous afternoon, and I had a blast. A nice supper round the corner from this point, with this view of Mt. St. Elias over the Taan Fjord of Icy Bay is pretty hard to beat.

As the light got nicer and nicer, I was puttering around trying to make some photos. It makes for a long day here in the Alaska summer – this one here was close to midnight. My last 3 shots of the day were this one, a vertical composition of the same scene, and then a landscape image of this area without the boat.

Then I went to bed.

During the night I’d glance out my tent door to gaze at the mountain – I was camped about 100 yards or so from here, on a nice little sandy patch of beach, with the door situated so I could open my eyes and get a full facial of Mt. St. Elias. I was hoping the weather wouldn’t change, and during the night, each time I checked, the sky was clearer than before – so I was pretty excited about getting some nice morning photos too.

I opened my eyes around 3:30am, and the sky was a gray misty haze .. a fog had rolled in outta nowhere, and I couldn’t see the shoreline, never mind the mountain 15 miles away. So I was kinda bummed. I sank back to sleep, finding solace that I knew I’d at least be able to catch up on some sleep in the morning.

I get up, around 6:30am, and it’s cloudy and gray, drizzling rain, and nothing much going on. I grabbed my camera, on the ‘just in case’ deal, and headed off down the beach. After about 30 minutes, I decided this wasn’t as good an idea as I thought, and returned to camp – the light was terrible, and I was sleepy.

So about 7:30 I get back to my tent. Rather than head to the kitchen area to eat, I sank inside the tent, grabbed my book “The Wilderness Condition”, a compilation of essays put together by Max Oelschlaeger. It’s a great read, but some of it is a bit too ‘heavy’ for reading at 7:30 in the morning. So I drifted off a little – floating in that little zone between awake and not quite so awake.

But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out the next part – I’ll give you a hint though. Tomorrow’s photo will be another image of this same sea kayak – in a slightly different location, and shape.

More photos of Sea Kayaks and sea kayaking.

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Where’s that boat gone?

hey Folks,

So, after a little rest and reading and drifting in and out of sleep in my tent, I heard some noises in the woods outside .. branches breaking, cracking, etc. Half asleep, I ignored it. I heard it again. Still half asleep, I ignored it again. It continued. Coming to, I sat up and said to myself (actually I said it out loud, but didn’t want to acknowledge that I talk to myself here – people will think I’m crazy), “I know exactly that noise is – I need to go take a look”.

So I got up, threw on my sandals and walked around the beach.

Rounding the corner, I saw my paddle lying on the beach.

The kayak, which I’d left lying beside it, was nowhere to be seen.

Instinctively, I looked out across the bay. I saw instinctively, because I KNEW the boat hadn’t floated away. I’d been very careful to drag it up well above high tide line, and had the add security of leashing it to an alder branch, so if the tide did rise abnormally, it would be secure. So I knew the boat wasn’t in the ocean. And a quick look over the water verified that.

No boat.

I arrived at the paddle and I saw

the scene posted in the picture above. It doesn’t show up real well here, but you can kinda see, starting right at the out of focus lupine (purple flower) in the foreground, a swathe of trampled grass and brush heading into the woods. I could still hear the crashing going on inside the woods. I looked down on the ground again, next to the paddle, and saw this:

A steaming fresh pile of bear scat.

As I stepped off the beach into the woods, I called out the regulatory ‘Hey Bear’ and made a bit of noise stomping on the brush (normally I move silently, almost cat-like, through the woods – dad will verify, I learned it from him).

The sounds of a hasty escape deeper into the woods indicated the culprit had absconded, so I ventured, bear spray loaded and in hand, in to the alder.

First, I saw my dry top:

Nice tear in it, but possibly salvagable. Next I saw the spray skirt, in similar condition, a silnylon tarp, torn and destroyed.

Next I saw my PFD (Personal Flotation Device, or Life Vest):

No longer a flotation device. Here’s a closer view:

Next I find a Bear Resistant Food Cannister. Unpunctured, my food safe and sound inside it, scratch marks on the outside. Plus one for Carl – not sure where the other container is.

Next I turn and see my boat,

You can see the bear learned something; that the boat should always be leashed up to a tree, so it doesn’t float away. Look here:

And his fingerprints:

So my trip just changed markedly.

A sea kayaking trip just isn’t the same when your boat is in this shape.

Then it changed again.

Movement caught my eye, and I turned my head to see the bear, returning to look over his gear. When say ‘returning’ I mean ‘returned’ – he’s about 30 yards from me.

A full grown adult grizzly bear, cautiously advancing, staring intently at me through the alder, not making a sound.

I again offer the traditional greeting of ‘Hey Bear’ – I figured it worked last time, maybe he’ll run away again. No such luck – he advances, nose twitching as he searches for my scent.

“Hey Bear, go on, get out of here” .. bear continues cautiously forward. 20 yards.

“OK bear, I’m leaving, just gimme a sec.”

I back up, and the bear advances. I reach the edge of the alder and the beach. The bear continues forward, I continue backward. Down to the waterline.

The bear reaches the edge of the woods and sits down – a good sign. I edge away along the waterline, talking to the bear, telling him how pleased I was at the work he’d done on the boat, and that I’d be glad for him to keep it as a gift. I keep going, making my way towards m tent, etc, and the bear retreats back into the woods to his new boat.

I get to the camp, and can still hear him over at the gear, having a grand old time. So what does one do in such a situation? Wait til tomorrow.

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Grizzly bear, Icy Bay Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Part 3 of the disaster at Icy bay.

So I get back to camp, and the bear’s still trashing my gear over in the woods nearby. I don’t know the full extent of the damage to my gear yet, and I don’t know what he’s planning on doing next. I don’t know what he did with one of my (hopefully) bear resistant canisters of food, my stove and cookware.

I’ve been around plenty of grizzly bears, but it’s always a little different in situations like this.

Fortunately, I carry a satellite phone with me on trips in to the backcountry now, and I decide it’s a good move to call the pilot who flew me to Icy Bay and ask him to come get me. It’s a tough decision to make, because it’s such a pricey trip to make and have to cut short, but I didn’t have a backpack with me, so I couldn’t really feasibly move my camp gear too far, and the bear has made it clear he’s not leaving, and that he’s unafraid of me.

I figured he was moving along the beach when he found my boat and trashed it, and is most likely to continue with that once he’s done with the gear. Which likely means he’ll be heading my way before too much longer.

I called the pilot, explained the situation to him, and he said he’d come get me if I wanted. I wanted. He asked how soon, and I said ‘well, now’s a good time if you’re available’.

He was, so said he’d see me in an hour or so.

I packed up all the gear in my tent, and was just putting my camera gear together in a pelicase when movement once again caught my eye. The bear was coming along the beach, on the edge of the woods as I thought he might be) and was about 40 yards from me, 20 yards from my tent.

I’ve written on my guiding website how much I like my Mountain Hardwear Skyledge 2, and I really wasn’t in the mood to lose more gear, especially my beloved tent. At the same time, I wasn’t sure what I could do about it.

I called to the bear, once more “Hey Bear” and he agreed to detour around the tent. By about 5 yards. He walked by it, thru a little stand of alder, and into a little field of lupine, where he took a few bites of the grass growing there. How could a photographer skip a chance shot like this?

So I snapped off a frame, and asked him to leave – that’s the photo above. Instead, he started to approach:

Which was kind of a bummer.

I didn’t want him too close. And I decided he was too close.

I backed up a little, and he kept coming closer.

For the photographers out there, these images were taken at 200mm focal length (the first one at 100mm). That’s pretty close. He stopped and looked at me. I was already stopped and looking at him.

We talked a minute, but couldn’t come to an agreement.

I thought he should go away, and he thought he should not go away: an impasse with 500 plus pounds of grizzly bear. I told him I was going away, shortly, if he didn’t mind waiting.

He said he didn’t want to wait.

I stepped back, and he stepped forward. I stopped, and he stopped, his nose just twitching. I was twitching too, but it wasn’t my nose.

At this point, I was a little uncertain what might be a good option for me. I knew the plane was still at least 30 minutes away, and wondered if the bear and I could sit and stare at each other for 30 minutes ….. hhhmmmmm?

All the while I kept talking with him.

Finally, I decided I’d try something I never thought I’d do. Throw a rock at a grizzly bear. He clearly wasn’t leaving otherwise. So I slowly bent, picked up a hefty rock, and told him if he didn’t leave, I’d throw a rock at him. He didn’t leave. Bummer. I plucked up some gumption from somewhere and tossed the rock into the brush in front of him.

The bear turned and raced away immediately. I told him not to come back again, or I’d do it again.

Actually, one thing that was interesting to me was that he didn’t actually run ‘away’. He ran straight back over to his new kayak and dry top. I could hear him in the woods as I packed the rest of my duffel, and moved all my campsite gear down the beach to where the floatplane would arrive. Hopefully real, real soon.

It seemed like about 6 weeks later when I heard the drone of the engine, but I checked my watched and it was only 15 minutes or so.

The pilot was hauling a**. He flew low over the area a few times, buzzing it loudly, and this seemed to run the bear off – I couldn’t hear him any more. The plane landed, and we loaded my gear into it, and then the 2 of us walked into the alder where the boat was.

No bear. Cool.

I threw all the trash into a duffel, and hauled it to the plane, and the 2 of us hauled the boat out as well. I searched high and low for my second canister and couldn’t find it in the woods – I began to wonder if he’d eaten it. ?

Seriously, I knew he couldn’t eat it, and a gnawing thought in the back of my head told me exactly where it was. Sure enough, a walk to the edge of the brush and a look out over the bay told the story – there’s this little black thing bobbing in the ocean a 100 yards off the shore.

We packed the rest of the gear, and then floated the plane around to that area, and by now the canister was on shore. It may be ‘bear resistant’ but it’s not ‘bear proof’. The lid has a hole in it where a really big sharp pointy canine tooth punctured it, and the canister had half-filled with water – salty dinner for me!

I was glad to find the canister, but kinda bummed that the bear threw it in the ocean.

Who knew bears were so vindictive?

Next up, fly back to Yakutat and check out the damage.

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Checking out a torn up boat, Yakutat, Alaska

Hey Folks,

Would you say “Toast”?

One thing I’ve learned over the years is it ain’t over til it’s over. Too often we rule things out without a thorough examination of the situation at hand. And thinking laterally instead of vertically, one can often find solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Problem is, there’s a 10 foot long tear in the side of my boat, and it won’t hold air while it’s all torn up like that. And if it doesn’t hold air, it’s not a boat as much as a lot of rubber and plastic that I have to carry around. hhhmmm, wait a minute .. what’s that, under the deck, on the back of the torn up seat? Is it, could it be??? It is? Joy, look what I found:

A REPAIR KIT!!!! (you can see my salty, watery dinners drying out in the background)

Now, let me see how I can make this work?

Does it go here?

I know. I’ll call the company who makes these little repair kits and order three hundred more of them, and I should be right as rain. ?

I figured I’d be hiking and walking around the Yakutat area the rest of this trip.

I’m heading into the field. Check in every few days for some more image and posts I’ve scheduled for while I’m away. No more bear stories (for now) though.

Cheers

Carl