Bushwhacking with Bears in Alaska

Discoveries along the way

Through a patch of devils club

  One part of my job this season up in Alaska is taking guests out in the bush where there is no dock, no trail except those left by game, and no real destination or goal other than to immerse ourselves in the temperate rain forest and explore. We call this bushwhacking, and it is a favorite past time for people who live in and around the forest. You can blaze you own trails and find new discoveries on every trip. I don't carry a machete because I don't want to leave a trail of destruction behind us, but I do carry bear spray.

   One big aspect of bushwhacking or hiking in Alaska is that you are walking through bear country. Luckily humans are not on the normal menu so it's not like bears are stalking you as you walk. If anything they want to get out of your path or just hunker down and hide until you are gone. I make plenty of noise so as not to startle any bears, and to make sure that moms with cubs are able to regroup as I do not want to come between them.

First Sighting

Black Bear stand off

  I took a group of six with me yesterday to an area I really like near Cape Fanshaw. It is part of the mainland so we could come across black bears or brown bears, although up until today I never had. I was seeing quite a bit of new bear signs...like scat, trails, and day beds. We were playing it safe by going slowly, making plenty of noise, and listening in between shouts of, 'hey bear!'

Racing Across the River

  We made it to a beautiful little stream crossing when I first caught sight of a bear down the river looking our direction. I could see from where we stood that it was a big black bear. It turned away from us and looked intently across the stream. That is when an even bigger black bear emerged. The first bear scampered across the river only to slowly come back and cross again. That is when I noticed that the salmon had finally started to run in this river. The deeper part of the stream in the shadows were chocked full of pink salmon. Leave it to the salmon to bring out the bears. After watching for a while we turned around and headed back to our drop off point, all feeling jazzed up for a true Alaskan experience.

Walking away from the bears

Pumped to Make It 

 You can read about an earlier surprise black bear encounter I had while checking out the sockeye salmon run near Mendenhall Glacier.