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| Our Guide Dan Kirkwood |
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| Mom and yearling cubs |
With our small group
of five passengers this week we set up a special surprise visit to the Pack
Creek bear viewing area on Admiralty Island. I have been wanting to go to this
place ever since I started working in Alaska. The meadow at Pack Creek shows up
in almost every bear documentary filled with bears. We knew that visiting in
June wouldn’t be crowded since it was in between mating time in May, and the
salmon runs in July and August. But we thought we would stop in , check it out,
and see if we got lucky. We had the manager of
Pack Creek Bear Tours, Dan Kirkwood, fly in to show us the ropes and introduce us to the bears we might be lucky enough to come across. He has spent the last five summers guiding daily fly in bear viewing trips to Pack Creek.
It looked like our
lucky day when we awoke to a mom and two cubs playing and strolling along the
shoreline. They stayed all during our breakfast, and then when our bear guide
Dan flew in on a float plane, we jumped on our skiff and were excited to see
the bears where still there. We were able to get a little closer in the skiff
and with my long lens I was able to get some pictures showing just how fluffy these
three bears where. The two cubs were puffy little balls of fluff, seeming not
to have a care in the world.
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| Little balls of Fluff |
At 9am the rangers
showed up at their post on the beach so we skiffed in to check out the meadow.
We immediately saw a big sow out in the mud flats digging around for clams. We
stayed and watched her for awhile until she finally ambled off, right over the
trail we were planning on going on. So we gave it a little time before taking a
wide heading around her path. Then our luck continued as she has merely
sauntered into the meadow where she casually chewed on sedge grass for the next
forty five minutes right in front of where we were sitting.
It was so refreshing
to be able to sit there, in the bear’s house, and witness what this bear did
and how it acted. We weren’t disturbing her and were merely onlookers into the
life of one of the worlds largest land carnivores. Often when we see bears here
in Alaska it is from skiffs, or kayaks, or the big boats…with a bit of water in
between us. It is a rare thing to be able to witness a bear while on land, and
to have it stay with us for so long was a very special treat. So it turns out
that Pack Creek can deliver even in June. Having the place all to ourselves was
something else to cherish.
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| Sitka Black Tailed Deer on alert in the meadow |
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| How do they get so big by eating grass? |
Link to a post on another spot on the bear viewing checklist in Southeast Alaska is
Pavlov Harbor.
It looked like our
lucky day when we awoke to a mom and two cubs playing and strolling along the
shoreline. They stayed all during our breakfast, and then when our bear guide
Dan flew in on a float plane, we jumped on our skiff and were excited to see
the bears where still there. We were able to get a little closer in the skiff
and with my long lens I was able to get some pictures showing just how fluffy these
three bears where. The two cubs were puffy little balls of fluff, seeming not
to have a care in the world.
At 9am the rangers
showed up at their post on the beach so we skiffed in to check out the meadow.
We immediately saw a big sow out in the mud flats digging around for clams. We
stayed and watched her for awhile until she finally ambled off, right over the
trail we were planning on going on. So we gave it a little time before taking a
wide heading around her path. Then our luck continued as she has merely
sauntered into the meadow where she casually chewed on sedge grass for the next
forty five minutes right in front of where we were sitting.
It was so refreshing
to be able to sit there, in the bear’s house, and witness what this bear did
and how it acted. We weren’t disturbing her and were merely onlookers into the
life of one of the worlds largest land carnivores. Often when we see bears here
in Alaska it is from skiffs, or kayaks, or the big boats…with a bit of water in
between us. It is a rare thing to be able to witness a bear while on land, and
to have it stay with us for so long was a very special treat. So it turns out
that Pack Creek can deliver even in June. Having the place all to ourselves was
something else to cherish. 
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