The bears seem much more habituated to the presence of people.
There are more people.
I guess I could write complainingly for ten pages about the people, but since it would be boring and self-indulgent, I'll focus on the bear factor. The bears are interesting. That's why Mike took so many pictures and films of them. We saw twice as many bears on this Alagnak float than I saw in two other past floats, and that's part of why I think they are growing more habituated -- they're always there, but when they're afraid of you, you don't see them as much. When they're jaded in regard to two-legged smelly animals in bizarre blow-up boats, they'll even have a snack as you float by:
I'm pretty sure we saw at least one bear on every day of our week-long float, and on some days we must have seen a half dozen of them. One night we heard a giant, heavy splash right outside our respective tents, and Mike called out:
"Did you hear that?"
"Yep. It sounds like bear fishin'"
"Yep. It does."
On this particular night, near the confluence of the Kukaklek and Nonvianuk branches of the river, we had camped not at all far from a little lagoon that was literally swarming with circling sockeye salmon in shallow water. So we figured any bear would be more interested in that excellent food than in our stuff, and we went back to sleep. On the whole, this is the truth of it: when there are fish around, bears don't give a damn about you or your food. My other Mikeish fishing friend refers to a salmon-filled river as an "open refrigerator," and he doesn't even bother with bear cans or bear-resistant containers. Personally, I won't go THAT far, and this next picture explains why:
What that is, is a rather poor picture of a kevlar-constructed, bear-resistant bag called an "Ursack." Park rangers and other unbelievers have been known to be skeptical about the Ursack's ability to keep out bears. And I too have generally used the Ursack for overflow food and for storing trash -- certainly, I never put the plastic flask of whisky in the Ursack.
But do you see the tooth marks? I might not have noticed them either, but on one morning of our trip, in my pre-caffeine stupor, I spent several minutes trying to untie the Ursack from its place on a large branch, when it finally dawned on me that no, there was no way in hell that I could have tied a knot that tight. It had been pulled tight by some critter trying to pull it off the branch, and judging by the tooth marks, and the tightness of the knot, I doubt we're talking about a possum or a fox. We're talking about an Ursus Arctos Horribilus. Needless to say, I now have a lot more faith in my Ursack. And I'll feel less guilty when I "fake" using a bear can to go backpacking by showing the can to rangers at the trailhead, and then leaving it in the truck.
I think this bear may well be the culprit. He hung around that camp for a while, and he looked like the kind of adolescent rebel to be trying to steal food from the smelly two-legged things.:
We saw not a few bears at that two-day rest stop in "The Braids" -- a long series of shallow, braided river channels where sockeye salmon are easy pickin's for both two and four-legged omnivores. Gladly, most of the bears were about as interested in us as this mama bear and her barely visible cub following:
Mike took these videos (I'm going to post one of my own bear videos below), and I'm glad to say that he got as habituated to the bears as they were to us. However, at the beginning of the trip, my long-time fishin pal Mikey was somewhat skittish around the Hairy Ones. And thus, I introduce the long-promised, but rather brief, story of the Sockeye Toss . . . it's like this: Mike is pretty excited about landing his first ever salmon on a fly, and he is understandably fascinated by the terrific strength and wild fight of the sockeyes that are streaming into the river. After a few Snap-offs, he does indeed fair-hook and land a really nice fresh one:
A fish that fresh is excellent eating, and it seemed right that the omnivorous two-legged Mike should bless his first sockeye by devouring a good part of it. We tied it onto the back of the raft and rowed down a half mile or so until we found a good flat cooking spot with good visibility up and down the river. Of course, you pick a spot with visibility so that you can see an impending four-legged visit before it happens. And guess what: no sooner had I started to set up the stove, and no sooner had Mike started the risky process of riverside fishmongery, than we got our visit.
"Hey! There's a bear downstream," Mike said.
"What's he doing?" I said. In times past, all Alagnak bears had spotted me, and run away.
"He's looking at me. "
Now, for a guy holding a fish, having a bear see you, and look at you, and perhaps watch you, is not good news.
"If he gets too close Mike, you need to throw that fish out into the current as far as you can get it."
"Oh shit -- he's running!" Mike called out.
I stood up in a hurry and asked which way the bear was running (I couldn't see it from where I was), but the Toss had already happened -- I heard a nice splash and saw a nice silvery lunch go floating down the river.
"Aw," Mike said a moment later, "I think he was running away."
The next hour's evidence, based mostly on uninterrupted consumption of peanut butter and crackers, strongly supported the notion that the bear was actually running away from us, and not toward our lunch spot. But what do we know? If the fish hadn't been tossed, the bear might have been all over us, hounding us for fresh sockeye. Surely, they're capable of that. So we did the right thing. But we did not get to eat fish for lunch, and both of us had to admit to being disappointed.
But so what -- later that same evening we snacked heartily on a dinner salmon. The main thing is getting your protein, and not having to pay for it with a mauling. When the bears are really habituated and really hungry and aggressive, as they can be on, for instance, the Brooks River, then you need to watch yourself. Fishing in a river like that is to do a constant slow dance of avoidance with a constant stream of fishing bears. Here's a video from the Brooks that I took a week or so before starting down the Alagnak with Mike. I was a bit disappointed that the bear didn't rush at the fish in a direction directly at me, which he had done before I took the camera out:
But I still like the clip as it is. And with every encounter, close medium or long, I like bears more. I ain't no Timothy Treadwell, but I'd really miss the bears if they suddenly were to disappear from Alaska. They're a very big part of why I enjoy being up there. A big, hairy, somewhat slightly scary part of it.
