Bear-talk.... - Volcano or Bear?!! ....
During our Expedition into the valley of The Ten Thousand Smokes
in Katmai N.P. we had a lot of close bear encounters. Sometimes
we were not sure what was more interesting: The bears or the
volcanoes!... :)
Junior bear, checking us out closely..... - Margot Creek, Katmai
N.P. Alaska.
A great feature of Katmai N.P. is its Grizzly bears which can be found
all around Naknek Lake and its many creeks where Salmon are running
during this time of the year.
These bears were really astonished when they saw us pass by with our canoe with
the sails up...
Margot Creek, 8th August 2002
The way we were able to learn about bears
they are some of the
most wonderful animals on this planet. Though "I'm just hoping, I
won't
get eaten or "charged" by one of them" was crossing our mind
several
times at closer encounters in Katmai N.P as well as in Denali N.P.
It is an
understandable human problem to feel unsave at an encounter
with an animal which could do harm or even kill a person. The problem
is that You just don't really know for sure how a bear will behave at a
particular situation.
Bears are individuals as we are and can behave different
at different
situations. Still, while we heard heaps of horror stories while crossing
through Canada and we met people - also natives - who were amazed
to find us camping in the wilderness without carrying a gun - not even
a bear spray... - after our experience in Denali N.P and Katmai N.P our
picture of bears is
Camp at Margot Creek (Baers, baers, baers.... - es wimmelt von
Bären!)
that a bear will normally not be interested in human encounters too and
just leaves if he has a human encounter anyway. So we just tried to
make sure not to surprise a bear and we were able to get really close.
Humans don't belong into the bears food chain - ...still, I admitt that I would
not like to meet a bear who is really starved out and might think differently.
In
Katmai N.P. however the bears had a lot of food, especially Salmon and
there were berries all over the place too. At the same time the bears in Katmai
N.P. never got any food from humans (no rubbish a.s.o) so they do not
relate humans with food at all. The people from the N.P. service also do
a great job in educating the visitors and make sure that this stays the way
it is.
Special thanx at this stage to Howard Maltby from NYC a very
experienced ranger of the Katmai N.P service who told us a lot about
the right behavior in bear country and encouraged us to make our
sailing trip to Margot Creek at the other side of Naknek lake.
This mother bear at Margot Creek felt very comfortable about our
presence and did not matter to see her babys walk right up to us. If she
had made the slightest sign of feeling unconfortable we would have
retreated. So we just stood our ground and were able to observe her and
her two kids for more than two hours.
Mamma bear teaching how to catch Salmon
and how to fight....
...Courios junior bear - checking us out very closely..
Margot Creek, 8th August 2002.
Mamma Bear (hardly disturbed while trying to catch Salmon....)
Margot Creek, 8th August 2002
Lonesome young Grizzly wandering along the beach at our basecamp in Brooks
Camp
Brooks Camp, 4th August 2002
There's heaps of more pictures (these were just quickly extracted from our
film-material. Hope we will find
the time to post some of them soon.
________________________________________________________________________________
well.. - here he is again - our favorite junior bear who was checking us out
closely while Mamma was fishing...
