My last day out on the river with the Snootli crews was on the Upper Atnarko again; same run, different crew, more bears, lots of fish, and more incredibly unseasonably warm, dry, and sunny weather.
We dropped one truck off at Billy’s Cabin again, and then headed back up the tote road to birch run. We’d all hopped out of the truck up at birch and Marshall was helping guide the many-point turnaround on the narrow and rocky spot when he looked behind him and yelled “BEAR!”
A grizzly had come up the slope from the river behind us and was shaking water from its coat. It stood there and looked at us as if to say “Well shit….I wanted to go that way but here you all are in my way with your truck, and your gear, and you humans all over my pathway.
Eventually it opted to take the high ground and scaled the talus slope to about 30 feet above us, occasionally stopping to look at us. It seemed about to come down and we bellowed at it to keep moving on farther so it aborted its descent for a bit further, eventually descending to the road down from us. It gave one backward glance over its shoulder and then disappeared out of sight. We didn’t see it again, but presumably we passed it on the river somewhere since we were headed the same direction.
The fishing was good again, and we filled all of the buckets we’d brought and were looking for bags to potentially collect more. We also put a lot of fish into the brood tubes and tied them off in the river rather than bump them down stream with the raft…which also meant we’d have to come back up and run them up the bank rather than just come back up to pick up the truck.
We did see a few other bears, but none that I captured on camera because they were either startled by us as we rounded a corner and they bolted (good bear!), or the one that made us VERY uncomfortable because it knew we were present but didn’t leave (BAD bear). We had made a good set on the bank of a small island/gravel bar that had a lot of shrubby growth. Marshall went over the back of the bar while we were spawning the females and that familiar “BEAR!” echoed over to us. We were downwind so it couldn’t smell us or the fish that we had on the bank, but when yelled at, when rocks were banged, it just looked at us with slight interest, and then went back to snorkeling for pinks in the shallow water between the island and the bank. It would go upriver and disppaear and that was disconcerting, because we kept waiting for it to appear on our side, but it didn’t. We finished up as fast as possible and then headed downstream a little bit to the next set from where we could see it. It kept fishing for awhile, glanced our way a few times before catching a whiff of the dead fish we’d left on the bank. At that point it grabbed one of the Chinook carcasses and carried it across the river and up the slope.
We carried on and eventually landed back at Billy’s cabin where we found that the other crew, working a higher reach on the river, had tried to be helpful and save us time by bringing our truck down from birch run, but we had to go back up anyway since we’d left fish in tubes int eh river and had to go back up to get them.
We spent so much time on the river that last day that the crew back at the hatchery assumed we were really scrounging for fish rather than actually doing so well that we just kept fishing.
The one amusing part of the day, which I wish I’d captured in a photograph, was that as we neared Belarko and the sign on the side of the highway that says “Wildlife Viewing” there was a grizzly bear right beside the sign…as if to say “Here I am….view me!”
And that wrapped up another visit to the Snootli Creek salmon hatchery and all the amazing people who work there. I am always grateful for their generosity and for the opportunity to visit and take part in their work in some small way. Every year I learn more about the Valley, the people, the community, the river, the fish, the bears…..
