Overland in the Americas: Bunking in bear country

We woke up a bit late on the morning of our back country expedition as we'd had a late night talking to the Arctic Brotherhood who had super efficiently all packed up their cigars and scotch and gone. Rather than waiting for the bus we set off walking along the road to the start of our route. It was a fantasic day, sunshine and clear blue skies and as we walked Ralph thought he saw someone up ahead on the road. As we got closer we realised it was a Lynx! Of all the things to be walking towards us...we never expected to see a Lynx, we thought they'd be far too shy but there it was. We stopped to look at it through binoculars and it sat down. Its back legs looked too long for its body and it had huge feet. Then it got up and vanished into the brush at the side of the road. Wow, this was a great start to our hike.

setting off

can you spot the lynx in this picture?

We'd forgotten how long a stretch of road it was until the creek which was the start of our 'trail' and ended up walking 3 miles on the road. We didn't wan't to start off-roading just yet as when we passed this particular willowy creek area along the roadside in the bus the day before we saw two huge grizzly bears making their way along the valley. Eventually we reached Tattler Creek and began to walk up it along its gravelly bed. We were a bit paranoid about meeting bears in amongst the willows which were growing in the valley so we got up as high as we could very quickly which meant traversing a scree slope high above the creek. This took ages and later that day we saw a guy on his own making no noise (to alert bears of his presence) walking right through the willowy creek we'd been avoiding so after that we thought we should probably do the same otherwise we'd never get anywhere!

The willowy Tattler creek

give me just a little bit more -Liberty X eat your heart out

weird fungi

Tattler Creek curved its way for a couple of miles between Sable Mountain and the side of Igloo Mtn with Cathedral Mtn across the road to the south. We'd been told that at the top end of the creek there would be a pass which if we went over the top of it we'd find a suitable place to camp in the next valley. Initially we had thought we'd probably just go the minimum distance (you have to camp at least a mile from and not be able to be seen from the road) but we got on quite well and there was still plenty daylight so we ended up scaling the steep pass at the end of the creek and finding our friends the Pikas were living in the scree at the top of the pass which was great. Looking down into the next valley there were a few flat areas in sight for potential camp spots and the valley was really beautiful. It felt really hidden from the world, we'd left the only road behind and everything we could see for miles around was as it has been for thousands of years. There could have been up to another 6 people in our unit but we didn't see anyone for two days apart from the guy walking through the creek.

snacking at the top of the pass

Bear bin

Up the creek without a paddle

hooray - the top of the pass

Cool succulent type things

No the tent hadn't blown away, Fiona is just testing the slope for setting out the tent, while Ralph was hard at work

Not a bad spot

Having chosen a relatively flat spot for the tent I noticed three bear scats and lots of fresh digging right where we were going to put the tent and even though there was nothing to say the bear would come back I didn't like the thought of camping in such a favourite spot!

Bear diggings - i hope the ground squirrel got away!

the bear scat all around our potential camping spot

We walked up and down the hill with our bags testing out potential spots and settle on a patch and pitched the tent on the springy mossy ground. Dinner was a Mountain House pouch of astronaut food - maybe beef teryaki, a favourite flavour. You have to cook 100m from the tent and bear can 100m from either too so you end up with a triangle of tent one corner, cooking area another and bear canister another. Ralph went downhill to get a pan of water from the creek, its drinkable after a minute of boiling to kill off nasties. It was so quiet and still, we sat out watching for wildlife but didn't see any until we we re about to go in the tent as it was so cold when a group of caribou ran from one valley to another high up above us. There were ground squirrels and a few small birds but other than that nothing going on so we went to bed.

It was quite windy in the night and would be completely still then a massive gust of wind would come and it felt as though we'd get blown away. I was convinced something was gnawing on the walking sticks outside the tent that we'd found and been using the day before but turned out just to be my imagination. After a porridge and banana breakfast while looking out for bears we set off back up the massively steep hill we'd come down the night before. We zig zagged up the hill as it was so steep then arrived back at the top of the pass where the Pikas were living. It was another great day, we decided we should walk to the top of Sable Mountain, it didn't look too far away! We set off uphill, then left our big back packs at about the third false summit and continued along the sharp ridge, there was a freezing wind coming round the front of the mountain, we looked back and saw our backpacks looking precariously perched below us. The views from the top were stunning, all the valleys and ridges and colours of Polychrome area below.

It was pretty fast going on the way down and back to Tattler Creek. We retraced our steps from the previous day. Just as we were on the final stretch we took a slight detour (due to Ralph's navigating) which involved climbing a small scree slope. Then we saw a bear approaching towards us on the trail below where we would have been walking, if we hadn't mistakenly made the slight detour! We shouted hello to make sure it knew we were there but it kept walking towards us! We balanced precariously on our slope and watched the bear walk into the willows and waited, as it turns out it was waiting for us to pass too (it went into the willows for cover) and it took a while for it to give up and move on (we didn't want to risk bumping into it in the willows!) . We'd been struggling up and down the steep valley all day but the bear just strolled up, it made it look so easy. We were too precariously perched to get a good photo but I did get this one of Ralph's face

just seen a bear

That dot is a bear - we took a while to compose ourselves after the encounter, largely as we had climbed onto a very steep scree slope with our heavy bags, missing the the prime photo opportunity.