20 August 2010
We left the Yukon River and hiked into a new watershed, in order to continue our progress north. We spent 8 days hiking 70 miles in Tombstone Territorial Park.
The first 30 miles of the hike are on an old road. It started off as a somewhat well-maintained gravel road that gradually transformed into a trap line and then petered out through stretches of marsh, leaving a faint trail uphill above the Little Twelve Mile River Valley.
A highlight of the hike occurred on the second day of the hike. The following has been taken directly from my journal entry for August 12. . .
Ordinary beginning to the day. I had a hard time waking up. The alarm was set for 8 am and I slept right through it. Dave was nice enough to let me sleep in a bit. Granola and powdered milk for breakfast. It's still hard to get everything in backpacks. A few more meals should take care of that.
We've been trying to make a lot of noise as we hike-- so as not to surprise a bear. We realize that this unfortunately reduces our chances of seeing any other wildlife. We would carry on a conversation fairly loudly and continuously. We soon realized that we needed to be even louder and more blatant our presence today.
The roadbed had gotten pretty overgrown, surrounded by alders. We had come to a low-lying spot. Dave was in front and could see a small marsh ahead. Sure enough-- there was a large bull moose in that marsh chowing down on some aquatic plants. I had been mid-sentence when Dave hushed me and asked for the camera. I started to pull it out of my pocket when we heard a rustling in the spruces just to the left of the trail.
Another moose was the first logical thought that passed through our minds. A flash of brown fur pretty much confirmed that thought. I even caught a glimpse of the critter's shoulder-- it appeared quite moose-like, but a bit shorter. A young moose.
Then, it stuck its head through a gap in the trees to get a better look at us. It was not a moose peering at us. Instead it was a grizzly bear. Our first grizzly bear sighting of the North American Odyssey-- and it was only 25 feet away from us!!
It huffed at us and took a couple more steps. We talked to it-- letting it know we were humans, while reaching for our bear spray. It huffed a couple more times, but moved further into the spruces. Apparently this young grizzly had been so engrossed in eating blueberries that it hadn't paid any attention to us, despite the noise we were making. It was only when we stopped near its berry patch, that it paid any attention to us.
The bear running away was our cue to move on, slowly down the path-- toward the gigantic bull moose that hadn't taken its eyes off us during the entire bear encounter. When we were far enough from where we saw the bear, we shot a quick video and photos of the moose. The trail led right to his mini pond. As we approached, he began to snort at us, clearly threatened. So we bush-wacked wide around his pond.
Our detour was to the right of him, and he slowly spun in a circle, always keeping his eye on us. As we clambered back on to the trail, he returned to his contented munching. We both breathed a sigh of relief, astounded at the double animal encounter that had just unfolded in a matter of seconds.
As we continued down the trail we began to yell, instead of just talking. We yelled to imaginary bears. These imaginary bears were just ahead or just off the trail. We told these bears that we didn't want to startle them and that there were plenty of blueberries in the woods. So please move away from the trail to let us pass. Whether or not there were any real bears who heard us, we would never know because we didn't see a single other bear for the rest of the hike.
Please wait...
Concept Diagram
