Brooks Camp, June 2022: You Never Know
Friends,
I’m back from a few days at Brooks. There aren’t a lot of bears there yet, but it doesn’t take many bears to make for some memorable experiences, so I thought I’d write a field report.
Going out for a few days in June was something new for me. Michael Saxton had proposed it a few weeks back with the idea that the bear team could get together and discuss the upcoming season, protocols, etc.. As I’ve mentioned before, getting the whole team together once the season begins in earnest seldom happens, and then only briefly.
Not surprisingly, the Katmai Entropy Engine saw to it that the original intention of my visit had vaporized by the time Michael picked me up for the landing craft ride to Brooks. That was fine with me. I was happy to just wander camp, see old friends, start memorizing new names and faces, and hopefully deal with a few bears. I also spent a couple of hours training Trevor, the new member of the team. Bear management at Brooks is so situational that it’s hard to do formal training, so Trevor and I mostly walked around camp with me telling him about various things that had happened to me and others at the various spots we passed. I tried to impress on him the idea that in spite of its apparently random nature, there are real patterns to how bears move through camp at different times of year. Above all, I wanted him to grasp that a fundamental task of bear management--once things get kinetic with bears in camp--is to understand where the people and bears are at any given moment and to let other team members elsewhere in camp know what you can perceive of the bigger picture from your location.
We had a few subadults come through camp while I was there, but the star of this brief tour was 909 and her yearling cub. 909 has featured prominently in my field reports and, if she is in fact one of 409/Beadnose’s last pair of cubs (as is suspected), I have been dealing with her since the beginning of my time with bear management. Like 409 she is remarkably savvy at working the system at camp, and she certainly shares Beadnose’s overt indifference / contempt toward bear management. Given that, I’m going with the general consensus that she’s Beadnose’s daughter.
She and her yearling cub provided a number of intense moments while I was there, but the one that will forever stick in my mind started near the visitor center. She and her cub were on the beach below the center, in front of the Brooks Camp sign and playing with the collection of moose antlers and skulls that are scattered in front of it. (It’s amazing to me how much abuse those antlers and skulls have endured by humans and bears of the years while remaining intact.) Eric Johnston and I were standing beside the visitor center above the beach, on opposite sides of it, keeping an eye on mom and cub, with a few visitors also watching.
After a while the cub looked toward the campground to the north and began to jaw pop in alarm. (What caused this we still don’t know.) The cub ran to mom and both of them blasted up the hill toward Eric and the visitors standing beside him. Eric knew that there was no stopping the two and he didn’t try. He just kept everyone together and let them bolt past. The bear pair shot into the brush on the opposite side of the trail that passes behind the visitor center, heading up the slope to Skytel. (Skytel is one of the largest buildings in camp and works like a motel, with a number of small rooms on each long side that are entered from the outside.) I started to move quickly toward the auditorium that is near Skytel in order to see where the bear family went. Eric and I began to shout toward Skytel that the bears were coming, and with a bit more urgency than usual since we knew some of the lodge staff were there cleaning rooms.
We heard back a young woman’s voice saying “Thank…” followed immediately by two feminine voices letting out a scream. The scream was obviously one of alarm and not agony, so I wasn’t too worried, but I kept moving as quickly as I could toward the auditorium. I saw mom and cub gallop out of camp on the trail to the archeological site, but I kept going so that I could get to a spot where the brush was low enough that I could see Skytel. When I got there I saw two young women who work for the lodge sitting side by side on the deck, laughing uproariously. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone laughing harder.
I didn’t have time to talk to them, but without question (given the direction the bears had to have traveled) the two women were going about their work when they heard Eric and me shouting from downhill. They turned in our direction to acknowledge our warning when 909 and cub shot out of the brush only a few feet away. The bear family blasted past them (of necessity given the terrain) and out of camp. All of this would have taken place in 2-3 seconds. The two women got a great laugh and a great story for their moment of alarm.
It wasn’t long before 909 and cub got over whatever it was that started this incident, and they were back in front of the sign and gnawing on antlers. Eric and I later had some tense moments with them when they more deliberately came back into camp. Those, combined with some experiences from the day before, convinced us both that at least one person on the team is going to have to spray 909 this year. Still, it’s great to see the two furry ruffians back at camp. This is 909’s first litter. She lost one cub early last season and had a trying experience with raising this one. Water levels on the river were high last year, pushing bears toward crowded fishing at the falls, which she understandably was reluctant to do with her little one. This was all the more so because since she likely lost the first cub to another bear. All of these concerns made feeding the remaining cub a real struggle for 909 until the salmon started dying in the fall and the bears were more spread out on the river. Because of this, it’s great to see them back and (even though the cub is still smaller than normal) with enough energy to cause us problems.
I experienced a thunderstorm at Brooks for my first time on this visit. Michael, who has been there longer than I have, had never experienced thunderstorms there before either. I have never, anywhere, seen the smoke from forest or tundra fires as thick as what we have had both at Brooks and King Salmon over the last few days. (The smoke is probably from a big fire burning on the Yukon Delta near St. Mary’s.)
It is shaping up to be another weird and wonderful, and episodically exasperating, season at Brooks. I may go back for one more short stint before the main show. In any case, more to follow.
See you downriver,
Carl
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