(Side Excursion) Field Report: Hard Times Bear Goes to Bible Camp

This field report involves a trip that my wife Susan and I took to Becharof Lake, the second largest lake in Alaska.  It is located in Becharof National Wildlife Refuge, which she manages along with Alaska Peninsula NWR.  The trip took place between my July and September tours with bear management in Brooks Camp.

Friends,

Susan and I are back from our trip to Bible Camp (officially known as Bear Creek Camp) on Becharof Lake in Becharof NWR.  As many of you may recall, I spent a few days there in June with photographer Jeff Jones   This visit with Susan was very different from the one I made with Jeff, with more bears, less light, and harsher weather.  Nonetheless it was a great micro-adventure.

Bible Camp received its name because the buildings there were built in the late ‘60s, before the refuge was established, by Alaska Native leader Paul Bofskofski and others for the purpose implied by the name.  This is why it is still known locally as “Bible Camp.”  It is no longer used for that purpose, but it is occasionally used by guides and pilots grounded by weather, and until a few years ago for a science camp run by the refuge and the local schools districts.  What with the passage of time, the high winds, and the bears, the camp is disintegrating, and it is an open question how long it will remain.  It is located on a giant gravel bar that is slowly turning into tundra, and that has a spit or point extending southward into Becharof Lake and with beaches to the east and west of camp.  Camp is closer to the east beach.

As I mentioned in my report about the trip I took with Jeff, the overwhelming thing about being at this location is the vista, and I don’t have the literary ability to convey that, still less the photographic ability.  When Jeff releases the eagerly awaited photos he took in June, there will finally be some photography that can come as close as can be done to convey a sense of it, but until then we’ll just have to wait.  I have some photos below, but by now you know about my photography.

Besides landscape, the most memorable aspect of this visit was the bears.  Not that we had a lot of them.  Most bears in the area were about a mile to the west working the sockeye run in Bear Creek.  But there were a few locals in the area that we got to know.  The bear we came to call “Hard Times” comes foremost, but also a big male we called “Mr. Big” (or, more formally, “The Notorious Mr. Big”), and a pair of high energy, rollicking subadults that I’m happy to say kept their rollicking out of camp.  (I’m more than willing to confine all of my dealing with partying subadults to Brooks Camp.) There may have been others since we saw bears frequently, but we learned to recognize these four.

There’s not much to say about the subadults except that they had plenty of energy and enthusiasm.  They kept to the west beach as they lived out, as best they could, the ursine equivalent of Led Zeppelin on tour.  Mr. Big was a typically stoic adult male brown bear and mostly kept to the west beach as well, although he did pass close to camp once.  For reasons of topography and winds the west beach gets far more washed up salmon than the east beach by camp, but surely when on the beach he was not getting as many as he could have in the river.  At least that’s what I would think, though there could be any number of variables I’m not considering.  In any case, it was a bit of a mystery why he’d be gleaning off the beach at this time of year (in October it would be expected).  Perhaps he was injured in a way we couldn’t detect and for that reason being cautious of the competition on the river, or perhaps he just wanted a change of pace.

“Hard Times” was by far the bear we got to know best, even though we were never able to figure out his or her gender.  I lean toward “her" having been a young, low-status, adult female, and that’s how I’ll refer to her here.  It’s possible, though, that Hard Times was a big but relatively cautious subadult male.  In any case, Hard Times got her name because we saw her multiple times per day in the area around camp, and camp was situated in a general area that can only be considered marginal for bears.  All the ground adjacent to camp consists either of alder clumps or barely vegetated gravel tundra.  As mentioned above, the beach adjacent to camp (and the one we almost always saw Hard Times on) has far fewer washed-up salmon than the one to the west, where we almost never saw her.  The only time we ever saw her feeding was when she was grazing in a grassy area to our north.  While it’s possible that she was occasionally working the south beach and sneaking over to the creek (which had an enormous salmon run underway), I am all but certain that she was a low-dominance bear living in relatively marginal circumstances.

That said, we did see her playing with driftwood once, and if she was not as fat as I’d have liked to have seen at this time of year, she wasn’t skinny, and had made it through more than one winter on her own.  We still felt for her though, and in spite of her proving to be a bit of a pain in the neck.

She tried to break into our cabin on at least two occasions, and this at the place on the exterior wall that was the closest to where we had our food inside.  She was successfully hazed off on both occasions, but her response on the first hazing was odd (at least in comparison to what I’m used to) and a bit unnerving.  I got a strong feeling that she had never encountered a human before, which in this area is quite possible.  In any case, she eventually moved on.  The second time, when she was clawing at our cabin with us inside, she was very successfully hazed by banging big sticks against the walls.  While neither incident ruined the trip for us by any means, both were memorable, and did change the dynamic.  More on all that with the photos below.

We never lost our fondness for Hard Times and wish her the best with the future, but we were happy she didn’t return to camp after the second hazing.

Next stop Brooks...  Susie should be coming out to visit during my fall tour.  Given that the crazy number of bears around Brooks Camp this July was more typical of of a busy September, I can only imagine what this September is going to be like.  It certainly won’t be typical.

See you downriver,

Carl

The plane we flew in, on the part of the giant gravel beach/tundra just north of camp.  This was the first time that I had flown in a Beaver on tires.  You get your variety where you can when you live in the bush.  A Beaver would normally cost much more to charter than we would be willing to pay, but for logistical and other reasons we shared it for the first part of our flight with a couple who were going to a fishing lodge along our route.  Because of that we were able to payed what would be our normal fare for this trip.

A particularly surreal form of lichen that was common on some parts of the gravel tundra.

As you go further north toward the mountains the tundra becomes more typical of the Alaska Peninsula.  The mountains in the distance are just on the far side of the Kejulik River valley.  On the other side of the mountains is Shelikof Strait and, beyond, Kodiak Island.  Fall colors are just starting to arrive.

 

Wolf and bear prints.  We did not hear any wolves on this trip but obviously they were around.

A red fox that we enjoyed seeing a couple of times around camp.  The fox was not bothered by our presence and would come within a few yards of us while going about business but never approached looking for a handout, unlike some of the foxes around lodges in the King Salmon area.  Her (?) coat was mostly shed underneath but still thick and sun-bleached on top and for almost the entire length of her tail.

 

Looking northward along the beach about 50 yards east of camp.  River Beauty is blooming in the foreground.  Other flowers in bloom were moss campion, monk’s hood, poppy, beach pea, Jacob’s ladder, arctic forget-me-not, and seabeach senecio.

 

One of the things we discovered shortly after we arrived was that a bear had torn open the exterior plywood and pushed down the interior plywood in the old classroom building.  The damage was done some time after Jeff and I had been there.  The bear did not get inside, and no food had been left in the building.  It may have been done as part of an attempt to get at the fox den that was beneath 

the building. 

 

More bear handiwork that we discovered upon arrival. 

 

Ah, mid-August on the Alaska Peninsula.  Wool long johns, fleece, rain gear, and seldom an incentive to take them off except when getting in the sleeping bag.  Becharof Lake is in the far background.  The high winds give Susie’s jacket the coveted spacesuit look.  In her left hand she’s holding a bear of claves   We bought them as noise makers for bears while hiking after I came to love them while working for bear management this July.

 

 

Surf’s up on Becharof Lake.  The shore west of camp faced the main body of the lake and this, combined with the prevailing southwest winds and Bear Creek emptying into the lake along the shore just west of where this photo was taken, combined to make this the beach where all the prime goodies washed up for bears and others to find.  The beach east of camp was much more sheltered and was exposed to a smaller section of the lake and thereby not as good for subsistence beach-combing.  The graceful rise in the clouds near the middle of the photo is Mt. Peulik being coy.  Most of the volcanoes on the peninsula have a thing about being shy.

 

As you can see, I continue to rank near the top of Alaska’s Most Boring Bear Photographers.  Here we have The Notorious Mr. Big passing close to camp, though in this photo his sleekness is more in evidence than his bulk.

 

The cabin we stayed in before Hard Times convinced us to move to a slightly more secure cabin (it had a slightly better door).  This cabin was plush in comparison to the one we moved into.  Yes, Susie brought work papers to read on this trip, but at least it was bear research, the fun stuff.  Neither of us is sure what the “No Trespassing” sign is about.  

 

The newest of the four cabins.  When Jeff and I arrived in June the door had been shredded by a bear and was lying inside the cabin.  One of the maintenance staff for the refuges had already been out to fix it,and did an impressive job with few materials, but Susie and I  nonetheless did not trust the door enough to stay in the cabin.  The beams extending out from beneath the cabin are not for some future deck.  They are the result of the cabin having had its steel tie-downs pulled out by the wind and the whole building slid back on its foundations.  The tie-downs have obviously been re-attached in a temporary fashion, but the cabin still needs to be put back in its original position.  That is, if Susie decides that keeping the buildings is really worth the effort and they aren’t removed instead.

 

The camp as a whole.  When it was originally built none of the alders you see in this photo were present.  Brooks Camp has ingrained in me a dislike of buildings in high-density brown bear company because of all the blind spots they create, and this is all the worse when thick brush is present.  (When visiting McNeil River this June Susie was told that this was one of the main reasons they have stayed with visitors sleeping in tents and avoided building guest cabins.)

 

The tundra around camp.

 

            

Peulik, one of our shy stratovolcanoes, making a rare appearance.

  

Hard Times Bear comes to camp for the second time that morning.  Both of the above photos are from the same visit.  A few seconds after the bottom photo was taken she was trying to rip her way into our cabin.  That would have made for an interesting photo but dealing with her and doing photography would have involved some decidedly non-optimal multitasking.  You can see in the photos that she isn’t exactly skinny, but in comparison to, say, the dominant sows at Brooks this time of year I think she’s rather thin.

 

Looking eastward from camp toward the Aleutian Range.  Some of you may remember something about the trips we’ve taken to Kanatak Pass and Ruth Lake.  They are located on the right hand side of the far background.

The Gas Rocks on the horizon.  I find the way they rise from the horizon fascinating, and I’ve taken all kinds of photos of them, but this is the only one that provides even a little of their mysterious feel.