Brooks Camp Field Report, September 2022: The Strange, the Sublime, and the Sleepy

The location where this shot could be taken was at a spot where it was too close to the bear for the public, or staff not on the bear management team.  It was extremely frustrating to have this amazing scene and not let folks photograph it--or even see it.  A solution was for me to get everyone's phones and take the shot for them, which I did.  The pictures were exchanged around camp, so I'm not sure whose phone this was taken with, but Beth Slagle sent it to me.

Friends,

I’m back a few days early from my September tour.  This has been an odd year for me at Brooks.  Camp life and bear wrangling have been pretty good, but first COVID and now an Achilles tendon injury (more on that below) have made for a shorter season than planned.  Nonetheless, in spite of the emotional and logistical tumult of once again leaving early, it’s good to be back home with Susan, and nice to be able to go ahead and pass along some of the strange and interesting moments of my stay in the alternate universe that is Brooks Camp.

It was a wet and windy summer, and so far it is proving to be a wet and windy fall.  Because the higher than normal water levels on the river kept more bears upstream, it wasn’t an unusually busy season in camp.  However, I did manage to put in a much higher than usual number of evening shifts, and those were often very busy.  

I like evening shifts.  The planes and boats and the crowds are gone. I’m either on my own as the closest thing to law and order in camp (other than the lodge bartender / bouncer) or I’m putting in some semi-recreational overtime to help a fellow bear tech. And there are lots of bears on the beach or passing through camp on their evening commutes from the river, many of them hoping to poach a bit of sweet, mowed grass in camp before bear management catches them.  What’s not to like?

This tour I was particularly struck by one of the things that I most enjoy about bears: how they are creatures of habit but also so adept at coming up with surprising and sometimes utterly goofy stuff (emphasis on the latter during this tour).  

My favorite examples of bear tradition is how in July and September they can daily be found eating grass behind the lodge while not ten yards away the smells of cooking steak, salmon, sweet potatoes, pastries, etc. are wafting through the flimsy screen door of the lodge kitchen.  The only explanation I can come up with for why there aren’t almost non-stop attempted ursine raids on the kitchen is that it’s just not something their mom ever did.  Of course, as I intimated in my July field report last year, all the evidence is that, in that long-prophesied season when the bears are booming and the salmon are a bust, tradition will be very sorely tested.  But in spite of significant pressures during some years, Brooks bear tradition has held for decades.

As for the surprises, I’ll cover some of them below.

Btw, I’m happy to say that this is easily the best-documented field report I’ve written in terms of having videos of various bear-management adventures.  In part this is because the team is trying to compile a database of such videos in case there is ever a year in which none of the crew returns, and in part because yours truly has been drug (Partially!  Grudgingly!) into the 21st century, and finally possesses the means to have videos airdropped.

The 909 / 910 and Cubs Team

As a search of Youtube on the subject gives some sense of, the way that sisters 909 and 910 have stuck together, even with them each having a cub, has been getting a lot of attention among Brooks bear fans.  It is unprecedented in my experience, although it may have been observed before, either in the elder days of Brooks Camp, at McNeil River, or elsewhere.  In any case, it’s a form of bear behavior I never imagined I would see.

I encountered the two families as a tight group on multiple occasions in camp, and had the strange, unnerving honor of having to haze the entire mass of them by myself at least twice.  Given how annoying and sometimes aggressive they’ve been with bear management over the years, it is odd how easy they’ve been to get out of camp in 2022.

My most adrenaline-producing experience with them happened when Eric and I were patrolling together.  We found the families grazing by the lodge, near the bridge gate.  We easily pushed them out of camp and into the willows, but within a minute or so 910 and her cub were back in camp between the lodge bathhouse and the Overlook cabins.  We took off after them and got the pair moving up toward Overlook.  910’s cub trailed behind, and then peeled off into the brush in the direction of the river before the pair reached the crest of Overlook.  910 was clearly bothered by not being to see her cub but, perhaps because she knew the cub would quickly find 909 and her cub, 910 did not turn on Eric and me.  After a few tense seconds we drove her down the trail to the marsh below Overlook.  

We turned around and started to walk back to the lodge, only to find that 909 was standing in the trail in front of us, now with both cubs beside her.  A second or two later we saw that an unhappy 910 had come back up the trail we’d chased her down and was on the trail directly behind us.  Noting that we were now sandwiched between the various members of the family we took the best option available and jumped onto the cabin deck to our side.  Please note that this “deck’ was at most two feet off the ground, and maybe three feet front to back (much of that being taken up with benches).  Within a second all the bears in both families had rushed back together and were literally a swirl of furry bear-ness mere inches away from Eric’s and my toes.  They were unmistakably happy to be back together, and aside from a few choice glares from the moms, they paid us no mind.  Eric and I stood there, both of us laughing aloud at the edgy strangeness of it all while over a half-ton  of bears swirled inches away. In spite of our laughing and joking, we were  keenly aware of the bear spray in our hands.

I really don’t know how long this ursine family reunion lasted.   It seemed like at least a minute, but it probably didn’t go on for more than 20 seconds. Eventually they started heading toward the beach.  After they’d moved far enough ahead, Eric and I got behind them to encourage the families along their way.  Eric shouted at the bears and I shouted to people who might be walking along the trail we had to cross in order to push them down to the beach.  Soon they were over the bluff and heading to the sand and gravel beside Naknek Lake below.  Eric managed to get some video of us pushing them toward the bluff , which can be seen here.

I also want to pass along a video that Melissa Freels took of me hazing 910, her cub, and her sister from the cabin closest to the back of the lodge.  Toward the end of the late shift this area can be a conveyor belt for bears wanting to sneak in a bite of freshly cut grass before moving on to sleep near the beach, and it says something that I only have a vague memory of this hazing.  It’s interesting how cautious 909 is in approaching her sister and her sister’s cub.  The light was bad enough and the breeze strong enough that misidentification was possible for either, and with a cub in the mix caution is essential even between sisters.

I love that this video shows just how big sows and some spring cubs can be. It’s also interesting that 909’s cub, known (mostly) affectionately to lodge and park staff as “Bobbi”, isn’t with 909.  Beadnose, the mom of both 909 and 910, kept her cubs on very long leashes and the same seems to be the case with her daughters.

If you watch 910 and cub as they start to had up the hill, the exchange a look and body gestures that I can only translate into Humanese as "Woo hoo!".  I've long contended that some bears, sometimes, get a bit of  Dukes of Hazard-esque fun out of being chased out of camp by bear management.  With this video I rest my case.

901’s Truncated Lion Roars   

Back in my pre-bear-management days of working the falls platform, I once had a bear growl repeatedly at me (or someone/something near me) in a way that was eerily reminiscent of a tiger.  Not exactly like one, but enough to be uncanny.  I might have thought I had lost my mind except that Tammy Carmack told me that she had heard a bear once making the same growl near the old bridge gate.

This September, 901 has been expressing her displeasure at being hazed with what sounds like the first second or two of a lion’s roar.  It does not have the deep “Hooof!” quality of a the brief version of a typical bear roar.  Instead it had the overall deep but modulated pitch of the first second or two of a lion’s roar.  It has become a part of 901’s signature style of dealing with bear management.

As of when I left camp, 901 hadn’t given us any hard resistance in September.  She has, however, become the Queen of Semi-Passive Resistance.  Getting her to move isn’t too hard, but she absolutely refuses to move faster than her chosen pace no matter how much bear management ups the pressure.  This video of Eric pushing her out at the leach field gives an idea of it.  If you can get her to make even one quick half-step over her chosen pace, it feels like a major accomplishment!

Bear Vortices, Reloaded

My working definition of a bear vortex at Brooks Camp is “A group of five or more bears that are not just a sow and her cubs, entering or about to enter camp.”  Of course, there’s a dose of my philosophical pickiness in that definition.  I think the more general Brooks bear management definition would be something along the lines of “Five or more bears about to make a whole lot of trouble.”  In my experience, bear vortices are always either sows with yearling cubs chasing a subadult persistently for no obvious reason other than amusement, or a pack of subadults. The subadults really do act in an organized way when in packs, although bears of course are much too individualistic to be able to keep such associations up for long, nor can they act with anything like the level of organization of a wolf pack or lion pride.

As I mentioned in a field report some years back, I usually like dealing with bear vortices.  But sometimes they can be intimidating, and the only bear vortex I dealt with this September was a bit intimidating.  It happened while Eric and I were having a conversation near the visitor center.  The voice of Jason, the lodge manager, came over our radios, speaking very loudly, and so quickly that we only understood the words “bear vortex” and “lodge”.  We started moving quickly toward the lodge, assuming that was where the vortex was located, but somehow we figured out that the bears were by the leach field (which is near “Tuckerville”, where the lodge employees live) and that by “lodge” he just meant what group was making the transmission.  We turned around and headed toward the leach field.

When we got there we found five subadults, ranging in size from roughly 200 to 400 lbs., scattered around the leach field.  I have had subadults flank me and come at me aggressively from both sides, and it was not an experience I care to repeat.  Because of that I’d like to think that Eric and I stopped for a moment and discussed the situation before proceeding to wade into the vortex, but I’m all but certain that we just went right at them.  As you can see in the video here, we managed to get them all moving and out of camp.  Such a wild and utterly bizarre feeling!

The subbies left camp and got on Cultural Trail (called that because it is a central part of the guided walks the park offers that discuss local native culture).  Bear vortices being what they are, I had a feeling we were not done with this one, so I stepped out of camp and onto Cultural Trail to have a look.  As you can see in the video here, it quickly became obvious that they were indeed mounting a counteroffensive.  I also realized that the vortex now had six bears.  Apparently one of them had been just out of sight in the woods between the leach field and the trail when Eric and I arrived.

This time they took the trail to where it enters camp by the auditorium.  This is a typical bear tactic and Eric and I were ready at the auditorium.  There ensued a prolonged but otherwise typical skirmish between Eric and me and the subadults.  After some excitement we managed to break up the vortex.  Some of the bears entered camp individually and we hazed them out.  The rest opted to go around.

Of course I spent the rest of my tour hoping this bear vortex would reassemble and return, with the provision that I’d at least pause for a moment to consider options before diving in.  It never happened, but reservations aside I’m happy I at least got to experience one!

Carl and Eric’s Bear Management Marching Band

For whatever reason, most of my interesting experiences (or at least the ones that were captured on video by others) occurred while Eric’s and my shifts overlapped.  The following two are further examples of this:

The first video, taken by Stephanie Hill, involves us moving 132 and her huge yearlings near the bridge ramp across the river from camp.  The family was too close to the bus for the tour to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes for it to leave.  Barring an emergency, we give the bears at least 30 minutes before moving them, and (outside of camp itself) only move them when camp functions are being blocked and there is no good way to direct human movement around the bears.

It is interesting to compare that hazing with the one of 94 and her four first-year cubs. The first part of it is here, the second and ending part further down the beach is here.  (These videos are also by Stephanie Hill.) While 94’s cubs are a year younger and much, much  smaller than those of 132, they are also much less concerned about us than 132 and cubs were.  As far as I could tell at the time, the only reason 94’s cubs didn’t stay in place and stare at us and goof off was that mom kept moving.  Along the 200 yards or so of beach we moved them, the cubs were constantly being distracted either by dead salmon body parts, or pausing to inspect us, or playing the role of Tough Cub and trying to scare us off.

I am tempted to write an essay solely on my thoughts about why 132’s family, with cubs that are a year older and more experienced, and many times larger and stronger, is more nervous than 94’s.  This in spite of the fact that the method of hazing is identical in both instances.  Suffice it to say, it shows how (at least once the cubs have finished their first August) genetics and family culture make more difference than age.

By the way, the noise maker that Eric is using is a sauce pan with gravel in it.  The bear management team learned this from our friends at McNeil River.  It doesn’t have the sharp, percussive bite of my sticks, but it is louder and makes a lot of very useful racket.  Combined with sticks, the pan with gravel was unstoppable this season.  That effectiveness will somewhat diminish over time, but for now it’s a very nice combo.

Dream….  dream dream dream

One of the reasons I am so deeply fond of 435/Holly is that, as bears go (and admittedly this is a low bar), she is so systematic, orderly, and regular in her approach to both survival and raising cubs.  Her systems have evolved in the years that I have known her, but she always has her regular routes, locations, and methods, and sticks to them with only minor variations in a given year.

This was a year off from cub rearing for Holly, but she did much of her fishing in her accustomed location near the mouth of the river this September.  Every evening, between around 5:30-6:00, she would wrap up and return to shore for her night's sleep.  When she has cubs, especially spring cubs, she almost always sleeps north of the campground, but when she’s on her own she picks a spot closer to the river.  This year she chose a spot that is technically in camp, in the woods beside where the canoes are stored, near the trading post.

Going by the book, I should have booted Holly out, since she was in the bear management camp boundaries.  But the trading post was always closed by the time she arrived, and the day trippers gone, and I saw no reason to bother her.  Instead I put up some of our “Closed due to bear activity” signs around the trails and beach near her sleeping spot, and let her sleep, in full and relatively close view of the lodge porch.

The odds of Holly coming out from her bed under the big spruce  in order to harm a passing human are precisely equivalent to the odds that a guinea pig would take out a SWAT team.  As for anyone foolish enough to get so close to Holly as to create problems for her, they would have to do so in full view of all the Holly fans that frequent the lodge porch in the evening.  As for the fate of said person, I can only echo the words of Mr. T from a distant, more innocent time: “I pity the fool.”

Closing Thoughts

I came home a couple of days early because of an injury to my right Achilles tendon.  I initially hurt it while hazing 909 and 910 and cubs out from behind the lodge.  I finished the shift and the one on the day after without noticing much in the way of problems.  By the end of the following shift , which was very bear intensive during its last few hours, the pain increased dramatically and my ability to walk properly decreased commensurately.  I probably could have taken some pain pills and finished my remaining two shifts, but the price would have been a recuperation process that would have taken much of the winter, and would have been a serious impediment to an upcoming trip that Susan and I are taking.  Since the remaining shifts had acceptable coverage without me, it wasn’t worth it.

As mentioned above, it was a wet and windy season.  That didn’t diminish the beauty and grandeur of the landscape surrounding Brooks, at least not in my eyes, but it often did give it a different form.  As for describing it, some photos below are the faintest possibility I can hope for.  I just wish I could add the feeling of the crystal clean air, and the sounds of white-fronted geese and sandhill cranes migrating past.

See you downriver,  

Carl

Holly during one of her evening naps by the trading post.

Photo by Angelika Cramer

One of the camp gravel piles, with a subadult-installed combination bunker and sleeping spot.  For a young bear newly out on her own, what could be a more awesome place to crash for the night?

                                        Some views from the bridge on my last day in camp.

The view from my window in the Otter as I flew home from Brooks Camp, a modest section of Naknek Lake in the background.