The Millennial Bear

It was one of those classic Millennial-Gen X moments. 

Sage, one of our long-time guides who is nevertheless still in her twenties, was leading a walk down a stretch of riverbank with four of our guests. They had stopped to watch a grizzly bear fishing on the far bank.

Meanwhile I was guiding a raft with our other four guests just to the north on a section of river that ends with a tricky double dogleg. The small walkie-talkie that was clipped to my lifejacket came to life.

"Grizzly Bear at K….," Sage said, using our in-house code. "200 metres north of the logjam."

I weighed up the approach to the bend and chose a line that would bring us out in the centre of the river. From there, I reasoned, I had options.

I could ask my crew for an energetic paddle to bring the raft across the river to the right bank, though the noise of the strokes might startle the bear we wanted to view and push it into the woods.

Or I could allow the current to carry the boat to the left where there was a conveniently-placed gravel bar.

Setting up directly in a grizzly bear's path is not always advisable, but in my nearly 20 years of guiding I had dealt with such scenarios many times before and I felt confident.

I chose the gravel bar.

So far so normal.

We glided silently up to the gravel bar, I kept my guests in the boat, hopped out, and crouched at the front of the raft. I fingered my bear spray (a can of cayenne pepper in aerosol form). Just in case.

And then the bear appeared. It was a little closer than I had thought and partly obscured. We watched it for a few seconds. And then the bear disappeared from view.

"Can you still see the bear?" I radioed Sage.

"I can," she replied.

We waited. The bear came back into view and then, once more, disappeared. It seemed to be grabbing a salmon and then taking it into the woods to eat it. For a couple of minutes, no bear.

"Any update?" I radioed Sage. "Can you still see the bear?"

"Yes, I can see them," she replied.

Them!!!?

I felt my heart rate quicken. I had clearly miscalculated. Moving around multiple bears is very different from moving around a single bear. I glanced over to the far bank and wondered if we could make it across the river without causing too much disturbance.

Only a few days earlier we had come across a mum with cubs-of-the-year who was far from relaxed around people. It could easily be her again, I mused.

But my main concern was that I could only see one adult bear and had absolutely no idea where the cubs were. They could even be just a few yards from us, hidden in the forest.

"Can you see the cubs?" I asked.

"Negative," Sage said.

"Does she have cubs?"

"I haven't seen any."

Now I was properly perplexed. Other than mothers with cubs, and occasionally siblings, bears very rarely spend time together.

And then suddenly it hit me.

"When you say 'them' do you mean 'them singular' or 'them plural'?" I asked.

"Them singular," came the curt reply.

Agghhh. The generation gap. For me there was no way that 'they' or 'them' could refer to less than two bears or indeed less than two of anything.

For Sage, who comes from a far more verbally-delicate generation, 'them' was an inoffensive term for anyone (or anything) that hadn't clearly manifested - perhaps even self-identified - as male or female.

A minute or two later the bear - blissfully unaware of its own pronoun - headed into the forest and disappeared.

*

It's been a most unusual bear season.

After a decade of awful salmon returns - occasioned by a hubristic government biologist who messed with the natural balance of things - the numbers were finally meaningfully up this year.

From a low point of around 5,000 there were more than 180,000 salmon in the river and they provided (and are still providing) a feeding bonanza for bald eagles, ravens, various members of the weasel family and, of course, bears.

But, as nature would have it, it's also been a record year for huckleberries. The harvest has been so bountiful that the mountainsides were groaning with berries long after they had normally disappeared.

And so - given the choice between berries and fish - many bears decided to stick with the berries.

(The science on this is complex but bears ideally like a mixed diet. Nevertheless, when forced to chose, they sometimes opt for carbohydrate-rich berries rather than the fat and protein that the fish afford.)

And so, despite the vigorous run of salmon, we just hadn't seen that many bears. (What the abundance of food does mean is that lots of grizzly cubs will be born this winter and so next year should be great for bears and bear-viewing.)

Most of our guests - thought not all - had some real lovely viewings. But many bears just stayed in the mountains. This week, however, all that changed.

We watched a mum with one cub, another with two, a huge dark furtive bear with a royal-sized backside, and an energetic sub-adult who came up onto the dirt road and starting walking towards us before reconsidering and making off into the bush. (See the video above.)

Then there was another mum with a large cub - this one retreated a few yards into the forest and gently huffed at us for a while. And a fat little bear who appeared out of nowhere on the river bank.

Those who have benefitted from this bounty are four of our regular guests who have all come for a double booking, eight days in total. Tomorrow, as per their stalwart request, we plan to head up the mountainside above the snowline.

Then on Monday Kim, my girlfriend, arrives from London for a week to help me put the lodge to bed for the winter. The bears will once again head into hibernation and the snow will begin to pile up in the valley.

As for me I'm off to teach in Hungary and Transylvania. Between classes we'll be heading for Ukraine and spending some time on the boat in London - Kim's principle residence. I suppose had also better bone up on some millennial lingo.

So if my next post is all about ghosting, humblebragging, toxicity, boundaries and not feeling included, you'll at least know why.

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NEWS & LINKS

+ We are taking bookings for May-June and Oct 2025. If you think you might be interested you can check out our website or drop me a line on julius@wildbearlodge.ca. One or two spots are already full but most still have some availability. We will be offering four night options in May-June and four and eight night options in October. The omens are in place for a great bear-viewing season.