Bear Training Gone Ironic

Remember how I said I would upload pics of Gramps helping Tiff with her hair on her wedding day?  Well, I did.  Here’s the post that I uploaded them to:  Wondrous WardleWedding.

Remember how I said I’d have proof of the double whale breach?  Well, I do.  Here’s the post I uploaded it to:  Nature Spoils Me.

A few weeks ago, Eric and I attended a bear safety training hike for one of the companies we work for.  It was at one of the many trails near the glacier, the Moraine Ecology trail.  Lately, the forest rangers have been closing down certain parts of the trail due to the black bears becoming more active with the salmon coming upstream, so this hike was meant to help us become familiar with the new route that guides take passengers on.

It was a pretty uneventful hike filled with us guides swapping corny jokes with a few safety measures mixed in.  Towards the end though, as we were coming towards a gate with a lock for the company guides to use (to keep tourists from entering the bear zone), one of the guides with us froze and quickly said, “Thatsabear.”  We looked to where she was pointing and saw a huge black mass moving in the woods close to the trail. 

Note form a tour guide:  Black bears are the type of bears that will leave you be if you make yourself known in a calm but assertive way.  When you come across a black bear, you’re supposed to stand your ground—maybe even make yourself look bigger—and talk to it in a (once again) calm and assertive way.

As a male black bear wandered out of the woods onto the path in front of us, our lead guide, an older gentleman born and raised down south, talked to this bear in her soothingly smooth Southern drawl, “Hey, Mr. Bear.  How’re you doing today?  In case you want to know, the combination to the lock is ####.”  It went to the other side of the path without even glancing at us.  I managed to get a few pictures of the bear as it crossed paths with us, but the only clear picture I took was of its butt. 

Here you go.  A bear butt.

At the end of the trail is a stream that salmon swim up with spawning.  Right now, the red (or sockeye) salmon are the ones in this stream.  We hung out for a while on the deck that overlooks the salmon stream.

Black bear, black bear, what do you see?

Once again, we saw a black mass moving in the woods.  The same male black bear we had come across was going to grab some dinner.  It locked its target on a certain salmon frantically swimming upstream and chased it up the stream until it was successful. 

Nearby in a tree were Harris, Hubert, and Hamish!  Triplet black bear cubs.

(pics of brave triplets and real triplets—See, don’t they look the same?)

At one point, momma bear climbed up the tree but stopped midway when Hamish decided to release a Niagra Falls of urine on her.  Kids.  Aren’t they great?

Momma bear.

A touch of irony and a little Disney magic turned this normal training into quite an adventure.