After sailing past Hubbard Glacier we continued to work our way southeast, eventually arriving at Icy Straight Point, on Chichagof Island. A community of native Americans owns and operates this remote port, and it was well-run. We had booked a wilderness excursion through Viking to look for wildlife, and Chichagof Island has one of the highest concentrations of brown bears in the world, so we were optimistic. Here are some photos:
Bald eagle soaring overhead as we entered the wilderness to look for bears and other wildlife. Our clear, sunny days had come to an end, at least for a while, but visibility was good otherwise. Chichagof Island is large enough to include the Spasski River, so that was our destination. Our guide and a driver took us into a muskeg area to start our search, but even while en route we spotted black-tailed dear and various kinds of birds.Our path to and from Spasski River was a half mile loop through muskeg and coniferous forest. Muskeg is essentially a northern swamp (my description), with a lot of water and soft ground, so we hiked on a boardwalk. The most dangerous bear is probably a surprised bear, so our guide carried a radio to stay in touch with what I would call a security perimeter. The tour company had two spotters along the road where the minibus dropped us off, and maybe a couple more in the woods around us. Their job was to help us avoid surprising a bear by letting our guide know if one was headed in our direction.The loop trail led us past three different observation platforms along the Spasski River. There was no action at the first platform, but at the second we found a young brown bear fishing for salmon. The salmon run had started just a few days earlier, and every minute or two we saw fish thrashing their way over shallow riffles in the river. Here you see the bear looking for fish in deeper water. The telephoto lens you saw in our previous blog post served me well in shooting these photos.Coming up for air. So what is the difference between a brown bear and a grizzly? Practically speaking, brown bears live on the coast where there are a lot of fish and edible vegetation (roots and berries), and tend to be better fed than grizzlies living in Yellowstone, Glacier, or Denali National Parks. This bear seemed to be relatively unskilled at fishing, though, and in the 20 minutes or so that we watched him, he never did catch a fish. Not for want of trying.Standing up to look around. I don’t know if he was curious about us, of if he sensed the possible approach of another bear. Shortly before we started back to the road, one of the spotters radioed that another bear seemed to be headed towards our path, so we waited while the spotter verified the bear’s location and direction. The approaching bear changed course, and once it was safe we finished the loop trail to get back to our minibus.Old fishing boat near the harbor. How old? Well, old enough to be fallen into disrepair, but new enough that it has a radar antenna on top. We found this near a shopping area, after our bear search and before returning to our ship. Picturesque, and it made for an interesting end of the visit.
