October 6

Good Morning

My friend, Kelly and I drove 1200 kilometers to the mouth of the Chilko River situated on the eastern side of the Pacific Coast mountains to photograph grizzly bears for a week. When we arrived on Sunday, the trees had just begun to develop their autumn colors. By Thursday, the color of the trees were vibrant and the winds were calm, providing lots of opportunities to capture the bears in incredible settings. We saw over 40 individual bears, our best daily total being 32 and the most at a single time; 15! It is interesting to watch the behavior of the bears from a fishing boat in the river right beside them. Normally it is quite peaceful but every once in a while a scuffle will take place between siblings. 

The highlights are always the cubs of the year (COY). This year there were three sets of two that we photographed plus another pair that had a skittish mom and we only saw briefly.

As I go through my 40,000+ photos, I will send out some highlights.

This little bear and its sibling, we only got to photograph once, We had seen it earlier in the week, but they would disappear into the woods whenever they were spotted. On this day, we say them from a distance and quietly drifted into a small bay on the side of the river that we call the Blue Hole. We stayed very still and the only sound we made was the clicking of the shutters. We were treated to about ten minutes of viewing before they worked their way down river and out of sight. The light coloring in unusual but not uncommon of this group. About 5 or 6 bears were this color but this cub was the lightest.

Stay Well