Anan Creek Bears

Today was my first day searching for Bears. In all fairness, all I really had to do was get on Breakaway Adventures sleek jet boat and they did the rest. The Anan Creek Bear Observatory is about 40 miles from Wrangell by boat. It takes about an hour to get there, then about 30 minutes to hike in to the falls where you can watch the bears fish. Most of the Bears at Anan Creek are Black Bears, but there are a few Brown Bears (what we call Grizzly Bears in the South). I saw a Mother Brown Bear with three cubs on the other side of the creek, but she didn’t stop to fish there. The cubs were almost as big as an adult Black Bear already. The creek is loaded with Pink Salmon working their way upstream to their spawning grounds. When they reach an obstacle, such as a big rapid or small waterfall, they stack up below waiting their turn to run up, then they stack up above to rest before they move on. There are so many Salmon in Anan Creek, that they obscure the view of the creek bed in places. So the pickings are good for the Bears, and that’s a good thing because one of the things that surprised me the most today is how inept they were at fishing. I only saw one Bear actually get a fish out of the creek, and one had a really near miss. The rest of the time, they seemed to be just hanging around waiting for a fish to commit suicide by swimming into their paws. Lots of fishing, but not much catching. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what it’s like when I go out fishing.

The boat ride to Anan Creek is very scenic. It was a misty morning with some interesting fog and low clouds. I tried a few shots from the boat. I wasn’t sure if HDR was going to work while running at 40 knots, but it’s not bad:




This is the lower Anan Creek estuary where the Salmon first enter the stream:


Here is the rainforest that you hike through to get to the Bears, though you can (and we did) encounter a Bear anywhere along the trail:


There are tons of Eagles hanging around waiting for some scraps of Salmon that the Bears leave. They can also catch their own, and after spawning season when the Salmon all die, they really clean up:


Mostly Black Bears at Anan, but I did see one Brown Bear Mom and three Cubs. Here’s Mom:


And here are two on the Cubs:


Here’s a couple of Black Bears fishing. I know it doesn’t look like they are fishing, there are no cans of beer or even a cooler in sight:


This looks like a good place to fish:


I think I got one:


Hey, Where’d it go???:


It was just here???:


Aw Gee, all I got was a mouthful of water. You should have seen the one that got away:


And finally, I now have definitive photographic evidence that a Bear does shit in the woods: