8/5/19 - Day 38 - Bear Watch

Driving down the Cassiar Highwy headed home we were on bear watch again, or moose watch, or cariboo watch, or anything that moves watch!

The northern section of the highway was pretty uneventful. A red fox ran across the road, stopped to look at us, then went on his way. There were numerous flocks of tiny birds that would fly out from rocks along the shoulder to swirl around in front of us before veering off and flying away. The scenery is pretty though and changes frequentlyly so the trip would be enjoyable even if you didn't see wildlife.

Heading south on the highway looks much different than on our way up, however there were sections that we remembered driving through what feels like months ago!




South of the town of Deese Lake, we saw a black bear near the back of a gravel pull off. A bit further down the road we saw a black spec on the left side of the road. When we got closer, we realized it was a black bear, and then to our joy we saw a cub behind her!  Pat stopped the truck and they began to cross the road, the mama in the lead with the cub trailing behind her. It looked just like the warning signs along the highway ;-)

We hadn't gone too much further when we saw a second sow (female bear) with her cub too! They slipped into the bushes pretty quickly.  Another hour passed and we saw the last black bear on the drive to the cutoff highway to Stewart and Hyder. 





The drive to the Fish Creek Nature Preserve in Hyder was pretty amazing. This time it was clear out so we could see the tops of the mountain peaks and the glacier rivers running out of them were  torents of silty water. Oh yeah, we saw another black bear walking out of the bushes into a clearing.




        The Fish Creek Preserve has a boardwalk above the upper end of the creek overlooking salmon spawning grounds. The boardwalk is fenced in because bears frequently go there to feast on the salmon. 





         During the hours we were there we saw a small black bear catch one fish. It splashed and jumped and pounced before it caught one which it then carried up the bank to disappear in the
salmonberry and devils club brush. We saw him again a couple hours later wandering through the sa lmonberry bushes again.

We didn't see any grizzly bears there although they visit the stream sometimes. They are referred to as brown bears in this area. Evidently they are the same species, but the brown bears tend to be larger because of the plentiful supply of fish.



I didn't go wandering off by myself here since I didn't want another surprise bear encounter! However, our bear watch will continue as we head down through British Columbia.

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