alaska v2.1 – “hey bear!”

as we get off the road and start hiking into our unit for the next 2 days, we come to a serious realization.  we are far away from everything we see as reality and very close to something unfamiliar and unknown.  we have traveled over 3,000 miles and finally we have arrived, and nothing looks familiar.  there is something extremely beautiful in that.

as we started our hike we quickly realize that the only trails that are out there are the animal trails and they are not exactly made for casual walking.  brush that is higher than our heads, weeds that untie your shoes every other step, and an unbelievable amount of wild blueberries.  with the blueberries, however, are the animals.  the bush is too thick to see more than 10 feet in front of us and knowing that the bears more than any enjoy the yummy fresh berries.  so another realization; we are experiencing the wild animals that are actually wild.  these animals are not used to seeing humans, not used to hearing cars, not used to eating human food.  we are in their territory.  in preparation for this trip we all learned how to deal with the different animals as we encounter them.  hoping we would avoid much interaction with much wildlife outside of the camper bus, we learned you need to be loud and unthreatening, calling out “heeeeeeeey bear” and “no bear” with the occasional random song that would pop in our heads.  the fear of these encounters would only get worse as we started to see fur on trees, bear scat and prints, and evidence of a recent bed for a beast.
we quickly realized how much effort this was going to be.   it took about 3 hours for us to hike back about 2 or 3 miles from the road and find a perfect little ridge for our site.  right along sanctuary river and at the foot of mt. wright.  day one was exciting and full of realizations.

i’m not sure about the other two, but this was a hard night to get sleep.

day two we leave our gear at camp, put on our day pack full of water and lunch and start the hike up mt. wright.  this was a beautiful hike.  when we reached the summit(about 5,000 ft.) it was a gorgeous wide open field of green.  the wind was strong, as it usually is when you are up on the top of a mountain, and looked like something out of the sound of music.  we took our time at the top and started our trek down.  we eventually reach a ridge that we came up only a few hours earlier and we hear this high pitched screeching noise.  it’s so incredibly quiet out there, so when you hear something other than yourself you come to a quick stop and just listen.  soon, about 20 yards in front of us was a lynx and her cubs.  we staying our distance and kept quite as they came up over the ridge and climbed back down the other side.  It was beautiful to watch.  the snowshoe hare population is very high right now in the park, so the lynx population is also up.  later we heard bus drivers that had been working at the park for 13+ years and they had never seen one because they are such an elusive animal.  awesome! (no pictures cause i didn’t want to startle her.   )
we slept very well that night.

the next day we got up and ate breakfast(hot oatmeal w/ peanut butter tortillas….so good!) and struck camp, packed everything up and started our hike back to the road.  this was a fun hike, knowing a better way back and enjoying the beautiful crisp morning.  we reached the road in half the time it took to get out, got our extra food bag and jumped a bus within 30 minutes.

now we are on our way to our second unit and a totally new territory . . . .

to see more pictures click here.