As this photo taken by Ingo shows the extra day visiting Grizzly Bear Lodge includes a trip to the Kakweikan River and a day with Trapper Rick and a visit to his cabin. The cabin is a half-hour truck ride over logging roads and then a fifteen-minute hike through the coast rainforest. This past summer we had excellent grizzly bear viewing at the falls below the cabin. This is one location that has no visitors except for the loggers and the guest from our lodge, a true wilderness river.
Ingo and his crew of four in the back row are ready for their morning tour. The floater suits provided by Grizzly Bear Lodge is a must for the day’s wildlife viewing. We are normally on the water by 8:00 and it can be cool if you are not used to the dampness of a morning boat ride. The morning’s overcast burns off before noon and that is about the same time the suits start to be removed. Layering is the best way to be prepared for the day’s tours because a running boat is always cooler than when sitting in the sun watching wildlife such as grizzly bears, whales and orca.
The grizzly tour day for Ingo and his crew was successful. An hour and half run up Knight Inlet to the salmon-spawning channel on the Glendale River provide many good photos. This one shows a grizzly bear having a hard time making a decision. The decision is to go into the river and catch a fresh salmon or to save energy and eat one of the two at its feet? In this case the easy meal won. Later in the season when this bear has more bulk (fat) it will be more selective and go for the fresh salmon and likely only eat the row, skin and brain.
Pacific white-sided dolphins can be found on any one of the lodge’s tours. Whether going on a whale watching safari, up the river with Trapper Rick or up Knight Inlet to view grizzly bears. These dolphins most often travel in pods several hundred strong and love to ride the bow wave of the boat or to follow in the prop wash of the motor. They will race the boat and leap up to three or four meters (ten to twelve feet) out of the water. A glassy calm day with the reflection of the trees just makes the photo more amazing.
This is a photo that many guests try to obtain but are not always successful. The fall grizzly bear tours from the lodge travel 26 miles up Knight Inlet to the Glendale River and the man-made spawning channel. The viewing stands over look the entrance to the spawning area and there are several small falls prior to the weir and a large holding pool for the humpback salmon before they move into the channel. This is a salmon buffet and the grizzly bears love to come down to dine. You can imagine the number of salmon (in the thousands in a small area) required for Ingo to get a photo of one leaving the water.
The tours from Grizzly Bear Lodge start in May and run through the start of October and this passage of time allows the guides an opportunity to watch the bears as they change over time. The cubs appear on the beach in late May looking like the posting on April 8th and progress to the larger cubs in the April 10th posting until by the end of their second summer they are like today’s posting. The abundance of salmon in the river and good mothers produce a high survival rate amongst the cubs of Knight Inlet’s Glendale River.
Although the great blue heron is common in the coastal water of British Columbia it does not mean it does not make a good photo opportunity. Most guest somewhere in their hundreds or thousands of photos taken while on tour from the lodge will have at least one photo of a heron. In this case the watercolour is as important as the heron.
Grizzly bears will patiently stand in the river and wait for salmon to swim up stream to the spawning channel. The viewing stands used by the lodge overlook both the natural river and the man made channel that leads to the entrance of the spawning area. The bears tend to grab the salmon with their mouths or to pin them to the bottom with a paw and then grab either way it requires waiting for the right moment to make a move. And from the look of this bear allot of concentration is required as they do not spent time checking out the click of cameras and only look up if there is a loud noise.
The sign of a hungry grizzly bear is the salmon it eats. Bears will get selective in their eating habits as they bulk up and consecrate on female salmon because of either high fat row (eggs). The salmon that return to the Glendale River which is the river Grizzly Bear Lodge use for its viewing in the fall are mostly pink salmon or humpback salmon. The males develop a pronounced humped back thus they are also known as “humpies”. The salmon in the mouth of this grizzly is a male so it has not reached the selective feeding stage. The other reason could be that it is the end of the season and this bear just wants that bit of extra bulk and does not have time to be selective.
Great photo of a bald eagle coming into land on a salmon carcass on the Glendale River. The eagles leave other parts of the BC coast to congregate at river mouths in the fall when the spawning salmon return. The eagles arrive shortly after the grizzly bears and for the same reason, free and easy food. Grizzly Bear Lodge’s spring and fall tours spend time on one Knight Inlets rivers which has the sedge grass for grizzly grazing in the spring and the salmon in the manmade spawning channel in the fall.
Just like that our season has come to an end. I would like to thank all of our wonderful guests and staff who made this year a huge success. I am happy to stay that all of our team is planning to return next season. We are actively taking bookings, with dates starting June 1 2025. Hope to see many of you next season.
The wildlife viewing this season was awesome. A couple highlights that come to mind was the shear number of salmon in our local rivers, as well as the abundance of Resident Orca. With salmon returns being so strong this year, we were happy to see bears in excellent condition. By the end of our season most of the bears had packed on a lot of weight and were getting very “picky” about what parts of the salmon they would eat. Hopefully this will translate into more cubs being born this winter. Another positive was the weather conditions. We had enough rain to keep our fire risks low and it made for some excellent wild berries. The bears took full advantage of this, with the berry season extending far past its normal conclusion. This did mean that we had to work hard to find bears during our summer season, (as they were often feeding on the berries deep into the forest), but moving forward it is excellent that they had such an abundant food supply. The Humpbacks also didn’t disappoint, with great numbers and a few new calves returning with their mothers to feed. After a slower year for resident Orca sightings, this season was one of the best that I can remember. In fact as Im writing this the A62 and A23’s are still being spotted in the area by dedicated biologists. Strong numbers of Chinook and Chum salmon are providing them with a steady food source. There are a lot of positive signs and we are hopeful that 2025 will be another great season.
Over the winter and spring we will be doing some repairs and maintenance. We plan on having a new cedar front deck built in time for the 2025 season, as well as new ceilings and paint in parts of the lodge and rooms. Theres always projects on the go.
Felix, Julien, Ryan, Zack and Myself all look forward to welcoming guest in June. See everyone soon.
Angus Reid
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