Grizzly Watching
Grizzly Bears are magnificent and the biggest reason visitors choose our lodge!
Grizzly bears thrive here and the viewing opportunities are spectacular. We have operated our Grizzly Bear Lodge for decades and know the prime spots for bear watching. The ultimate grizzly bear photo opportunities.
Grizzly Play Fight
Mother grizzly and cub or siblings they still spend time enjoying each other’s company. This is a common scene on one of the lodge’s grizzly tours to the Glendale River. Once the appetite is satisfied the bears take time out to socialize. It is good that it is playing because the size of the claws indicates that some damage could occur if it became serious. In this case I would go for siblings, if your notice the size of the paw in the lower left corner of the picture is similar in size to the one in the upper right.
Copy and learn
This grizzly bear cub, on BC’s Glendale River on Knight Inlet, even has its mother’s colouring. Cubs tend to learn by seeing and doing. In this case the cub has taken to a rock because it is a little warmer and it lacks the layer of body fat of the mother. Also the force of the water might make it hard for it to remain in one place. Both are looking down river and waiting for another school of pink salmon to arrive in the entrance of the spawning channel. Waiting for lunch.
Grizzly bear spring cub
The end of May and this mother grizzly and cub has found it’s way to the shore on Knight Inlet. Born in January or February makes this cub four to five months old and a new member of the “Grizzly Bears of Knight Inlet Family”. The shore of the inlet has few large male grizzlies this time of the year as they are waiting the arrival of the salmon in August and tend to be nearer the river mouths of the Inlet. This photo was taken several miles from the mouth of the Glendale River our ultimate destination for the day’s grizzly bear tour. But you never pass up a photo opportunity especially one involving a cub.
Grizzly yawning
This grizzly bear on the Glendale River has it’s mouth stretched wide open in mid- morning yawn. Yawning can be a sign of stress for a bear, or it can be, simply, yawning. In this case a yawn is a yawn as this bear had been resting on the side of the road near the viewing stands we occupied when it got up, yawned, and moved to the river to resume fishing for pink salmon.
Why you want a guided tour
This was a late August trip to the Glendale River on Knight Inlet. The tide was rising so we were up the river in the lodge’s eighteen-foot flat-bottomed skiff. Using the skiff permits us to travel up the shallow river and gain closer access to the grizzly bears feeding on the sedge grass in the delta or estuary. On this day a “tourist boat” was anchored is the river mouth and they were up rive in their zodiack and much too close to the grizzly wanting to cross the river. We tried to get the zodiack to move back without much luck. Fortunately the bears in the area accept the small boats as a fact of life and tend to ignore them but I prefer to give them a little more room. The etiquette of grizzly bear watching is not to get so close that you prevent them from going where they want and behaving in a natural manner.
Grizzly cub like mother
Grizzly bears in the spring and early summer spend much of their time on the beach in search of food. Turning over rocks in the inter-tidal zone provides “food” high in protein. Food made up of crab, clams, muscles, barnacles, amphipods and other tiny invertebrates. In this photo mother is eating the muscles growing on the log and possibly some of the seaweed while the cub is trying very hard to turn over a good sized rock. This is a July photo and the mother is still growing new fur that was rubbed off during hibernation.
Unhappy grizzly cub
This photo taken in late September shows a seven month old grizzly cub waiting for mother to provide lunch. It would be lunch as our time on the viewing stand on the Glendale River is between ten and noon. Mother cannot be to far away because at this age the cubs do not leave their mother side for very long. Mother will be close by fishing for the pink salmon that have come into the river to spawn. There are several rocks in this part of the river that are favourite perches for the hungry cubs.
Blackfish in green water
Blackfish, aka Orca, or more commonly, killer whale – a creature that inspires awe in BC boaters. “Blackfish” is what the coastal Kwakwaka’wakw band (First Nation’s peoples) the original inhabitants of the Northern Vancouver Island area in British Columbia called the orca. In fact one area most frequented by the orca is known as Blackfish Sound. However, this photo was taken in Knight Inlet as indicated by the colour of the water. Knight Inlet is fed by fresh glacial water and this “floats” on the salt water. The rock flour, or glacial flour, consists of fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock, generated by mechanical grinding of bedrock by glacial erosion. Those rock particles or glacial milk refract the green spectrum of the sun’s light so it appears green.
Black Bear Cubs
