Guest Photos

A wildlife photographer’s dream!

We offer fantastic bear and whale watching opportunities at Sailcone’s Grizzly Bear Lodge, your guests’ photos prove it!

Do you have your own photos to add from your stay with us? Please click here to email us!

Interesting Guest Photos

shy grizzly
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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.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

fast dolphin
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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.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

salmon spawning
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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.

 

Guide Photos

dolphins speeding
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Pacific white sided dolphins travel in groups that are between 50 to 200 but on occasion will reach numbers of up to 2,000. These dolphins can travel quickly reaching speeds of up to 45 kph (30 mph). They are acrobatic with airborne flips and leaps can reach extreme heights. Like all dolphins they like to ride the bow wave of a boat and stick their nose into the prop wash. The best way to obtain a good photo is to spend twenty of thirty minutes in their presence and constantly take pictures and to hope there are some goods ones when you do your editing in the evening back at the lodge. All our day trips whether to the grizzly bears, whale watching or Trapper Rick’s often encounter pods of white sided dolphins.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly first year cub on a rock
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Grizzly bear watching from our lodge in Knight Inlet starts in late May. At this time of the season the mother grizzlies bring their cubs, born in the den between January and March, to the beach for the first time. The three or four month cubs are very timid the first time they see a boat but when the mother ignores the “clicking cameras” so do the cubs but they are still alert to our presence. If the size of a dog pup’s feet is an indication of its eventual size then this cub will develop into a good-sized bear.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly bear claws close up
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Grizzly bear claws can be used to hold a salmon to share with a cub as shown in the March 29th posting or they can be used to dissect a salmon as shown in toady’s. Janis Worsley from the UK used a long lens to capture this grizzly at work.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly cub staying dry
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Because of the abundance of salmon in BC’s Glendale River the grizzly bears do not show much aggression towards each other, which encourages females to bring their cubs to the spawning channel to feed. First and second year cubs are common around the viewing platforms and provide amusing photo opportunities.  Although the water flowing from Tom Brown Lake is warm, in that it is not glacial cold, this cub seems to prefer sitting on a dry rock while mother fishes. It did come off to eat but was quick to return to its perch.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly sharing with cub
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Great Britain’s Lindy Taylor provides another great photo, this one of a mother grizzly bear sharing a salmon with her first year cub.  This photo shows the claws holding the salmon so the cub can feed. The normal claw length is seven to ten centimeters (3 to 4 inches) long and useful to catch and hold the salmon. Again the salmon is being eaten headfirst, as the mother and cub need to fatten to survive hibernation….more cub tomorrow.

Interesting Guest Photos

knight inlet grizzly with salmon
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Same bear from yesterday’s post eating the salmon headfirst. This photo was taken on September 1 which is one week into Grizzly Bear Lodge’s use of the viewing platform on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River. The salmon arrive in the river mouth in mid-August and start up the river in late August giving the bear their first opportunity to catch salmon. This means that the grizzlies are hungry and will normally eat the whole fish and not be selective and eat only the protein rich roe and belly fat.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

salmon and grizzly
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Lindy Taylor from Great Britain provided this great photo of a grizzly bear that “just” caught a salmon below the viewing stands on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River. If you take time to enlarge this photo you will see that the pink salmon is still bleeding. This bear had just come to feed and had not been splashing in the water because it still has litter from a daybed on its back…fishing eating tomorrow.