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

male grizzly peeing
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One of the most often asked question whether a lone grizzly is a male or female? A male is usually bigger than the female and his head appears to be smaller in comparison to his body.  Females appear to have shorter legs and are a bit squatter in appearance. Luwen and Liwen from Singapore provide the photo showing the tried and true way to tell the males from the females, which is to watch them urinate. The males urinate forward, and the females backward! If you are lucky enough to see or photograph that, then you will know without a doubt whether the bear you are seeing is a male or female grizzly.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

heron on piling
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These are probably the most photographed pilings in the area of the lodge. They are located in the Glendale River estuary about an hour and fifteen minutes from Grizzly Bear Lodge on Minstrel Island BC. This is also the location of you tour day with the grizzly bears. The pilings are what remain of an old logging camp and next to the float that is used for the day’s base. The base being where we tie the boat to move to a large skiff used for viewing the bear along the shore in the spring or to transport guests to the shore in the fall to drive to the viewing stands up river. The float is also a comfortable place to have the afternoon picnic. The pilings are used as perches for gulls, eagles and in this case a blue heron. Lynn Morris from Great Britain has captured the heron with an excellent “mystic” background.

 

 

 

Interesting Guest Photos

eagle watching
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It is harder to get a good picture of a bald eagle than one would think. Not because there are few eagles because eagles are found on the grizzly bear tours, the whale safari and the extra day at the wild river. First is that eagle tend to sit near the tops of trees making their back ground either a blue or a cloudy sky. Second is to position the boat far enough away from the eagle so the photo seems on the same level as the eagle but close enough for a good photo. It all comes down to finding a eagle low in a tree close to the water and wildlife in not always cooperative and eagles will often fly further down the shore or higher if approached to closely. The answer in the digital age is many photos and a little luck and you will have one like Lynn Morris’s “Eagle in a Tree”.

 

 

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzlies beneath viewing stands
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This photo form one stand toward the other shows an interesting occurrence.  The mother grizzly with two two-year old cubs had passed our viewing platform and walked down the road toward the other stand only to come face to face with another bear walking out of the spawning channel area to the natural river on the other side of the road. What happened? Nothing, the bears passed and went on their way. The abundance of food in the area means that there is little aggression between grizzlies as long each respects the other’s comfort zone. A large male may dominate the viewing area for a while but it just means that the other bears wait until it leaves before coming to feed.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

above a grizzly
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From August 25th to early October the grizzly bear tour from Grizzly Bear Lodge goes to the Glendale River on Knight Inlet on uses one of two viewing platforms located near a man made salmon spawning channel. The two stands are less than seventy-five meters (yards) apart and each provide excellent opportunities for close up bear viewing. The above photo provided by UK’s Lynn Morris shows a grizzly bear walking beneath the viewing stand. It does show how close the bears come to the stand but not the “grandeur” of the bear….. view of other stand tomorrow

 

Interesting Guest Photos

grizzly with salmon in mouth
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This photo provided by Lynn Morris is one most guest want to capture. The grizzly with a salmon in it’s mouth the other being a video of a grizzly bear catching the salmon. If you enlarge the photo you will notice many salmon in the water in front of the bear and yesterday’s post shows the abundance of salmon in this section of the river.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

rifer of salmon
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A great photo by Lynn Morris showing the numbers of salmon in Knight Inlet’s Glendale River. From late August to early October it is these salmon that bring the grizzly bears to our viewing area. This area is about an hour and fifteen minutes by boat from the lodge on Minstrel Island. At this time of the year the grizzly bear tours use a viewing platform which overlooks the entrance to a manmade spawning channel and for the bears this is like “fishing in a barrel”. The spring and early summer viewing occurs along the shore and in the estuary of the Glendale Cove which attracts the bears because of the abundance of high protein sedge grass, the tidal flats and rocky shore with their animal protein.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

seaplane flight
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rainbow over knight inlet
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Guests arrive by seaplane from Campbell River on Vancouver Island. The floatplane ride takes about forty-five minutes and passes over many small islands, bays and inlets. For many guest it is their first ride in a small plane and they may be a little nervous but in all my years on the coast any accidents and they are rare occur due to winter weather. It is comforting to know that “seaplanes” land on water and that is every where on the coast while the larger planes that you use it come to British Columbia require large airports and they are less common than all the water under a seaplane. Lynn Morris from the Great Britain provides these photos of her flight.

 

 

Interesting Guest Photos

whale tail
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whale tail 2
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whale tail 3
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France, showing a humpback whale fluking, which is when the whale raises its tail out of the water and descends beneath the surface. The under side of the tail is used to identify different whales by it’s shape, bumps on leading and trailing edge, the black and white pigment pattern and any scars. There are many websites dedicated to humpback whale identification and some that provide the Photographic Catalogue of Humpback Whales in British Columbia.
Humpbacks show great fidelity to their feeding areas and British Columbia is split into two separate regions. The southeast Alaska/northern British Columbia region is estimated to have a population of 3,000-5,000 whales, while the southern BC/Washington population is approximately 200-400 whales. There also appears to be a correlation between feeding and breeding grounds. The majority of humpback whales feeding in northern BC appear to be wintering in Hawaii. The southern BC whales have animals that have been re-sighted off mainland Mexico, as well as Hawaii.

 

 

Interesting Guest Photos

single orca
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pod of orca
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Whether it is a single large male killer whale or a family pod the feeling is always the same, excitement. A whale watching safari from Grizzly Bear Lodge offers this excitement which may come from viewing orca, humpback whales lunge feeding, Steller sealions, harbour seals, dall porpoise, pacific white-sided dolphins or bald eagles. The variety of marine life in the area of Johnstone Strait between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia is astounding and mostly due to the abundance of herring. Herring are the food of the humpback whales, dolphins, porpoise and salmon. The salmon then become the food for the orca, seals and eagles.