Sarah Hooper's blog - Chapter 4 (The Wildlife)

The wildlife we saw was incredible and at times I felt as though I was at home watching a wildlife documentary.

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There are a few reasons why we may have been so lucky - traveling in a small group meant that we could stop and investigate where we wanted without having to push on to a schedule, it may have been the remoteness of the area and lack of people who travel this way meant that we saw the things we did, or we could have just been lucky. Whatever the reason, it was wonderful... (Daves' wildlife photos are far better than mine but these will have to do for now !)
Little mountain squirrels (or siksiks) are cute little creatures that pop up out of their holes to watch us paddle by. They are also known as 'bear snacks' and we found lots of evidence of grizzlies having dug up their colonies.

We saw lots of birds - bald eagles and gyr falcons as well as golden eagles and peregrine falcons. One day we saw nature in action, straight out of national geographic - we were so mesmorised that we don't have photos unfortunately. We were watching a golden eagle soaring and circling high above and stopped paddling, quite close to shore to see what happened next. Before long the eagle made a vertical dive down towards a family of geese with several goslings. Much flapping of wings and squawks of distress ensued and we were left with the eagle landed on the banking - looking quite pleased with himself and a (seemingly) dead gosling which had not quite made it to the river. Within seconds a raven came from no-where, almost dive bombed the eagle and led him high up into the clouds. We watched these two for 5 or 10 minutes while the raven tormented the eagle in a display that the snowbirds would have been proud of. Meanwhile, the little gosling (who we now realised had only been playing dead) toddled off to catch up with the rest of his family. We were totally stunned. Was the raven a buddy of the geese? Was the raven angry with the eagle for a previous mis-demeanour ? Or did he go after the eagle just because he could ? Perhaps we'll never know...

The ptarmigans allowed us to get really close, I was only a few feet away from the one on the left.

We saw dozens of caribou on our trip and when we started meeting local Inuits it was one of the first things they asked us about. The caribou in our area is know as the Bluenose East herd. They have been the subject of much research and controversy lately as the numbers have dropped dramatically in the north and in some areas a hunting ban has been put in place. There are many theories as to why the numbers have dropped but feeling I got from folk I chatted to was that at the moment no-one is really sure as to the reason (or reasons) why and more research is needed.

We saw several wolves but only one pair and a small herd of muskoxen. We were able to stop and watch the creatures for as long as we wanted. They were as curious of us as we were of them - after all they had probably not seen people before!

OK, so we saw a great looking grizzly early on in the trip whilst we were paddling. It was really cool, I got an OK photo and with a bit of exageration I could have made a good story, it was at a safe distance and I was happy.

Then we had a day off and decided to go for a hike. Gene stayed at camp and despite his protests of 'I don't think there will be any bother with bears today' we insisted he kept one of the pepper sprays. We had the other one (which I slept with) and bangers in our bags. Not more than 500m from camp we sat on the top of a rock outcrop and chatted away, looking through our binoculars and enjoying the sunshine. After 10 minutes or so we continued on our walk and after no more than a minutes walking Dave said 'guys back up there's a bear'. There was no doubt in my mind from his tone that he wasn't joking. 'Where? where? I said as backing up 'I can't see it' - 'you nearly frickin stood on him' was his reply. [I should point out that this does not need any amount of exageration to make a good story] Oh my goodness, then I saw him - asleep on the rocks! We spied our escape route, loaded our bangers, all in hushed tones and then I have no shame in telling you that I retreated to a distance which put two good meals (see photo above) between me and the bear. At this point I assumed that we would be leaving the 'sleeping bear to lie' and retreating without waking him but his proximity to our camp (500m) and the fact we were staying their that night meant that Dave & Marks theory (they are vets) was to scare him away. So Dave set off a 'screamer' - sounds like a firework. That only succeeded in waking him up - Oh my goodness, I am thinking, now we have a grumpy bear! There followed a short discussion between my two companions (something about throwing a rock versus setting another banger off) before Dave set off another banger - which sounded like a gunshot and scared the bear away.

But it wasn't over yet!

As we watched the bear run away we noticed two other animals - and one of them was Gene! A wolf was running away from Gene (who had set off for a hike by himself!) and the bear was running towards him! Thankfully Gene came to some large boulders and decided to turn back whilst the bear ran round the back of the boulders - phew!

When we eventually made it back to camp Gene was blissfully unaware of his near miss and was feeling clean and refreshed after having just enjoyed a rather nice bath in the river!

Remember - Take bears seriously and always have protection at hand!