Salmon and Bears

As summer draws to a close in Juneau, there are still some things yet to see! My dad asked me on the phone last Thursday if I had seen any bears yet... I hadn't, Andy had. Anyway, he said there really couldn't be as many bears here as people said there were if I hadn't seen one yet. I wondered if he was right, so the next day Andy and  I decided to put that to the test. For the past few weeks the pink, then chum, and now sockeye salmon began running up every river in the area to spawn. You can spot a running river from a ways away because there is almost always a big flock of birds surrounding the area eating the carcasses of the fish that didn't make it. We went and looked at our first run at Salmon Creek and the DIPAC fish hatchery about a week ago.

The DIPAC hatchery has a fish ladder for the fish to return to a climb when they spawn. One area of the ladder has this tank window. Apparently after the fish reach the top of the ladder the separate them by species and put them somewhere else to spawn and then release those who live... I'm not really sure how this whole process works. You can see the ladder below. There are hundreds of salmon in each section at this time of year.

Anyway, this time we decided to venture further upstream on a river to where the bears would be feeding on the salmon who made the journey to spawning grounds:). Near Mendenhall Glacier about a five minute drive from home, there are some bear viewing platforms over Steep Creek, so we started there. Apparently there are so many bears in this area that most of Steep Creek Trail is closed now and fenced off to prevent to many human/bear encounters, but the raised platform trail is still open since you are suspended above the creek and feeding area on this part of the trail. It took us about 10 minutes to find this little guy with the help of a very excited tourist.

We watched him climb around the tree for about 15 minutes and then got tired of waiting to see if his mom would be back soon. We then ventured on another nearby trail called the Trail of Time. Towards the end of the trail, we came across another black bear.

I was getting rather nervous when the bear looked at Andy and Sydney and started walking toward them. Happily he ended up going under the bridge instead of onto it where we were standing :). It was awesome to see them. As the video shows, the bear was trying to sneak up on the sockeye salmon in the river but he missed. He kept walking down the river jumping to get salmon, but I don't think we saw him catch any. Both bears were black bears based on their size even though their coats are more of a cinnamon color. We only spent about 45 minutes in our whole endeavor and I have to admit, although exhilarating and exciting, being in the areas where the bear population is so concentrated right now definitely makes me nervous. I was happy to have seen them but ready to be out of their way. Plus we can't let Sydney out of the stroller and allow her to run freely on trails like we usually do right now... and you can imagine how she feels about that. Anyway, the moral of the story is.... there are a lot of bears and salmon to had in the area these day, and if we go looking for the bears, I'm now pretty sure we'll could find them.