Grizzly Bear Encounters

I have a number of colleagues and friends who have been to Alaska. As soon as I told them that I would be going, a lot of lunch jokes about hungry grizzly bears waiting for breakfast, lunch and dinner meals beside the road in Denali National Park had been told, with my presence, of course. So, I knew a front paw of a grizzly bear could be larger than my head. I knew a grizzly could whip open the skull of a caribou with one strike … I knew the day we arrive was the first day in the year that the road to Wonder Lake opened up in Spring. I knew after a winter, grizzlies are hungry and slim … Well, we bought a large bear deterrent in Anchorage. But at any rate, we really really wanted to see a few grizzlies in the wilderness.

We got very lucky on June 9, when we took the 6:45am shuttle bus into the heart of Denali National Park. Around 8am, our driver and guide, John, quite excitedly called all of us to attention. John saw fresh bear tracks on the gravel road that we were driving on, AND all the fresh shuttle bus tracks in front of our bus told John that all those buses were going in a stop-and-go fashion. That said “Bears in front, maybe on the road, even”. So, we very cautiously drove forward and saw a shuttle bus very slowly crawling ahead of us. Ahead of the shuttle buses, there they were. A male and a female grizzly were hanging out together. Apparently, they knew there were buses following them. John told us that some bears enjoy this kind of attention. It looks to the bears that they are in control!! Well, well, it also looked like these two were just boyfriend and girlfriend, because married guys usually walk a little behind wives.

About an hour later, we got even luckier. Our bus drove around a corner, and suddenly there were three buses coming in the other direction stopped there. What’s going on? Only four to five yards away on our left showed up three bears, a mommy and two cubs. The title picture on the page were this family. While we were so up close, instead of a slightest hint of pepper spray, there went my wife’s voice: “Ohhh, so cute …”, just like she was holding a baby. Well, I admit the two cubs were truly cute and lovable, like the pictures below.

Later on our trip, we saw a specimen of a fully grown male grizzly in a gift shop in Seward. Dear Lord, it’s huge. It’s a lot taller than me and, yes, it had a paw almost the size of my head. The sign at the foot of the bear read something like “10 feet …”. No, he was awesome, but not lovable. I suspect whether we actually needed two pepper sprays.