After lifting 50 pounds of ground tackle 110 feet back on board, and after a short rest for me to recuperate, we headed for Walker Cove.
When we turned into Walker Cove a float plane was just leaving. When we got to the mooring, 55°34.865’ N / 130°57.600’ W, I spotted a bear and a cub on the beach.
It was a female Alaska Brown Bear and her cub. We tied to the mooring in the cove near the beach where the bears were foraging.
Our scent presence and noise we were making didn't effect the bears a bit. The female was content grazing on beach asparagus,
while the cub some distance away on the tidal beach entertained itself digging clams.We basked in the warm sun after lunch just watching the bears gorge themselves in between trips to the water to bath.
They seemed oblivious to all else, until a float plane came from up the valley at low altitude and buzzed the beach. That got her attention,
and the cub came running to mom.Occasionally the cub would follow mom around bleating ceaselessly until she would rollover and nurse it.
About 3:30 after working the length of the visible beach they finally disappeared into the trees.
About an hour later four males came around the point and started grazing along the same shore where the female and her cub had spent the day. One of males was huge I had a hard time believing what I was seeing. The four males worked the beach until evening then they also disappeared into the trees.
The next morning two float planes landed and taxied into the stream looking for bears. They allowed the current in the stream to push them back into the cove, then paddled the length of the beach without seeing any bears.
During the float plane show, I rowed the skiff out and retrieved our crab trap and ten large crabs. I cleaned five good sized males and released the rest, as the float planes took off. We were making ready to leave the cove and the female and her cub reappeared on the beach.
After we left the mooring I was able to get very close to shore before I ran out of enough depth for Teal. JoAnne was able to get very good pictures, which she refers to as her "National Geographic photos."We went up the head, where there are actually two heads, where two separate glaciers met leaving two glacier cut valleys. We went in close to the west head and saw no signs of bear.
The east head however had three large males working the high tide line.
When I gassed the motor to leave, one big male stood up for this photo.When we left Walker Cove and headed north up Behm Canal the weather was changing for the worse.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story,
George and JoAnne
