Glaciers and Bears	Short Cuts
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By: George Reiswig - 8/2002

August 8th

The glacier's toe used to reach all the way to the road where this picture was taken from, but has receded considerably in recent years.

A closer view of the base of Bear Glacier, and the small icebergs she calved into the lake, below.

We are in Stewart, B.C. this evening, just shy of the border of Alaska. Yesterday I woke up at 6:30 to re-torque the cylinder head bolts. We spent the rest of the day doing laundry, trying to figure out what was wrong with Fred's brakes (something had happened to his line lock at the end of the Telkwa Pass trail), buying diapers (the joys of traveling with toddlers... there's a story unto itself!), and answering questions from the locals about our trucks. Oh, and looking for a place to make more copies of our FAQs, which we have almost run out of. I thought I'd made enough for the whole trip, but we'll need more.

Today was mostly paved travel from Terrace. On the more remote areas of the road between Terrace and Cranberry Junction, we did see a couple of bears, including a mother and cub. These were black bears, which seem to like nothing better than to poop right on the road. Evidently voicing their opinion of our trespass.

Looking upstream from inside the Unimog doesn't do justice to the view from the bridge, where the gorge narrowed down to ten feet across.

Crossing the Kiteen River, I stopped on the bridge and looked down into the flowing jade, and had one of those pulsatingly spiritual moments I love. I used to run whitewater for a living, and this river stirred something in me that I haven't felt in awhile. Although the river isn't ferocious in terms of whitewater, the narrow split in solid rock that it flows through past this point forces it to narrow and roil, causing boils and flumes of almost iridescent green. It reminded me of how the Colorado River looked after the rapids, still vibrating from the force but almost calm. I wanted to jump in and go with it, wherever that was.

So here we are in Stewart. Stewart is socked in thoroughly, and our preferences for accommodations have grown soft in our old age. None of us on the trip particularly relishes the idea of making camp in the wet when there is a perfectly good hotel nearby, so we are sleeping dry this evening. The clouds outside the window wend their way slowly past... what? ...we don't know... toward the nearby sea. But look at a topo map of the area, and you'll get an idea. The lines here are very, very close together. From here, we can see the bases of the mountains -- Magee, Rainey (Rainy, right now), and others. They rise precipitously, as though we were insects looking at the foot of an elephant that nearly missed us. Water is everywhere here, in ice on the Cambria Icefield, in glaciers like the Bear Glacier that we saw earlier, in waterfalls that cascade off the steep mountains, and in the air. It is so humid that glacier-fed whitewater in the Bear River causes a mist to hover over it, as though the water were hot, not cold. Near as I can tell, the spray from the whitewater cools the humid, moist air just enough to form this fog, an interesting reversal from warmer water causing fog in cooler air.

This evening we went all the way to Alaska! We drove the nearly two kilometers of smooth pavement to the U.S. border, where we were greeted by a sudden onslaught of potholes in the American dirt road. This proved to be the only protection the U.S. needs at this point; there is only a border post coming back into Canada. Terrorists wishing to attack a glacier in the United States, or looking to wrestle a few infidel grizzly bears, such terrorists will face little difficulty at this crossing.

A small sow makes a go for takeout: chum salmon on Fish Creek.

A larger female moves in to the prime fishing spot. She got no argument from her smaller cousin, who promptly left.

Easy pickings, the salmon are everywhere. The bears eat only the roe and the fattier parts of the skin and flesh, leaving the rest for scavengers.

Ah, yes, bears. Our daughter, Krista, has learned a few words thusfar: the usuals like daddy, mommy, a good Canadian eh? that she somehow (!) picked up here. Pea is her current version of please when coupled with the American Sign Language (ASL) sign.

Now there's something that sounds like a cross between bear and beer. No, we have not exposed her to beer already, but she has lots clothing with pictures of bears. Tonight in Alaska, we did the touristy thing to do here, same as 60,000 other people every year. We went to Fish Creek, a salmon-spawning haven where, between bites of chum and pink salmon, brown bears like to hang out and watch the idiots on the boardwalk. (That would be me.)

Krista slept through the potholes, and was grumpy on the walk down to the bears, but as soon as she saw a bear, she was riveted. To be honest, it felt about one step shy of being in a zoo, watching a pair of ursus horribilis sows go about their business as though the 40-odd homo sapiens gawking at them weren't even there. But despite the fact that, when in wilder country, we're armed with (in order of their utility in the event of an encounter) bear flares, Bear Pause pepper spray, and a 12-gauge shotgun with slugs in it, watching these powerful animals from the boardwalk is preferable to seeing them up close out in the wilds. These bears are almost tame, but it was a unique experience.

By the way, do you know how you catch a unique bear? You neak up on it. Know how to catch a tame bear? Tame way: you neak up on it. Okay, that comes off better if you say it out loud. But not much, really. (Editor's note -- GROAN!!!)

I digress. In fact, that is largely what my writing style is: digression. Now where was I going? Never mind.

Tomorrow we plan to drive to the summit view of the Salmon Glacier, where we're told that there may be some trails that are not passable by most vehicles. That sounds good to us. Here's hoping that the weather breaks a bit, so that we can see the sights. It's raining hard now, so I'm dubious about our chances. I'll get back to you on what we can see, though.