Today we fly to Terrace as our starting point for a week long trip to the Great Bear Rain forest, where we are hopeful to see some Spirit bears.
These are black bears that are white and because of this carry a special meaning to the First Nations. It requires two black bears that carry the recessive gene for white fur to actually have a white bear born.
After an orientation evening in the small town of Terrace we set out the next morning on the 45 min bus transfer to “Afterglow” at Kitimat, the live a board we will be staying on for the next week. We are totally remote on the inlets and waters of the Great Bear Rainforest and so the blog is somewhat suspended as we will not have any signal. The prediction is for rain, some heavy rain and then some rain ! It is after all the rainforest with ancient, forest all around. The setting is so peaceful and serene created by the drifting mist and low lying clouds.
As we make our way to the first stop, we see many humpbacks, breaching, pec flapping and diving , today is actually partially cloudy with glimpses of sun and it actually isn’t raining much.
Food on the Afterglow is legendary and we get a choice of hot and cold breakfast , followed by mocha at the creek and a fresh bake of cookies or some freshly baked cake like banana bread. Each day is a surprise as to what our guide will pull out of the dry bag. I think the girth will be expanded by the end of the week. It is hard to resist these homemade bakes. Lunch is sandwiches, freshly cut veggies and a hummus dip, while we patiently wait for a Spirit bear to appear.
First day Strawberry, one of the Spirit bears known to fish here is sighted coming out of the salmon spawning creek. She walks by along the coast as we see her from the boat. The rest of the day we wait on the creek’s edge which is teeming with salmon on their last push to get to their family spawning ground. The males develop a little hook on their lower lip and have a hump on their back. This is to get stuck into competing other males that want to fertilise eggs laid be a female. The females just chill out close to the bottom waiting for just the right spot for when nature tells them to lay the eggs.
No more bears that day.
We do see some small creatures and the rainforest setting is gorgeous.
Second day is a whole 10 hours of waiting in different parts of the creek and walking up through the ancient rainforest to the waterfalls. This is the final hurdle for the salmon, they are driven to swim up stream and leap over rocks and waterfalls. This last barrier is a 10 m high waterfall and they keep on jumping but not making it past the half way mark.
We see quite a bit of evidence that bears have been feeding on salmon but no sightings today. What is however plentiful at the creek are midges and black flies. I end up spending a large part of the day draped in a head net, so I am the only one that has managed a minimal number of bites when we come back to the boat. The rest of the group of 6 shows faces and hands that have even heavily attacked by lots of very itchy bites.
