Encounter With a Bear
TERRACE, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
The eye’s that met mine were grey, there was no joy in them, no sparkle, just a focused fear that I’d see return in the days that followed.
We often try to laugh things off, jokes at funerals, giggles at near misses, but today humour wouldn’t cut it. I’d tried to initiate laughter, as my friends returned to camp, but one look into their eyes and all I could see was distress, fear and exhaustion, plus a complete and utter inability to see the funny side of anything that had just happened. Humour has its place in this tale, but that was for much later, over a beer downtown, now; well now was a time for action!
I’d woken that morning far from help, after a heli drop and a long afternoon of camp set up. The plan was to tour for a week, from a tented base-camp, in the backcountry coastal range of British Columbia outside of Terrace. The set-up of such a wild camp is a logistical process that was put into place by Owen Day, of Summit Ski Tours, enabling our group to simply enjoy the helicopter ride in, before a good seven hours session of tent erection, food store, water source, toilet and kitchen digging. At one point I’d even dug down around 14 foot looking for a stream, only to find mud.
Fortunately the sun was warming on our first morning, as we chatted under the brightening skies, looking around us for lines we could take while sipping on a sleep dispelling coffee. The scent of a fry up filled the breeze, stimulating a primeval rumble from our stomachs, as we slipped into the mess tent for a fortifying feed.
Owen left camp with a small group, as the rest of us slow-coaches did a little kit fiddling. I was ready soon after, and followed in the first groups tracks through a pristine zone of old growth forest. The pitch was mellow and I immediately lost myself in lonesome thoughts, as the old-mans beard swayed gently on the branches. My only company, or so I thought, was the odd sight of small birds flitting between the trees.
As I reached the top of the tree-line the rest of my group caught me up, and we were soon joined by whoops of joy on the wind, as the first group sped downhill throwing plumes of powder skyward. We were soon after them, riding an alpine pitch into the forest, before bottoming out well below our camp.
I’d just transitioned back to skis, when our radio crackled into life and a gargled message of “Return to camp, as we’ve got a bit of a bear issue going on!” Asking for clarification, and a sneaky request for a repeated message so we could film it coming through, was met with a sharp and brief response of “Just get to camp, now!”
Doing as told, a good half hour later the first group skied into camp with sweaty yet ashen expressions. Our unknowing laughter was soon cut short as we began to understand the severity of the situation. On their second ascent, they’d encountered a grizzly in the forest just above camp. Realising that the bear was starting to follow them, they grouped together making as much noise as possible yet the bear had simply kept its head down and continued its lolloping gait towards them.
“Three of us stood tall shouted and banged our poles together , but there was so much snow on the trees that the noise simply got sucked away, and our bloody light weight poles hardly made a sound.” recalled Romi.
“For a minute I was like, wow this is amazing I’m seeing a bear in the wild, how cool. Then a saw the look of total fear on Owen’s face.” continued Romi. “Hebe was between us and the bear so we waited for her to get to us before Owen told us to get in the skin track and get going.”
“Hebe was going so slow that Andy and I overtook her, and that’s when my ski fell off, of all the bloody times for that to happen!”
“I was the only one on a splitboard so I just kept going.” pitched in Andy, with a tear in his eye. “ I was trying to work out how far ahead I needed to get to give myself enough time to transition back into a board.”
“Man it went on for over 20 minutes. Every time we turned around it was still coming. Owen had tried to lead it away when my ski fell off, but it didn’t work. At one point the bear stopped following the zig-zags of our skin track and started to cut the corners, travelling through the deep powder just as fast. That’s when we simply started to run uphill on our skis, I started to see stars I was pushing so hard. Eventually we saw Owen, with crossed poles, on an adjacent ridge letting us know the bear was no longer in site.”
“Skiing back to camp, through those woods, was terrifying!”
“Did anyone walk up there?” asks Owen pointing towards some deep tracks.
After lots of head shakes and a few no’s we realised on further inspection that the tracks which headed into camp and circled one of the sleeping tents had been made by the bear the night before. A decision to strike camp and get the heli to come and get us was taken without argument.
We’d converted a small section of wilderness into an almost comfortable human habitat; we’d even flown in a wood burning stove, and in doing so become complacent to our surroundings. We’d landed a helicopter multiple times on a hibernating bears den, built a camp and started to cook bacon, of course we’d woken him up and of course he’d wanted to check us out. Maybe he just wanted to say hello, as if he’d really wanted to harm us he probably would have, but being chased uphill for over 20 minutes by a 270kg hairy mammal was certainly enough to reset our respect of the wild and to get us hightailing it out of there.
How Do I?
Guide
For excellent guiding and basecamp logistics, in and around the Terrace area, contact Owen Day of Summit Ski Tours
In Bound
Ride Shames Mountain an excellent Co-op resort with amazing access to endless slackcountry.