Intensive bear
In search of close animal encounters, gets ‘wilderness overload’ as she joins Bear Whisperer Gary Zorn on a new adventure in Canada’s Cariboo Mountains
THERE were several chilling lessons to be drawn from Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, which told the tragic story of Timothy Treadwell’s misguided love affair with Alaska’s brown bears.
No matter how long you’ve known or studied them, these are intrinsically wild animals and pitching a tent in their campground is a foolish, arguably suicidal act.
Even the title of the critically acclaimed film had a double meaning; along with referencing the species featured, it aptly described the doomed enthusiast’s gruesome end.
Precaution or prejudice, it’s a thought that sticks with me as I zip open a canvas tent erected on a floating pontoon deep in the heart of British Columbia’s Cariboo Mountains – a wild, remote region of ancient forests, glassy rivers and snow-dusted peaks, where my closest neighbours are bears.
Glamping With Grizzlies is the latest venture from veteran wildlife tracker Gary Zorn, whose affinity with the shaggy mammals led him to trademark his Bear Whisperer moniker. For more than 40 years he’s been tracking paw prints by foot and monitoring behaviour. Now, he’s setting up camp in their front room.
At 5am we motor slowly into the middle of Quesnel Lake, waiting for ridgelines to map the horizon and treetops to emerge from shadows in
the early morning light.
It’s a 50-mile boat ride to former gold rush community Likely, where Gary operates wilderness adventure company Ecotours-BC with his wife Peggy. But sleeping overnight in the thick of the action means we can catch the bears at their most active in the first few hours of the day.
Roaring into the mouth of the Mitchell River, we chase the feathery outline of bald eagles, who glide like spectres shrouded in mist. An early autumn freeze has draped the forest with crystal garlands and fallen tree trunks glisten with the silver wisdom of age.
Left untouched, forest debris creates an enchanting, fairytale picture: wildflowers sprout from rotting stumps, emerald mosses blanket the floor and fine lattices of broken branches assume a sculptural grandeur.
When we reach a jam of logs, Gary ushers me to quietly climb ashore. In the shallow water, sockeye salmon flip and wriggle as they struggle upstream, their red-raw bodies smarting from the struggle.
“I’ve not known a run like this for years,” gasps Gary, scanning a graveyard of slithery corpses. Every June to September, the fish travel hundreds of miles to spawn and die, kick-starting a new life cycle and providing a vital source of protein for grizzlies gearing up for their winter hibernation.
A former hunter turned photographic guide, 72-year-old Gary was the first person in British
Columbia to be awarded a bear guiding licence. He has almost exclusive use of an area the size of Switzerland, covering areas where he claims people probably haven’t set foot for 20 years.
But it’s here, on the Mitchell, a small river running into the Cariboo Mountains Provincial Park, that he has his best encounters. Unlike so many of the province’s coastal hides and lodges, there are no fenced, elevated platforms and, crucially, no crowds.
Alone, shielded by devil’s club leaves the size of dinner plates and cedar tree trunks thicker than the Egyptian columns of Karnak, we step slowly, squelching over the decaying fish carcasses.
“I’ve never carried a gun or used pepper spray on a bear,” Gary gruffly insists, making sure the wind is in our favour. “And I don’t intend to start now.”
I’m not sure whether it’s the towering vegetation or gutclenching fear, but the forest begins to spin around me. “Too much wilderness,” is Gary’s somewhat equivocal diagnosis.
On the riverbank, meanwhile, a bloated male grizzly wobbles towards the water, his bottom jiggling like a chocolate panna cotta.
“Jethro,” tuts Gary, as if chastising a greedy child. “Will you look at the butt on that!”
Much of Gary’s success stems from his understanding of the Cariboo’s resident bears.
All of them have names and