©Bert Gildart:  At first Janie and I both thought we were seeing another black bear, but as we pulled our truck and Airstream onto the side of the Alaskan Highway, we both changed our mind.

“That could be a small grizzly,” Janie said. And I had to agree, despite the fact I thought it unusual for a grizzly to be near the side of a road. And although the Alaska Highway is remote, it still sees a fair number of cars, trucks–and even Airstreams–most every day.

Not more than an hour ago, we had left Liard Hot Springs in British Columbia to continue our journey to Fairbanks and the surrounding area. For several reasons, bears were very much on our minds–and so were ways to differentiate g-bears from black bears. We’d also been thinking about bears because one of their preferred food items was so abundant–something I well knew.

Years ago I had worked in Glacier National Park hired as an assistant biologist in the ennobling position as a scatologist. For three months I had gathered bear poop and then, later, in the park service lab, worked to identify the fecal material. The material was exactly like what Janie and I had been seeing the past few days at Liard Hot Springs. It was cow parsnip, but this was different.

TROPICAL OASIS

Because of the hot springs Liard was once referred to as a “tropic-like oasis.” Because of the warmth, cow parsnip is not only profuse in Liard, but it grows exceptionally high; and that may be one of the reasons we have seen so many bears in this area. In spring, it’s one of their favorite items of food.

So far, this trip has been as much about bears as anything else. Five years ago when Janie and I drove the Alaska Highway, we saw very little wildlife, but this year we have seen bison, stone sheep, caribou, black bears and now we both believed, we were seeing a grizzly bear.

The reason we were not decided is because of the bear’s youth. This must be a very young bear, perhaps a two-year old; one that may have just recently been booted from the family. Most sows, after all, are again ready to deliver a new crop of young, and young from several years ago must go.

Though it’s hard to say with any certainty, this bear probably weighed just a little over 200 pounds, and that made it difficult to determine at first whether it was a g-bear or a black bear, particularly when it was not turned sideway. Even then, the hump was not very prominent, but because of the dished-in face and what we think is the beginning of a hump, we’re calling it a young grizzly bear.

Anyone have any thoughts?

NEWS NOTES: We’re traveling the Alaskan Highway trying to post blogs when we have access to the Internet. Tonight we do for the first time in almost a week. We’ve seen much and will try and catch up when we’re parked for awhile. Meanwhile, the service we’ve paid good money for (telephone service in Canada) is not working, and we’re wondering why? As a result, we can’t call out on our Verizon phone. We thought we were paying for our service to link with the towers most used in Canada. Maybe when we get to Whitehorse our service will work; right now we’re in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory.

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THIS TIME THREE YEARS AGO

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Alaska, Montana Photography, Outdoors, Photography, RV Travel, Trailer Trash, View Point. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.