If we go down to the woods today, we’re sure of a big surprise … Or at least, we very much hope that today’s the day the grizzly bears have their picnic, because we have travelled a long way to see them feast on salmon in the wild: an hour’s plane journey from Vancouver to Campbell River on Vancouver Island; a short ferry ride to Quadra Island; an overnight stay at the lovely Gowlland Harbour Resort, with its outdoor hot tub and huge central fireplace; and now we’re being picked up by boat at the hotel’s own docks at 8.30am. Certainly beats my usual morning commute.
The boat ride is wonderful, the only way to travel. Literally. As Doc Brown said in Back to the Future: “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” And there are none connecting the mainland to our destination of Bute Inlet.
It’s a foggy, overcast day, but that just adds to the magic. Huge round-topped mountains loom on the shore, densely packed with pine trees despite the near-vertical cliff faces, teasingly shrouded in mist that parts every so often to reveal tantalising details of untamed landscape, as though mother nature were doing the dance of the seven veils.
Fabien, our guide from Campbell River Whale Watching Tours (which also does grizzly bear and other tours), announces points of interest along the way. Over there is an underwater cave visited by divers from all over the world; here, now sunk deep in the Seymour Narrows, are the twin Ripple Rocks that sank 100 ships on the passage to Alaska until, in the 1950s, the Canadian government had them detonated in the largest ever non-nuclear peacetime explosion; and still further on, surreally, the docks leading up to a remote lakeside hideaway owned by the film star Michelle Pfeiffer.
Nearly two hours later, we’re back on dry land and being driven up a bumpy track by a First Nations guide from the resident Homalco tribe. We climb up some steps to a hide, a kind of wooden chalet on stilts overlooking a winding river, and instantly strike lucky: a mother bear and her two-year-old cub are feasting on salmon 90 metres away, indifferent to our presence.
It’s a beautiful spot. A heron flies past, long neck elegantly outstretched. A bald eagle takes wing from the topmost branch of a nearby tree to rejoin its mate. The pines are festooned with yellow garlands – the plant is called old man’s beard or witch’s hair, says our guide Michael – so they resemble unseasonal Christmas trees.
But there’s even better to come at the next hide. Soon after we take up our positions a big bear wanders up the path, shakes his fur, then rises up on his hind legs and stretches to his full height against a tree. After a luxurious back-rub, he saunters casually over to the riverbank where several juicy salmon are laid out in what is essentially nature’s version of an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.
These fish have completed a perilous 995 mile journey out to sea and back, have fearlessly flapped over boulders and leapt up waterfalls to their old spawning grounds to finally lay their eggs, and then, with their primal purpose fulfilled, promptly expired. Our bear inspects a limp body with its paw – not fresh enough. He moves on to the next – still no good. He then catches a live one, stepping on it with his great weight and grabbing it in its jaws before, surprisingly, letting it swim off. He’s spotted a fatter specimen, dead but still fresh enough.
For the next half hour, slowly and deliberately, the bear tears strips off first this salmon and then another until not a shred is left but the bones. “To prepare for hibernation, a bear has to store up about a million calories in fish,” whispers Michael. The bear is not nine metres away from our hide: we witness every fascinating, gory detail. It’s a salutary reminder that although he may look cuddly, with his sweet teddy-bear face and slightly stilted walk that resembles two men in a pantomime suit, what we’re really looking at, from the safety of our hide, is a 270kg natural-born killer.
Bute Inlet is at the southern edge of the largest temperate rainforest in the world, with an area larger than Belgium and a biomass greater than any tropical rainforest. It’s one of the last great unspoilt wildernesses. In the 1990s it was given the name of Great Bear Rainforest. If you go down to those woods one day, you’ll know the reason why.
For more information about staying at Gowlland Harbour Resort, see www.gowllandharbour.com. For grizzly bear and whale watching tours, see www.Campbellriverwhalewatching.com.
For more information, visit www.canada.travel
