Snow and Bears

Monday morning at 6am, we woke up to a snowfall and snow covering the ground. We actually had to brush the car off before we left. It’s usually warmer by our trailer than it is at the field sites, so this didn’t exactly bode well for our morning. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife on the road, and we drove through several areas that were buried in snow and where it was snowing and others areas that had no snow at all and where it was raining.

We dropped Crisia off at the bridge to Fortress Mountain where the snow is coming down in huge flakes. Our long-term site is actually a 30 minute uphill walk from the bridge, but the bridge is barred supposedly due to construction on the bridge. We are in the process of trying to get access over the bridge. The government turned us down, but we ran into the president and GM of the mountain randomly one day. We gave him our research documentation and our contact information. He says he needs to clear it with the government before letting us through, but we think he's the reason they won't let us through. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with the bridge since he and his partner drive over it twice a day in a giant SUV. Supposedly the government has deemed the ski hill he’s trying to reopen unsafe and until he puts enough money into it to make it safe, they’re making it so that the public can have no access to the road leading to the mountain. So until we hear from him regarding our access, Crisia has volunteered to run it, while Nikhil and I do the nearby long-term site at Grizzly Creek.

The snow was coming down hard as Nikhil and I drove to Grizzly. Suddenly out of the snow, a baby black bear galloped across the highway – directly towards our field site. Where there are baby bears, you know there is a mother bear somewhere that would not be very happy to see anything she would see as a threat to her young. Nikhil parked the car, and we debated what we should do. In our little fire and safety seminar held by the staff at the field station, we were told that if we know there is a bear, especially a mother bear, in the vicinity of our field site, we should leave the area and come back later. However, we had animals in our traps that would die if we left them there for too long. We came to the conclusion that we would proceed cautiously on the opposite side of the creek and let our animals go without taking the time to collect all the information we usually do.

This took a long time since everything was covered in snow and looked so different. It was hard to see our flags and, when we found them, we had a hard time locating the traps since they were covered in snow. We proceeded slowly and talked loudly, hoping to inform any bears of our presence so that they would go away. We got to the end of one of six trap lines, and we saw the mother bear directly across the creek. It was huge. Neither Nikhil nor I had ever seen a bear this close before, so we decided we would finish the second line, go get Crisia and come back later.

We got back to the bridge around 7:30. We tried to estimate how long it would take for Crisia to get back to the car. If she took any longer than this, we would go after her because something might have happened. The time we decided upon, 8:40, came and went, so, reluctantly, we went out to walk up the hill with the snow coming down hard directly into our faces. We would either have to rescue her from a sprained ankle, or we would arrive there just as she was finishing up. Fortunately for her and somewhat unfortunately for us since we had gotten soaked in the cold for no reason, it was the latter. We heard her shout, and I answered. Since she was shouting for the benefit of any potential bears in the area, she didn’t expect to be replied to, so apparently I scared her quite a bit. She was wet and frozen from falling several times and losing her way in the snow but was otherwise alright. It took her so long because, in addition to falling and getting lost, 23 out of 31 traps had animals in them. We were told that 10% trap success was considered a good day. We’ve been getting much more than 10% trap success, closer to 40%, at Fortress and Grizzly. So this was even much more than usual.

As we headed back to the car, we told her our story of the bear and asked her what we should have done and what we should do now. Crisia told us that her instinct would have been to do what we did, but she got in trouble for letting animals go last year. We decided to go back and check the rest of the traps together and hope that we don’t run into the bears.

At that point, there was even more snow to contend with. It took a lot of digging and kicking snow around to find any of the traps. Our traps are made out of metal, so even handling the traps to lock them resulted in frozen fingers. It was difficult enough to handle any animals when you couldn’t move your fingers from digging through snow and handling the trap. Anytime one of us hit a branch underneath a tree, piles of snow would fall on our heads and down our backs. On the positive side, out of both grids, we only found one trap death, and we didn’t encounter the bear. We had expected to find more dead animals with it being so cold.

By the time we got back, it was almost 11am. Crisia’s fingers, after soaking through her gloves at Fortress and working without them at Grizzly, were burning for two hours afterwards, and I think I’m now coming down with a cold.

We postponed setting traps out that night to wait for the snow to disappear since we were told that we don’t often get a lot of animals in the snow and if it’s too cold, we could lose some animals. The snow was mostly gone by Tuesday night, so we set traps again and had no problems in the morning. However, right now it is snowing again. I’m reluctant to postpone another day of trapping since it means less time for me to catch my own animals, but I may not have a choice. Oh well, that’s life in the field with the mountains and their unpredictable weather.

Updates: More velociraptor (a.k.a. bighorn sheep) pictures and pictures from the bridge to Fortress (taken this morning when it wasn’t snowing, as Nikhil and I were waiting for Crisia).

In news unrelated to anything I’m doing right now, here is a trailer for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass coming out December 7. If you haven’t read the books by Philip Pullman, I suggest you do so immediately. I’m making Eliott read them right now (Eliott, I hope you have started that book by now), and JJ has read them already.