Grizzly Day

When you're walking across tussock-land, you quickly learn one thing – if you can jump in your packraft, you do it. Three inches of water. Yep, that's plenty for my toy boat. As a result, I found myself happily floating down the Goodhope River.

It's a slow river, a shallow river, and a salmon river. The perfect river for grizzlies everywhere!

I saw the first one along the slope downriver. Cha-ching! Bear #5 on my trip. I kept paddling towards him. He eventually noticed me and noped out of there. Somewhere.

My alertness heightened as the water was quite low. Low enough for a grizzly to easily go packraft fishing. A moment later, I encountered a large, brown creature fishing in the river. Whoa! I came to a full stop.

Is this the same grizzly? It couldn't be. This one didn't budge at all and stood his ground. Yeah, Mr. Grizzly, I ain't going to portage. I instead whipped out my camera. He wasn't feeling the paparazzi treatment and finally ended the stare down. Yeah, I win!

I continued paddling. My alert level was now to the max after back to back grizzlies.

Cha-ching! Bear #7 incoming. I spotted him a distance away downriver. He was a biggie. I had no choice but to paddle in for a closer look. This one was so busy munching on blueberries, he never even noticed my doing his photoshoot. Whatever. I continued paddling.

Cha-ching, ching, ching! Jackpot!! Bear #8, #8.5, #9. A mother grizzly bear and her two cubs.

Okay, now it was my turn to nope the hell out of there.

But she saw me.