Pack Creek, July 29-30th

While patrolling the area around Holkham Bay for an anchorage for our visit to Pack Creek, we saw our first bear - a gangly looking subadult walking the beach at low tide. We ended up anchoring right off the spit at Pack Creek. We were the only boat there and all the rest of the guests we saw during our stay arrived & departed via float plane from Juneau.

The allure of Pack Creek is the setting. When you arrive at the beach, a forest service ranger greets you and you receive an orientation. You are only allowed to eat in a small designated area between two rocks on the spit at the dinghy/seaplane “landing zone”. Every bit of food (even gum and flavored water) has to be stored in bear lockers nearby. The “bathroom” is the area behind a rock on the beach (and it’s not that large). You are only allowed to walk to two areas – an observation tower (about a one mile hike through a very nice forested area) that over looks the creek, and an open viewing spit (about a 10-minute walk) where you can see the tidal flats where the creek flows into the channel. Basically the bears (all Grizzly/Brown Bears) own the area. By staying to these routes and not stopping except at the viewing areas the bears have become accustomed to humans being low level background noise to their normal daily activities: predictable, and not a threat or source of food. Many generations of bears have grown up in this area under these conditions and they are comfortable doing their natural bear thing in very close proximity to humans in this setting with a very specific set of ground rules.

Bear Lockers at the landing site:

Pristine Grizzly Bear habitat:

We went over at 9am, and at the viewing spit we saw a bear sleeping far away. We then walked out to the observation tower. It was a very pretty trail through the woods, though a bit spooky with all the fresh bear scat and other bear signs that we saw along the way. Once at the observation platform, we saw lots of (spawning) salmon, bald eagles, and ravens- but no bears. We returned to the viewing spit, still no bears. A bit disappointed, we headed back to the boat to have lunch and enjoy the beautiful sunny weather.

                                     

Lots of bear poop... no bears:

Later, as we sat out on the back deck relaxing, we noticed a bear in the distance romping around the tidal flats, as it was now low tide. Ok, back to the beach and back to the viewing spit. And that’s when the bear show began. While there we had one adolescent (apparently known as “Joe”) walk right by us as he headed out to fish. Watching him run and jump around and kind of try to catch a salmon was very entertaining. There also was a sow and two cubs in a meadow sleeping. They got up and headed right towards us occasionally stopping for fishing and horsing around between the two cubs. It was amazing to watch and they were very close, with nothing between us and them but the log we were sitting on. We also saw another sow and two cubs further down on the mud flats and many other single adult bears wandering around, but further away.

"Joe" snoozing on the tidal flats:

"Joe" wakes up...

...and gets pretty close

Sue watching bears from a safe (?) distance:

Sow with cubs. We watched these guys for hours:

Same sow, with cubs in tow came to the river right in front of us and gave them a fishing lesson:

Pack Creek has an interesting system for keeping the dinghy’s off the beach. The bears roam freely all through the area including where we landed our dinghy. In order to keep our dinghy from becoming a big bear toy on the beach, the Forest Service has installed a continuous line that runs from pully’s onshore out to offshore mooring points and back. After you unload your dinghy, you tie it to the line and haul away until it positions your boat far enough off the beach that the bears wont be interested. When you are ready to go, you haul away again to pull your boat back to the beach. The tidal ranges here are pretty big so it takes a lot of hauling…

We lost count of how many bears we saw but the highlight was definitely watching Joe play and the mom and two cubs do their thing for over an hour. I have seen bears many times but this was special as you felt comfortable watching them knowing they felt comfortable having you so close. A very unique experience.