Today was a hike with a local guide, Doug, looking for bears, their signs and any other wildlife we could find. So at 9am ish we got into Doug's nice new comfortable truck and set off up the road following the course of the river. At intervals we stopped and hiked into the river on old trails or trails Doug had made over the last 8 years - indeed he was very secretive with their location and we always parked the truck out of sight so we wouldn't be joined by other tourists or on this occasion a UK tour operator who was in the area looking to do tours. Doug was a little displeased with the guy as he had cancelled a day with him - understandably he was irritated at the short notice loss of work as this is a very short season - only a couple of months long. We found out that in the winter his monetary lifeline comes from Pacific Coastal, the airline, when Bella Coolla has to shut due to the weather he has the contract to take the passengers up the valley to Anahim Lake airport.
The hikes were great - the air was cool and fresh - even cooler under the trees and we saw bear day beds, hollows they had made in the ground to rest midst feeding, bear poop, claw marks and rubbing sites on trees.....but despite looking left and right up the river we didn't see any bears until 4pm. Just when we thought our luck had left us we saw, what we thought was a large male, fishing and eating in an inlet just up the river bank. He seemed oblivious to us so we watched him for 15-20 minutes before he disappeared from view back into the woods.
Throughout the day we also saw some other wildlife - especially cute was today's picture - a pika, who was living amongst the rocks on a large gravel/ scree slope - the picture actually hides the large erosions on his skin from invading bot fly - that said he appeared unperturbed and the flies were clearly emerging and leaving him alone albeit the scars of their occupation were evident. We decided he would not make the front cover of 'Pika monthly' but we liked him! Other wildlife included, salmon,of course, both pink and the larger chinooks which were just starting their journey up river to spawn, bald eagles, a rough necked grouse, a red squirrel,busily hoarding pine cones for the upcoming winter, a small western toad, the lava casing for a stone fly, a wasps nest and a large grasshopper.
We returned to the lodge just after 6pm after a really full and energetic day - the weather was dry and sunny; we had lunch by the river, we saw bear and an eclectic collection of Canadian wildlife what more could we have asked for?