Let Sleeping Bears Lie

On our snowshoeing trips, we are often asked, “do you ever find hibernating bears when you snowshoe?” And our answer is always “never.” It would be like finding a needle in a haystack: the rough guess from Parks Canada is that Banff is home to between 120 – 140 bears in total (that's black and grizzly). The park is almost 7,000 km2, so that's one hibernating bear for every 50 km2!

In the world of bears, however, you should never say “never.” A week and a half ago, a biologist friend of ours, Karsten Heuer, was out backcountry skiing with some friends along the Icefields Parkway, north of Lake Louise. They were skiing through the forest when they stumbled upon a sleeping black bear. It was tucked into a tree-well, right on top of the snow, which surprised everyone. Black bears normally find shelter in stumps or logs. Since they hibernate with a relatively high body temperature, the conventional wisdom is that insulation and shelter make it easier for them to conserve their body heat.

Karsten told us that the bear was curled up like a sleeping dog, and that when they came close, it lifted its head in a really groggy way. It dropped its head back down, as if to say, “can I just sleep for another few months?”, but then it lifted its head more alertly. That was the cue for the skiers to vacate the area and leave the bear in peace.

One of Karsten's friends, biologist and professional photographer Dan Rafla, was in the group, and he managed to squeeze off a quick shot as they skied away. Dan (www.danrafla.com) has generously allowed to use his photo, a rare image of an even rarer event.

If you're visiting Banff through this winter season, Dan will be presenting his show, “Wildlife in the Rockies” at Buffalo Mountain Lodge twice a month until the end of March. Check this link for details:
http://www.crmr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Buffalo-Mountain-Lodge-Heritage-Tourism-Talks-Information.pdf

A beautiful Smilebox for us

Many thanks to Liz and Chris for making this Smilebox slide show of our snowshoe together!  Looks like they had a good time and so did Nadine.  

What a pleasure to be out in the snow during the holiday season.

Free digital slideshow made with Smilebox

Grizzly bear turns out to be an elk-aholic

Now that we've had temperatures of minus 30, and a couple of big snowstorms, you would think that hibernating grizzlies would be far from our minds.  But bears have a way of commanding attention even when they're not around!
















While we were away in October, a grizzly bear managed to either hunt an elk, or find an elk that had died up around Bow Lake.  A couple of tourists found the cached carcass – luckily while the bear wasn't around.  What they found was a pile of vegetation and leaf litter in a 15 x 15 foot square that almost completely covered the animal.
















We've heard of bears guarding animal carcasses before, but more commonly they just hang out beside their meal, keeping away intruders until they finish eating.  This is the first time we've heard of them hiding food like this.

When the park service  heard about the cached elk, they decided to move it to a safer place away from people.  One of our friends in the warden service took some pictures as they uncovered the elk for transport.  It was like an archaeology dig!

Enjoy a glimpse into the private dining room of one of the icons of the Canadian Rockies!

Recipe for Whitebark Pine Success

Do you have an interest in gourmet food?  Do you care about nature?  Of course you do!  Which is why the whitebark pine deserves your attention.  This tree is found at windswept treeline locations in the Rockies (that's the nature part), and at this time of the year, it produces cones full of high fat pine nuts (that's the gourmet part).  They are not the same species of pine nut that we eat, but Clark's nutcrackers, red squirrels and even grizzly bears love them, and as a result, stands of this little known tree are biodiversity hotspots.

Unfortunately, whitebark pines are in trouble, having been hit hard by both mountain pine beetle and a non-native fungus called white pine blister rust.  In the US, the species has met all the criteria for being listed as an endangered species, but because the Fish and Wildlife service is so strapped for cash, they have refrained from putting the tree on the endangered species list.

So why not support both nature and the gourmet feeding habits of our local wildlife?  Shell Canada has a grant program  for environmental projects across the country and is currently running an online voting campaign to decide which grants they'll fund.  There are lots of proposals in the running, but only the top vote-getters will receive money, so to cast your ballots for one of North America's most amazing trees, go to:

www.fuellingchange.com/main/project/149/Enabling-Whitebark-and-Limber-Pine-Grassroots-Restoration

The site requires you to submit an e-mail address and a very limited amount of info, but if you jump through their hoops, you earn ten votes that you can apply to a good cause.

A Plethora of Pikas

On virtually every hike we've taken this week, there has been a plethora of pikas preparing for winter!  Their cute faces peer out from rocks everywhere you turn.

It’s been a good summer for pikas, one of the Rocky Mountain’s most unique creatures.  This diminutive member of the rabbit family — it looks like a hamster — inhabits rock piles in the high country.  They don’t hibernate, but remain active under the rocks and snow.  To survive, pikas collect grasses and leaves for winter food.  Studies estimate that a pika will make about 11-12,000 trips to amass their stash!

Like a farmer, the pika turns its harvest into “hay” by drying it out and storing it under large rocks.  Pikas are built for cold temperatures and this week, someone has turned a switch on the weather.  In one week we've gone from late summer to full-on fall.  Now that it has cooled down, pikas have become very active laying in their stores for the challenging winter to come.

The Marmot Who Cried Wolf

A wise sage once said, “Listen to the marmot, and you will see everything.”  Well, maybe I just made that up, but I have learned that the alarm call of the marmot is a great way of finding animals like hawks, eagles or bears.  And last week, it helped me (Joel) find a pack of wolves.

I was hiking down from Packer's Pass in the Skoki district, when I heard a marmot whistling on the far side of Ptarmigan Lake.  The whistling was insistent, so after about a minute I plunked myself down on the trail and got out the binoculars.  At first I thought it was a false alarm, but then I spied an adult black wolf.  Was it alone?  No, a little further away, having a break, was the rest of the pack, including six wolves born this spring.  What luck!

They were a long way away, but my timing was good, because the whole gang serenaded the wilderness with a big group howl, and then all nine wolves began travelling east towards Baker Lake.  I'd heard they were efficient travellers, and they proved it by covering almost 1 km in very short order.  I took some footage with the zoom on maximum, so even though they are in the distance, you can get a taste of what travelling wolves look like.  Enjoy.

PS: I saw another two wolves later in the week, right on the Lake O'Hara Fire Road.

Taking a Walk on the Wild Side

It's rare for Nadine and me to get a day off  together in the summer, but two days ago the stars aligned, and we went for a walk on the wild side, going beyond the end of the formal trail into one of the many great valleys in the Lake Louise area.  It was a very memorable day.  The wildflowers were great, we got to walk along the top of a long and serpentine moraine crest, and we enjoyed a close-up view of one our favourite hanging glaciers.

But what we'll probably remember most is our turnaround point at the top of the valley.  We were planning to right to treeline, but our forward momentum was halted by a close encounter with grizzly #72 and her two cubs.  We'd been making plenty of noise, but we came over a little rise and there they were, feeding on the lush grasses and plants in the meadow.  I snapped a couple of quick shots on my maximum telephoto, and then we retreated.  From 150 metres away, we enjoyed about five minutes of binocular time watching three of the most famous citizens in all  the Lake Louise area.


They were beautiful.  It would have been great to have Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, so we could watch them some more, but we felt these bears needed to be on their own, so we quietly slipped away.  It was a day to remember.