Black River Bear Chronicles (May 9th – 13th 2008) - Theodore Standage

2009-07-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

Preface

This story starts on Friday, May 9th, 2008. I was embarking on a 73 mile, 3-week trip from the Salt River up to the Pumping Station on the Black River. It was supposed to be mainly a fishing trip to gather as much experience and knowledge of the river to write the book I had been planning, but things hardly ever turn out as expected. In this story, I provide my own commentary and try to explain what I think the other subjects in the story are thinking.

Friday, May 9th

We (my dad and I) leave the house mid morning and get up to the Salt in the afternoon. The river looks like it’s running a little high, but not insanely high. I tie on a chartreuse crank bait and throw it out hopin’ to grab a few bass to start the trip off. The water is moving pretty quick, quicker than usual, but I manage to pull out a small Channel Catfish- the first I have ever caught here. We are a little puzzled and decide to head upstream to check out the flows at our normal first crossing.

We get there and start wading out. The water rose up past our waists and it is getting pretty difficult to keep our balance. There is no way I am going to be able to carry my 65+ pound pack through the swift current and get upstream. Since the Salt is made up of the White and Black rivers, and thus doubling the amount of runoff, we decide to go check out the Black to see if there is as much runoff there as the Salt.

When we get there, it doesn’t look too bad and there are a bunch of people camped there already, which gave us hope (there was a lot of trash spread around the area which wasn’t cool, but other than that all was great). We start fishing near the campsites and go a little downstream. My dad spots the first bear of the trip, a smaller juvenile making his way up the hill on the other side of the river. Its coat is a cinnamon color, but it’s still a Black Bear like the rest of the bear in the region. We make our way downstream and the first cross has water rising up past our waists, but the current isn’t nearly as strong as the Salt. We only catch a few fish, but the river is definitely do-able.

The evening and night go by pretty uneventful after a terrific breakfast-dinner meal cooked by my dad. I am soaking in all the good food possible before I am left alone with my freeze-dried meals, oatmeal, and canned soups.

I fall asleep to a new album I got the day before, Spread the Rumors by Socratic. Thank goodness for my I-pod, it will prove very comforting in the coming days.

Saturday, May 10th

We wake up and eat our cereal, yogurt, and fruit. No encounters throughout the night. After we eat we drive up to the bridge at the crossing and fish upstream about half a mile. The fishing isn’t great but we do pull out a few. After a couple hours of fishing we head back to camp to get things together for my dad to head back home. After cleaning up and a quick embrace he heads out.

When he leaves, I gather all my food and anything else that seems like it could be smelled by a bear and tie it up to a tree a little ways away from my camp. After everything looks tidy, I make my way downstream hoping to get into some better fishing than we had had so far. I hike past where we had gotten to the day before and start fishing. After a few casts at a certain hole, I start feeling a little uncomfortable, like something or someone is watching me. This isn’t uncommon for me to do this while alone in the wilderness, but I start looking around to see if it is just a figment of my imagination. I look around and spot a large bear across the river and about halfway up the hill lounging on a large rock, staring at me pretty intently. He is quite a ways away from me so I’m not startled. I’m actually feeling pretty good about myself that a bear would want to watch me fish. Maybe he’s trying to get a few pointers or something for future reference.

He watches me for a minute or two, but then after watching me come up empty, he decides to make his way down to me. I see this, pick my things up and walk down to the other end of the pool. When he sees that I have moved, he walks back up to his rock and sits down again. I snap a few pictures of him at this point and head down to the next hole. When I get there I decide to change lures, so I take off my backpack and get down to open it up and get my tackle out. When I get the pack open, I hear a big splash from just across the river, much bigger than a bass hitting the surface. I whip my head around to see that a bear has just jumped into the river to come over to my side. I instantly stand up, grab my stuff, and walk away. Seeing my move, the bear also stands up, turns back and stands on the other bank, watching me walk away from him. His coat is a nice shiny black color and I get a nice photo of him from just down the river. I am getting kind of spooked by this point, but I still move on, hoping to find the fish that the river has always provided for me.

I pass a couple groups of fishermen, realizing that my bad fishing has been from fishing the same holes that were just fished out an hour or two before. After a few more unsuccessful holes, I find the sweet spot. I pull out about 25 or 30 fish from a single spot, including some very large bluegill. I am very satisfied, pretty much forgetting about the incidences from before.

The sun is starting to go down so I decide to head back to camp and have dinner. The hike back is uneventful, except for stubbing my big toe on a large rock- one toenail down, nine more to go.
I finish up my Sirloin Steak and Potatoes (Campbell’s Chunky Soup) and tie up all my food in my bear bag again and send it up into the tree. I am in my tent before dark and turn on my I-pod once again. After three songs the battery is already dead and the battery pack I borrowed for this trip is outside in my pack. I am too lazy, however, to go out and get it, not knowing that this would prove to be a mistake.

After laying there for fifteen minutes or so, I hear someone from the camp next to me scream “BEAR!!!” I hear them all scramble into their trucks, start them up, rev their engines, honk their horns, and turn up their radios as loud as they can (they are playing some Skinner from some live concert. I am thinking I want to get that CD, as it is some pretty good stuff). They turn off all their noise after a while and it is again quiet. I am pretty scared at this point since I can’t see what’s going on around me.

After another fifteen minutes of nothing but the random noises of the outdoors, I hear someone from the camp on the OTHER side of me scream, “BEAR!!!” and they do the same thing the other camp did. At this point, I am freaking out pretty good in my little tent. It doesn’t stop there, however. This happens two more times, each camp taking another turn freaking out over a bear coming into their camps. I am thinking I want to go home. There are bear all around me and I’m here alone in my tent, with my dead I-pod.

I spend the night waking up frequently to nightmares of bears and other random scary dreams, wanting to be at home in my bed

Sunday, May 11th

I have survived the night and am very relieved. I check for bear prints around my tent and camp, but see nothing. I did a good job of cleaning up my stuff and not spilling my food the day before so I avoided having a bear come near my stuff or me. I am comforted by that, and am pretty sure I can keep it up and avoid it for the next three weeks. I don’t want to go home anymore.

I eat my oatmeal and head downstream again to try my luck even farther downstream. I decide to attach the Bear Bell that Scott had given me for my trip to see if that keeps the bears away. I hike straight past all the spots I had already fished and get to a part of the river where the river is about as wide as the canyon for a good mile or so. This stretch of hiking is pretty tough as the rocks in the river are very slippery, covered in algae, and the sides of the river are pretty steep in some parts. After a while of slipping in the river I decide I want to try my luck walking on the side of the river.

I am walking, yelling “HEY BEAR” periodically, with my bear bell ringing with every step. I come around a tree to a little opening and standing right there is a cinnamon colored bear. He jumps out at seeing me pop out and I freak out as well and immediately turn around and walk away. I check behind me to see if he is following, but he stays put, staring at me while I walk away. I am thinking at this point: How did he not know I was coming? Wasn’t I was making all sorts of noise? Maybe he was a deaf bear. Who knows.

Fishing that day is decent, but not worth the hike. I wash myself in the river and my clothes as well with the vegan soap I had bought at REI. I feel pretty good about myself for being such an “environmentally sound” person. After hiking back for about an hour, I feel just as dirty as I did before, but oh well. At least I had an hour of smelling like lavender.

I get back to the camp to find that both the groups had left after a weekend of drinkin’ and fishin’. I know there are trash cans in the area so I go to check them to make sure they hadn’t leave anything when they left. Sure enough, in the trashcan closest to my camp, there are three bags full of trash. I don’t like this, so I grab the bags and hike them up a hill to another container, which, at one point, was supposed to be bear-proof. It has been beaten up and broken by the bears over the years however, but at least it’s farther away from where I am sleeping.

That night I have my I-pod battery pack and blast it while I fall asleep.

Monday, May 12th

Today is moving day. I am moving upstream past the bridge so I can fish some new water- hopefully better water. I get everything together and decide to take the road, past the container that I had put all the trash left from the groups before. I want to see if the bears had eaten the trash yet. As I’m walking along the road, I look down to see that I am walking in the footsteps of some pretty large bear prints. I am not surprised and keep hiking.

As I reach the bend in the road that leads to the trash, I slow down. I peek around the corner and sure enough there is a very large, cinnamon colored bear chowin’ down on something delicious. This bear is pretty large and I don’t want to stay long. So now I have to take the long way around now, below the ridge where the container was. I stay along the road, seeing bear tracks on pretty much every stretch.

I reach the bridge and walk to the campsite I want about an eighth or quarter of a mile up the river. Thinking I’d be fishing the rest of the day, I decide to put up my tent and get my camp ready before I head out. Of course, the wind picks up as I start, making it really difficult to keep my tent and rain fly down. A few times I almost lose the tent but manage to hold on to the tent, only getting pulled about five or ten feet or so from the wind. Let me tell you, this is a workout. If I could do this everyday I think I’d be pretty buff.

It takes me nearly two hours just to get my tent up, that’s how strong the wind is (You’d think I’d give up after a while, but for some reason I don’t…). I am spent and decide to eat my lunch- Raisins, Muscle Milk Protein Bars, and Granola Bars.

So I’m eating my lunch and relaxing on a rock when all the sudden I hear two big splashes from the river. About 20 yards from each other and 50 yards upstream from me, two bears have jumped into the river to come to my side at the same time. I am very annoyed at this point, not really scared. They are headed up to a camp up the road from me that had left some trash there over the weekend. The one farthest upstream is quite a bit bigger than the other and looks the other bear away when they reach my side of the river. The bear closest to me takes a look at me, looks back at the other bear, then looks back at me and starts on his way straight at me. I can tell I wasn’t his first choice, but that I am the next best thing to the trash from the other camp. I do have my food out already, so it’s easy pickin's.

He doesn’t take his eyes off of me as he continues to straight-line his way at me. I keep yelling at him to stay away from me, telling him he is a very stupid bear and that I don’t like him very much. He continues his course, not running, but also not moseying his way on up either. He has made up his mind that the food in my hand is now his and that he is going to get it.

When he gets to about ten or fifteen yards from me, I reach down for the bear spray that I had on my hip. The wind is coming straight at me though, so it would only come straight back at me and I would be the one who was made defenseless. So I grab my bags of food, my daypack with all my fishing gear, and my fishing pole and retreat down the road, yelling mean things about the bear the entire time. I watch as he tramples my tent that I just spent hours putting up. He then proceeds to sniff around my bag and I see one of spoons fly up in the air. I then walk all the way back to the bridge muttering to myself and kicking up dirt in disgust. When I get there, I look at the things that I had instinctively grabbed as I gave up my camp to the bear- my fishing gear and food. Pretty good things to grab I think. My priorities are where they should be.

After a minute or two of pacing the bridge I decide to scare the bear out so that he doesn’t ruin everything I have. I start yelling from the bridge all the way back to my camp. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed louder. I do my best Indian war cries and keep telling the bear that he is the most stupid bear I have ever met (I don’t think my mind is completely sane at this point). The yelling and ranting works, however. When I get to about twenty yards from my camp, he gets up, steps all over my tent one more time, and makes his way up the hill (not toward the other bear, but up the hill). Looking at all my stuff I see that all he had really done was trample my tent, make some holes in it, bend the poles, lick my spoon, and chew on a bottle of vitamins I hadn’t grabbed when I retreated. Could be worse.

I am still muttering at this point and I grab all my stuff together and drag it up to the bridge where two trucks are parked. I am hoping these guys aren’t backpackers and that they will be back and can give me a ride into town or something so I can get out of this crazy bear world that I feel like nothing but prey in. I am not in control- the bears are.

After four hours of doing Sudoku (about two or three on the “evil” one Scott had inserted in his book for me) one of the guys comes up to the truck. I explain my situation to him, he graciously offers to let me sleep in their camp tonight and that I can use his phone to call my dad from a ridge on the way down to Tick Flat. I thank him and the rest of the guys make their way up from the river. They are an interesting group of guys, from all around the country, who do this trip to the Black River every year at the same time. Thank goodness for these guys.

These guys give me a ride in the back of their pickup and I call my dad from the ridge. I tell him he needs to bring another tent for me and that he needs to come to Tick Flat instead of the crossing. He asks why and I tell him, “There was a bear, let’s just put it like that. I’ll tell you the story when you get here.” I also tell him that he might not want to tell mom yet, but I found out later he was with mom at the time so there was no getting around it.

So we get to the camp of these guys and they have sandwiches there for me and I am really relieved. They offer me a beer like every five minutes and laugh every time I decline and ask for water. They are pretty funny and nice guys.

I sleep quite soundly in the bed of one of their trucks that night. What a relief to find these guys.

Tuesday, May 13th

I wake up and it’s cloudy. I make my oatmeal and eat it as they all wake up, probably all a bit hung-over from the night before. They keep saying they were scared that night because they think I am a bear magnet. Not five minutes later I’m looking around and I see a bear walking towards our camp. I say, “Well there’s your bear boys,” and everyone is laughing. The laughing goes down as the bear comes closer and is within ten yards of us all. We aren’t scared though because the bear doesn’t look aggressive. He looks at us every once in a while, but mostly keeps his head away from us and just walks right on by, really with no fear of us at all. I look around for my camera but realize the bear is walking right next to it so I can’t get a picture of him. When he gets out of camp I go and grab my camera and get a bad picture of his back end.

I head out to go fishing, even though it’s freezing cold and the forecast definitely has lots of rain in it. I need to fish though, because the day before my line didn’t get wet once. I catch around twenty or twenty-five that morning and come back right before the rain really turned on.

It’s one of the guys’ first time ever fishing or camping and he comes back to camp with a pretty small bass wanting to cook it up and eat it. Everyone knows the fish is going to be hard to get any meat off of but we go down and I teach him how to filet it and we cook it up. With a little lemon pepper and some limejuice from the limes they use for their drinks, we cook up the filets for a couple tasty bites he probably won’t ever forget. He is ecstatic.

After this, Kenny, one of the guys from Prescott, tells me he went over and talked to the camp we had heard gunshots from the night before and that morning. He tells me that these guys were sitting around their campfire eating their breakfast when a bear walked right into their camp. They all scattered and the bear proceeded to roll their ice chest over and over until it opened up. When it opened, he grabbed their steaks they were planning on eating that night, and left. As the bear started to leave, they were finally able to go grab their gun and shoot it up in the air and the bear ran away. The bears aren’t afraid of us- this is for sure.

At around six, as we are standing around the campfire, I hear the roar of a large diesel engine making its way down the road. I run out and there is my dad. I am extremely happy to see him and tell him I don’t want to be alone at this river anymore and that it’d be fine with me if we just went home that night. He agreed, thanked the guys for taking care of me for the night, and we headed home- away from the bears that had ruined my trip, but bears that had created some pretty fun stories for me to tell.

Epilogue

While I am annoyed right now, bears are still my favorite animals. I just wish they would keep their distance and see me as the scary and manly man that I am (I’m trying to find the humor in all of this, please don’t take me too seriously- with the exception of my next statement).

PACK IT IN - PACK IT OUT!!

I tried to keep this in some sort of present tense form, so if you’re reading and you fumble your words, just blame my poor writing, not your poor reading skills.