Neglected to cover it in Part 1, but Nikki showed us some early First nation pictographs on a rock wall on the way up Bond Sound.
One appeared to me to be a turtle and the other a sun. The thought is that some of these pictographs were used to mark divisions between early First Nation territories.
After lunch, we took Nikki’s skiff further up the river on a rising tide. From there, it was all hoofing it. There was a trail of sorts – Nikki said it was a grizzly bear trail that they use year after year. Makes sense. The bears don’t want to spend energy crashing through the bush any more then we do.
Parts of it were wide open through beautiful old growth cedar forest.
Along the way, Nikki pointed out various things including this immature bald eagle.
While parts of the trail were open, significant parts of it were also dense brush and salmon berry plants- not much fun.
We also had to cross the river. Options were to wade or walk over this log which was actually over 7 feet off the river.
We decided it was better to wade then risk falling off the log.
Several years before there had been a slide and large trees came down the mountain side and were piled up like toothpicks. It would not have been good to be there when that happened.
Bear sign was everywhere along the trail including fresh bear poo and tracks – not black bear but the grizzly kind.
There were also thousands of pink salmon in the river.
All of which argued well for seeing Mr. Bear. No such luck as we reached the waterfall which was as far as we could go. The waterfall was spectacular and the photos do not do it justice – it was probably 150 feet high.
The salmon in the pool were bound and determined to try and make it up the falls but it certainly seemed futile to us. Some made it around the first lower stretch of white water only to be washed back down.
We sat and enjoyed the beauty of the place for about 1/2 an hour.
It was time to start back and as we were about 1/3 of the way back, Nikki quickly motioned for us to get down. There across the river not more then 100 feet away was a large grizzly working his way up the river foraging as he went. He did not spot us and we were down wind from him so he was completely unaware of our presence.
It was absolutely magical watching a bear just being a bear completely unaware and unaffected by our presence. As he moved up stream, he crossed to our side and continued to move up the trail and we quietly slipped away down the trail.
Quite the day- if you get up this way you should definitely sign up for a day with Nikki – her website is EchoBayEcoventures.com
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