I went from never having seen one, to having one camp out in my yard over the last two days. Today he was digging in the snow and eating leaves between my front door and my car, so I had to phone my principal and the student's parents to tell them I would be a bit late. Sanford figured out where I live last night, and this morning he was barking up a storm at this bear to no avail.
This little guy has been all around town, climbing onto people's porches and seeming quite content to munch on leaves while dogs bark at it. I suppose I can't blame the bear for having such great taste, as I do have one of the nicest spots in town :) My yard has a pond for him to drink from and a bunch of trees with little berries left on them.
He looks pretty scraggly and skinny so perhaps he is trying to get what food he can before hibernation. That or he has no idea how to hibernate because he has never been shown.
A one-ton grizz was poached off the Hurley a couple of weeks ago, and all that was taken from the carcass were the paws. I hope this wasn't his/her Mom. I left a message for the Conservation Officer this afternoon, Bob Butcher, so hopefully they are able to trap it and relocate it. It would be a shame if they have to put the little guy down. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the situation.
Look at those claws!
In other news, this past weekend I went to Whistler for an avalanche course. I took it through Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau. A very necessary thing to have when I will be spending so much time in the backcountry, skiing in avalanche terrain. The course was awesome. We learned about avalanche rescue, as well as proper techniques for transceiver searches (a transceiver is the beacon worn before entering the backcountry that emits a signal and can be switched to "search" to pick up the signals of other beacons). We learned how to probe for a missing person once a beacon is pinpointed. Lots of scenarios to practice our skills. We dug a snow pit to examine the various "weak layers" of snow, specifically a layer of "surface hoar" that fell early in the year and is quite unstable and prone to failure, producing slab avalanches. The weekend had extreme avalanche conditions, so we had to do our work inside the bounds of Whistler mountain, because travelling in the backcountry would have been way too dangerous. I was the only woman on the course, other than one of the other guides who was "shadowing" our course before starting to guide her own.
I learned lots about attending to weather patterns and about paying attention to snow crystal formations in layers that can be "persistently weak" throughout the ski season. All the stuff we take for granted when we travel to a resort where the avalanche risk is controlled.
The Duffy Lake road, the alternate route to Lillooet before taking Highway 40 on to Gold Bridge, was closed on Sunday because of a controlled avalanche, so I didn't make it home on Sunday until 11 pm. Highway 40 was itself quite rough, with giant boulders strewn across the road, fog so thick I had to drive 30 km/h to see anything in front of me, and a couple of spots where the road has completely washed away. Thank goodness for my trusty RAV4. Certainly not a dull moment living in this corner of the world. I love it!!!
Here are a couple of pictures that I took on Friday during my drive on highway 40 towards Lillooet on my way to Whistler. They were all taken from a single spot on the road.
A stream of mist over the river.
Looking back towards Gold Bridge. The humped mountain on the right is Green Mountain, and Sloan is further to the right, just out of the shot. We are overlooking the Bridge River, which flows into Carpenter Lake which is made by a dam about an hour's drive away from Gold Bridge.
A picture with my car on the road on the right, to give you an idea of the perspective.
The next corner...
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