Day 120: Salmon Glacier and More Bears

August 12, 2014

Today appeared to be cloudy when we first go up but it was just a little foggy and the sun wasn't up over the mountain. Shortly it became a beautiful sunny day. AM temp was 57 with a high of 76.

We first went to the only bakery in Stewart for breakfast. We had blueberry muffins that were almost as good as the Coulter Bay muffins we had in the Tetons. Not quite the same but very good. We also had a Bavarian cream filled doughnut. MMMM good.

Then it was on to the Salmon Glacier which is actually in British Columbia but can only be reached by going through Hyder, AK. An interesting side note. We started the day in British Columbia, crossed to Hyder, AK, USA then back into British Columbia before we got to the glacier. The back into Alaska, back to British Columbia to the coach for lunch. Then back to Alaska for bear viewing this afternoon and then back to British Columbia tonight. Six border crossings in one day and with only driving about 68 miles.

We had put off taking this little side trip to Salmon Glacier for a couple of reasons. First it is a dirt/gravel road and we wanted to wait for it to dry out a bit after all the rain a few days ago. Also, we had a little bit of an attitude of – well, we have already seen a lot of glaciers and wouldn't we rather see wildlife than another glacier. Today was a good day for glacier viewing since we had great sunlight for pictures. We are so glad we make this drive. The summit of the glacier is about 20 miles from the Alaska/Canada Border. It is a beautiful drive even if the glacier wasn't at the end of the drive. The glacier is huge! It is one of the few – perhaps the only- glacier that you can drive to and then look down onto the glacier and as well as the be level with the glacier.

click to enlarge pictures

It is hard to see the vastness of  the glacier. Look for the helicopter in the middle.

We saw 3 hoary marmots on the way to the glacier

And Scout got to play in the snow again

While at one of the glacier overlooks we took a short hike up to a beautiful alpine meadow.

Apparently the mosquitoes in the meadow had not read the label on the insect repellant we sprayed on out hats.

After lunch we went back Fish Creek to watch bears chase salmon again. There are more salmon in the river now than when we arrived last Saturday – chum and pink salmon. It is cool just to see all the salmon swimming in the river. Then to see the bears chasing and catching some huge fish is really thrilling. It was another good evening for viewing. We had different bears to photograph today. First a male known as "Dogbear" fished up and down the creek for a while.

Dogbear is known by the torn ear

Later a beautiful female grizzly that is very dark colored came walking upstream.

She is known as Monica and hasn't been seen this year before today.When she saw Dogbear, she left the creek climbed up to the road (creating a bear jam) then came back to the creek upstream from where the male bear was. She then caught a few fish and continued on upstream.