TRANSITION DAY: WE BACKPACK OUT ALONE DOWN THE TUMRAK MOUNTAIN
1200 METERS DOWN TOWARD THE STORAGE RIVER INTO THE TREES AND HEAVY
VEGETATION AND HORDES OF MOSQUITOES IN AN ARDUOUS TREK, LEAVING
OUR BASE CAMP AT "TENT" WITH COOK, TRANSLATOR AND HELPERS LEFT BEHIND,
PICKING UP CAMPING SUPPLIES AT "SPIK" AND ARRIVING EXHAUSTED AT
OUR SPIKE CAMP "DOM-1": MY GREETING AT MY TENT IS A SOW BROWN BEAR
WITH TWIN
CUBS STANDING UPRIGHT AND PEERING AT ME THROUGH THE BLUEBERRIES
SHE HAD PREVIOUSLY HAD TO HERSELF
August 25, 2001
A WALK IN THE WOODS, TO THE WOODS:
STRUGGLING DOWN MOUNTAIN WITH BACKPACKS
FOR A SPIKE CAMP IN A RIVERINE HABITAT-
A VERY DIFFERENT VENUE FOR BROWN BEAR HABITAT
It was tough going.
The day was better than the night had been, but it had been a rough night with the addition of another ton of rocks around the tent to keep the sides from billowing up and carrying us away as if we were a "cold air balloon." The morning showed less wind and the rain had stopped, but we had packed the hip boots in the top of the backpacks, assured that we would need them quite soon, as soon as we got down off the ridge we easily negotiated on the way down-hoping that we would not have to see it from the downside up. Victor had said that if we had early success in the bear hunt, the mountaintop TENT base camp could be picked up by helicopter which then could come on down and pick us up at the riverside SPIK spike camp. This was encouraging to us to think that this very tough walk "toward the woods" might be a one-way proposition. We soon found out the second feature of going lower into a warmer, wetter more vegetated environment with less wind-we began to inhale clouds of mosquitoes.
Like the Alaskan mosquitoes which I had encountered in the Dall sheep hunts of both Talkeetna in 1998 and in the Brooks Range of 2000, the mosquitoes seemed to be lethargic, and easily killed as they maneuvered up to land on you while you were concentrating on something else. But, as the military maxim has it: "Quantity has a quality all its own!" In the Brooks Range we had been reduced to contests to see who could kill the largest number of mosquitoes with a single swat on, a knee, for example. I thought I had done quite well in the competition, but lost out to a single swat record of 47 in on slap. Here we had to watch which way we were facing relative to the wind before opening our mouths, and the part that could not be ignored is the swarming into eyes, nose, ears and an occasional coughing fit as one or more was aspirated.
I had squirted several layers of the DEET-containing Russian repellant on me, which I also sweat away in short order. A single mosquito would not be much of a distraction if you were concerned, say, in falling down a mountain slope and losing a good number of the things that are dangling off one's person in addition to making it very difficult to get at a any given one of them while noosed by the others. But a thick cloud of mosquitoes is very discouraging when you are simply trying to traverse their territory and continue breathing at the same time.
Further, we would be intruding deep into their territory for not only the primary purpose of getting through it, but also to sample the amenities that they dampened considerably. We found we were coming downhill through large slopes of blueberries, and almost every time we did so, Sergei and Victor went into the same feeding frenzy as the bears evidently did. We could see ample evidence that the latter had been there rather recently, as many of the berries were still visible having made one through trip of the bear on the first pass.
We came to a hillside steeply plunging over an embankment to a gurgling stream, surrounded by willows, alders and "the long grass." This hillside was sprayed with lupine in blossom, and what were not lupine in the scattered wet grass were low-lying blueberry bushes. This was our "changing station" where we could pause for blueberry feasting, and changing both clothing and footgear. We stripped off one more layer of clothes, making us less unbearably heated up from our exertions and by that much more, vulnerable to the predatory insects that awaited us in the tall wet grass. I was carrying a rifle that was slung around my shoulder and tangled with my backpack, but any close encounter with a much bigger predator lurking in the tall grass than the ones buzzing around my ears, would also be "in my face"-far too close to defend against with a weapon that had demonstrably reached out 315 meters with some considerable authority.
Now, came the "moment of truth." I got out the still-packaged brand-new Remington hip boots, special ordered for this trip, and said to be the one indispensable necessity for getting into the lower mountain valleys in pursuit of game such as moose and bear. They certainly were necessary, but not always sufficient. I put on the hip boots, with only one smart addition-the Gore-Tex socks. I then tried to slog forward down the hill and toward the stream. I noticed that I could not get any "purchase" on the steep hillside, and that there was no ankle support to assist in the "torquing" action of trying to go up or down any steep slopes. There was even less traction on slippery rocks, and the clumsiness of the boots prevented feeling the ground beneath the feet, so that there often was an insecurity as the foot went down to unknown ground cover, which was completely invisible, given the head-high grass, and snagging alders. And, so, now "equipped" for the streams and the mud ("bolote nieke" is the Russian name, meaning "mud boots") and even wading through hip high streams, we were on our way into the forest primeval.
At the first stop along the thick cover when we paused in the middle of the stream, Sergei held two objects in his hand. One was my scope objective lens cap, and the other was the rubber end of Alan's mountain walking stick, both of them plucked off by the obstructions we had tried to plow through. When one or the other of the guides got too far ahead-and it would not have to be more than a few meters to be out of sight in this cover-I could see the wide swath of crushed grass and broken branches as a marker of the way they had passed. I thought "That is a comfort-I can always track them along the way they have gone!" Then I looked off laterally at a ninety degree path to the course we were following and saw similar crushed vegetation and clear marks of a passing large body, and then saw the clumps of blueberry filled dung in the middle of several such "tracks", and considered that it was somewhat more important that I know which trail I was on before crawling up the backside of some large creature passing through the thick cover.
I found that when I walked along the stream bank, where the growth was always heaviest, with vegetation leaning out over the often-obscured edge of the stream from the phototropic plant life, I could not see the "fall line"-the steep drop off of the terrain as the slope gave way to gravity, often precipitously. This meant that I was stumbling a lot and falling often, as there was very little "secondary effort" that could rescue a falling body in the clumsy hip boots. When I got into the stream itself, there are lots of roller-bearing rocks that have the additional feature of a mossy slippery algae covering, so that recovery form a bunch of well-lubricated marbles under foot tended to make the stream even more treacherous as a path, given the backpack which would pull the bearer over backwards when the feet went out from under the center of gravity. So, we had a peachy keen time strolling downhill, out of sight of each other, but not unaccompanied by a myriad of small friends who followed us trying to get more intimately acquainted.
The probable experience many have had that would rather not have volunteered for this part of the duty could be described as the deep jungle patrol in pursuit of VC sappers. I was similarly equipped-carrying an autoloading rifle, staggering under a backpack, and pushing through profuse cover in sloppy water and treacherous mud, strolling into harm's way.
ARRIVAL AT OUR "STASH" WHICH I HAD MISTAKEN FOR OUR
"SPIKE"
CAMP-TO REALIZE WE WERE NOT YET HALF WAY
We pulled out of the stream and fought further through a part of the fall line over some glacial gouged valley where I saw the kind of "bench" that I had seen and ridden along in snow machines through birch forests in May of 2000. These areas were parallel to rivers or valleys and about twenty meters up from the riverbank, probably representing spring flood plains. Here the tall grass was not as wet, and there were scatterings of true trees-our first, since coming down one thousand meters, measured on Alan's wrist altimeter I was delighted to see the duffel bag hanging in a birch tree, figuring we had arrived at the site of our spike camp. . This I mis-labeled "SPIK" at 55* 17.08 N, 160* 46.42 E at 520 meters altitude. It was the cache that had been put up in the tree (for obvious reasons in view of our game we were pursuing) that Victor and Sergei had carried down here yesterday on a nine hour round trip from the base camp. In four hours of hard travel we had come 2.95 miles along the great circle route from TENT along bearing 10*. The usual estimate of four times the meridian distance is probably an underestimate in this terrain.
We pulled down the duffel bag and a few items from the tree in which they had been lashed, such as the folded tents, and I thought we were going to pitch them. Instead we broke out the ingredients of what was very familiar to me-the standard "on the road lunch." Kielbasa cold sausage is sliced, and usually served with good not pre-sliced Russian crusty bread. With an apologetic wave, they explained that there was no bread this time, but there was "chai", so we had sweetened tea-Earl Grey, if you please. The luxurious dessert, a Russian chocolate bar, curiously in our case, followed this for each of the lunches or snacks, white chocolate I learned here that "SPIK" was actually "SNAK". We could see a distant green mountain on the far side of several rivulets, and it was two hours over that mountain that we would be setting up our spike camp. So far, we had done the easier "downhill" half of the trek.
LEAP FROGGING DUFFEL AND CLIMBING IN HIP BOOTS
We harnessed up again, this time with Sergei not only hauling his backpack and rifle, but now also carrying the duffel with our food stock and camp supplies. When we got to the streams, we plunged across, having more troubles at the entry and exit to the waters than in them because of the density of growth at the stream edges. Next came the long and steep climb up the vegetation, which made the slope slippery. For this part, Sergei would carry up the duffel, and drop it, coming back to pick up his backpack and leapfrogging the process-the way I got the Washington Flyer form Metro at the West Falls Church Station with my baggage overload. Alan apologized, saying any hunter should at least be able to carry his own rifle, but the combination of backpack and rifle had to be given over to Victor, who would carry Alan's things in the same leapfrogging after carrying forward and jettisoning his own load. That left me. As a point of pride I bulled steadily up the hills, and kept the backpack and all the gear on me, even when the slope was so steep that I had to crawl forward pulling myself up with handholds on whatever vegetation seemed stable enough to support my burdens and me. If footing or handhold failed, I knew I would spin over backwards pulled by the backpack and snagged by the rifle and would only stop when I hit some form of watercourse toward which gravity was dragging me as well as the water.
Are we having lots of fun yet? Yes, it was as hard as I want to encounter, but not insurmountable, and I was still packing my own way. As I got higher on the mountain, and ever more drenched with sweat and thirstier, I had finished the 1800 cc of bottled water I had put in the backpack side pocket. I looked at my Ironman Triathalon watch, "waterproof to 100 meters" and it had fogged up in the steam heat and stopped functioning. I now began looking for streams, and heedless of the bear scat lying around the streams in profusion, I began to lap up at each stream, as I had consistently in Alaskan similar environments.
When we crested the mountain and emerged into both sunlight and a big blueberry patch, I spread out my shirt to try to dry it after the soaking, and pulled off the boots. After struggling in hip boots, my big new Wolverine Gore-Tex climbing boots would feel like ballet slippers. I changed, even though I would have to change back twice again before arriving at our spike campsite. The four of us scrounged blueberries off the mountainside and glassed ahead where there was a streambed that broadened out into a marshy meadow. I gathered from the Russian commentary that this site was nearly our destination. As we suited up to "move out" again, I slipped down toward this stream where I changed into the hip boots as we heard a call from Alan up ahead. He was out of sight in the alders, but he had tried to get around the stream and found himself in deep sucking mud from which he could not get unstuck. When I translated his dilemma to Sergei who was waiting for me to change into hip boots, he left the duffel where I was and went back to where Alan was stuck and literally lifted him out of the sucking mud.
We trudged through the meadow marsh up to a hillside over looking the stream we had just come down and meadow on one side, and the hill behind the ridge obscured the upstream part of what we could see downstream-the broad glacial valley of the Storage River-our "Destination Bear Hunt". We had finally arrived, just pre-dusk at what would be our spike camp, which I labeled ("DOM" is Russian for "Home") DOM-1 at 55* 15.26 N, 160* 45. 53 E at 465 meters altitude, 4.96 great circle miles form TENT at 14* and 2.04 miles from SPIK at 20*. We had traveled nine exhausting hours, and although the jaegers were scouting with binoculars, I would have been just as happy if the bears stayed away until Alan and I both recovered from the hike. We also said we would both just as soon score on a bear as soon as convenient for them to call the helicopter with the INMARSAT so that we would not have to make the same trek in the opposite direction but could get picked up by air out of the spike camp. This was not meant as a joke, but it became so when we found out that the INMARSAT phone did not work.
Then I saw it. We had just pitched the tents and I had put the backpack under the atrium flap of our tent, and looked up. There on the hillside, clearly seen and not more than two hundred meters away, was a large brown bear. I called out "Medved! Bolshoi Medved!" and pulled out my cameras and took several shots. The bear heard me, and stood up on its hind legs to get a better look at these new intruders into its terrain and the odd blue dome that at least one of these annoying neighbors was standing next to while aiming a flashing box in its direction.
"Normal!" called Sergei, "Samka!" ("Average" and "Female" besides!) Sure enough, the bear ambled to my left and stood up to look at me again as two darker cubs emerged and romped along behind her-looking like last year's offspring. I had pulled out the sleeping bag and spread it out on the tent floor, using the last of the light to write the story of our arrival at the camp on the single sheet of stationery I had packed in a waterproof Ziploc bag for this purpose, and had put it away with the other two sheets that I hoped might be used for the description of the coming bear hunt. As I looked up, I saw the bear sow and her cubs pause once more in curiosity before ducking into the woods at the ridgeline over our tent. So, I am going to a very sound sleep tonight in the heart of bear country, separated from them by a thin fabric, while tomorrow I am going to pursue them on their turf, which seems anything but "user friendly" to me!