The reason I went to Katmai Bay with my partners was to place cameras on the top of a hill overlooking a sedge meadow that is in the area. Sedge meadows are one of brown bears favorite food next to salmon. Katmai Bay is our control area. Here no one but us biologist come. It does not get tourist to bear watch or people to hunt or fish. The bay is a long distance from anywhere. It took us an hour to fly there. So we take pictures of the bear behavior without human interaction and compare that to pictures taken at other areas of the park where there is high people interaction, like at Brooks Camp or the bays of the northern coast. The camera take pictures every 30 minutes and every three weeks once we put the cameras up one of us biologist will fly in and change the SD card. During the winter we will go through and study all the photos taken and do comparisons.
On the 2nd Day there after our bear encounter we packed up all the gear and headed to the camera site. The camera site was about a mile from our camp site. We could have taken two ways to get there. We could have walked the ridge that was heavy in Alder tree growth or walk down to the bottom of the hill and cross the sedge meadow then climb up. If bears have bedrooms they would be in the heavy Alder trees. Not a safe way to go. So we packed up all the gear and headed down into the sedge meadow.
A little ways away from us was a female bear having breakfast. We began to say our "hay bears" and just like they said in training the female moved away from us. Good thing too as none of us were ready for another close encounter. When we got to the area where the camera was to go I looked up and said you have got to be kidding. The area that the cameras were suppose to go was no longer on a hill but a cliff. A very tall cliff with what looked like no way up. The other biologist had been here the previous year and said there was a little path that would take us up there.
The little path up the cliff was quite narrow and was made of dirt and lose rocks. The intern started up. All of us were wearing heavy packs and had items in both hands and I was carrying the shotgun over my shoulder. As the intern climbed rocks and dirt rolled down on to us. I let him get about half way up then I began to climb. I moved the solar panels that I was carrying up then pulled my body up. Once the intern made it to the top he dropped his gear and came back down for the solar panels and the gun. I was almost to the top and was crawling under a tree branch when my pack got stuck. The intern had to come down again and help me get unstuck. It was not a pleasant hike and it was raining the whole time. Once I was up the intern went down to grab things from the other biologist and I helped her up as she took her last few steps. Then the three of us dropped to the ground and rested with the rain falling down but none of us cared.
It took about 2 hours to get everything set up and the cameras in the right position to take pitures. Electric fencing went around the cameras and then we camalflouge the cameras to make them seem part of the surroundings. Personally I don't think it worked but it wasn't my study or my plan. Then it was time to go back down. Down is always easier and this time even more so as we hardly carried any wieght. But now the path was even more slippery because of all the more rain that had fallen. My choice of decent was on my butt that way I had more of me on the ground to keep from falling. Though you had to look at the bottom and how dangerous it would be if you fell. The intern fell the last couple feet on his way down but us too females made it a slow and muddy slide down both on our backsides. The intern was all right but just as muddy as the two of us.By the time we got back to camp we were exhausted and decided to take a nap before we did anymore work.
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