Summer in Review: Bear Compliance and the Resulting Terror in the Night.

Summer is over. Looking back I can hardly tell where it has all gone. Not that I'm complaining mind you, my bank account is full again and I had a good time. However, it is time now to return to the world populated by people, which brings greater challenges, for me, than this summer has delivered. Still there are a few interesting highlights from this summer that I will share.

Work was more enjoyable this summer, but less rewarding. I know that doesn't make any sense. Hear me out. Early in the summer one of the local powers in the NPS began to initiate some changes in the process of doing things. Going into detail would be as boring for you as it was for me, so I'll try to explain succinctly. In short, my crew was ordered to do more paperwork (less work) and several of the planned work projects were removed from our schedule. Thus the summer was spent doing pointless projects that delivered no
sense of real accomplishment. We spent a lot of time out in the woods this summer, but I feel as if we did very little (as opposed to last summer when we worked our fingers to the bone). Anyway, it was still fun, and I got to see a lot of new country, but there was always a sense of conflict between the actual work crews and the administration. That = LAME.

BEARS were less plentiful than I saw last summer; I only saw one close, one from a medium distance (both black), and two from an airplane (both grizzlies and far away). Anyway, the real story comes from the last month of work. Several weeks ago I was in a crew of three that was sent to a remote pass in the mountains to work on an airstrip. While we were out there a group of five or six, led by a guide, showed up. At first they were friendly, but the next morning they were upset that we were using power tools to work on the runway (a ridiculous and stupid sentiment if you ask me) the guide also snooped around our camp and complained that we weren't "bear compliant." A video was recorded and sent to the local park ranger. While there really was nothing wrong with our camp sight and we were working close enough to it that bears weren't a threat anyway, the complaint put my crew on the radar of the administration. Not a good thing. The week later one of our crew had his gear raided by a grizzly bear as he waited for his flight out of another location. This resulted in another complaint, an official investigation, and an interesting series of lectures presented before my last trip of the summer. The lectures included several thinly veiled threats about job security, several drunk driving analogies, and several references to experiencing the feel of someone else's brains in your hands, oh, and about two hours worth of stories about people getting their chest cavities ripped out, and faces/heads ripped off. In short, bears are just short of immortal demi-gods who wander the Earth searching for victims. They possess insurmountable strength, keen intelligence, the speed of a car cruising just under the speed limit, and the devil's own temper. Oh yeah, they're bulletproof, and can bite through your skull like a fat boy bites through a German chocolate cake.

After that we were finally provided adequate bear safe food storage (which had not been provided by the admin before and was the core of the issue) and we were sent out into the woods to do what we normally do.

The next evening after a reasonably good day of work we all gathered around our campfire ate dinner and commenced with our evening's conversation. Naturally talk tended to always return to a certain, gory, theme. This conversation lasted for a couple hours as the light gradually faded and grew more and more sinister. At one point several of us heard a strange sound in the distance, but it faded away before the entire group grew silent. I had heard similar sounds emitted by ravens earlier in the summer and said as much. The conversation continued. After a short period of time the sound came again and conversation immediately stopped. It sounded like a person alternately talking and then screaming in the distance. An eerie silence followed and we all looked at each other in confusion. Then in the absolute silence that followed the sound came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. It was a woman screaming in mortified terror and pain. I can still almost hear words in her scream. We all knew, at that moment, that our worst fear were realized. All eight of us sprang into action gathering shotgun, satellite phone, bear mace, and such. At the same time a few people began calling into the stillness trying to establish contact. There was no reply. I have never heard such deathly silence. We broke into groups. Four of us went straight towards where we thought the sound was coming from while the other four (myself included) raced down the only trail in the area on ATVs hoping to intercept anybody that might be in the area (there would be no reason for anybody to leave the trail at this point). Nobody found anything and we never heard the sound again. We all returned to camp, all of us were obviously on edge and creeped out. I was the first to offer an alternate option because I have read that mountain lions sound, at times, exactly like a woman screaming. Only a few people considered this to be a viable option. The chief concern with this was that mountain lions don't live in Alaska, but I was able to dispute this point because I have seen one before (have I told that story). Anyway, gradually my theory won over, and was possibly verified when we heard the sound six days later in the early morning.

Still, none of us slept very well for several days after that.

If it was a mountain lion I have to say that they produce the creepiest and most horrifying sound imaginable to a man. Just think back to any horror movie that you have ever seen and recall the screams of the helpless girl characters that are pulled into the darkness by an unknown terror. It was that scream.


That's right, any demi-god abilities that bears lack, these guys have. They're a blend between ninjas and Nazgul. Just don't pee your pants when you hear one of these scream in the night.