Bears

Yesterday, I had my second bear encounter of the summer.  The first encounter was at the last property I was working.  In that encounter, the bear was spotted approximately 1/4 mile away.  It then walked up hill directly at my field partner and I until it was 50 feet away.  At that point, the helicopter picked us up.  My field partner fired one warning shot, which did nothing to dissuade the bear.  The second bear encounter was one of the more stressful hours of my life.

Bear encounters are highly stressful events.  However, statistically speaking, bears are not that great of a risk.  At the last property, someone pointed out that a bear attack might be a one in a million event for the average person, but geologists working in bear country are not really average.  Thus, I propose a new statistical analysis.  I will assume that everywhere in Alaska represents "bear country."  Thus, in the last ten years (according to Wikipedia:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America) there have been 5 people killed by bears in Alaska, or about 0.5 per year.  According to the State of Alaska (http://www.hss.state.ak.us/dph/bvs/death_statistics/Leading_Causes_Census/frame.html), bear attacks, at 0.5/year are not in the top ten causes of death.  Malignant neoplasms are number one, number two are diseases of the heart, yet the food served in mining camps is not generally heart friendly.  Unintentional injuries come in at number three (with 339 deaths per year, if you deduct bears, 338.5 people are killed by other unintentional injuries in Alaska per year).  Intentional self-harm (suicide) is number six, with 140 deaths in Alaska per yer.  This means, that a randomly selected person in Alaska is 280 times more likely to kill themselves, than to be killed by a bear.  Given this, should people carry firearms to prevent bear attacks?

From an easy, back of the envelope statistical analysis, it is very evident that bears are not the biggest risk.  However, bears are scary.  It, for some reason, is not scary to ride in a truck on a gravel road to the field.  It is not scary to ride a quad for half an hour into the field.  It is not scary to walk over uneven ground.  Nor is it scary to ride in a helicopter.  However, when you are confronted with a bear, it is scary.  From this fear, people start making decisions based on emotion, rather than logic.  This is an undesirable situation that can only be dealt with through discussion, and training.

I have been through several bear trainings.  Some have been funny to me ("While there is no proof bears are attracted to menstruation, menstruating women should wear tampons rather than pads while in bear country"), and others have been quite good.  It is generally agreed upon that bears have vision approximately equal to our own with excellent senses of smelling and hearing.  If a bear can only see you when you see it, that does not help keep bears away.  Since scent is controlled by wind direction, which is unpredictable sound becomes the best warning tool.  All training advises you to take advantage of this.  They say that to warn an animal with an excellent sense of hearing it is advisable to make lots of noise.

I usually sing to make noise.  My go to song is Greg Brown's "If I Had Known," but I have a few other partial songs in my catalog.  "If I Had Known" is 3:25 with music.  I can pause for a bit between stanzas, but the goal is to make noise, not be artistic.  Thus, I rip through that song in about 2:20, I might stretch it to 3 minutes, but either way, I have to sing that song a lot to make it through a full day in the field.  So, sometimes I take a break from singing.

When I am not singing, I am not really a geo-ninja.  When in the thick of black spruce, moss, willows, tundra, tussocks and alders, I break branches pushing through them, I rustle trees trying to move them out of the way, I hit my shins and fall resulting in me turning the air blue, and if I get really angry with something I break the branches or what have you with my shovel.  This, apparently, is not enough noise to warn a creature with excellent hearing of my imminent arrival.  Bears, apparently, hear me rolling in on them like a gaggle of drunken sailors on shore leave in a fine china factory, and think to themselves, "what is that noise?  It must be a sparrow."  Given this line of reasoning, that seems to be common to all bears that will attack you, does singing actually help?  Would carting out a rock band help?  I am skeptical that if these creatures cannot associate my slow, steady progress through the brush with stick breaking and expletive eruptions as a human coming towards them, that folk music will make them turn and run.

What seems to work with bears is not noise (I am not suggesting that travel should be done with stealth, but rather the noise working in the brush combined with the normal amount of talking and singing should be sufficient), but working in pairs.  The buddy system does not eliminate the bear threat, but rather mitigates the risk in the most effective manner.  That is why one should never be working hundreds of meters away from anyone else, in an area of high bear sign, swimming through alders, singing, swearing and releasing frustration through fits of blind rage on dead trees.

This brings me to my second bear encounter of the summer.  I was hundreds of meters away from anyone else, in an area of high bear sign, having just passed through a bear latrine with fresh scat, swimming through alders, singing, swearing and releasing frustration through fits of blind rage on dead trees.

I exited the alders into a burned area (from a forest fire).  I was relieved to be out of the alders, but looking straight into another thick zone of alders between me and my first sample points.  I took out my HTC (absolute rubbish for field work) to assess whether I should move farther off my line to avoid the alders, or continue through the alders when I heard a branch break behind me.  I turned around to see a bear's ass leap back into the alders at the precise point I exited the brush twenty feet before.  I drew my bear spray, easily removed the safety I improvised when my was torn off in alders (a concern of the pistoleros), and called to the team that I had just spooked a bear and it was headed southeast towards Olmos and Stewart.  Fillion, who was attacked by a bear a year ago, quickly realized that he was between Olmos and Stewart, he thought through this, and realized that if a bear is headed towards Olmos and Stewart, it is actually headed directly for him!  Shatner began to orchestrate a response on the radio, and the chatter began.  At this point I realized that the bear had not moved southeast towards the other three crew members, but was glowering at me from the bushes, and all I can see are two eyes and a snout.

They teach you how to recognize bear moods to predict their actions in bear training, and they teach you what to do when you are interacting with a bear.  A bear with perky ears and its head up is curious, much like a dog.  A bear with its ears back and head down is angry or aggressive.  I could not see the bears ears, but its nose was very near the ground, so I leaned towards angry/aggressive, and called on the radio that the bear was not moving, but staring at me.  Shatner wanted to know who was closest to me to offer aid.  Stewart then radioed to ask what point I was nearest to.  In order to answer that question, I had to look at my HTC.

In bear training, they also teach you how to interact with a bear.  The best method seems to speak calmly, "hey bear, whoa bear," with your hands above your head to "look big."  I had one hand on my pepper spray, taking an aggressive stance, ready to hose the bear down.  My other hand was at my radio to key the mic when I had to need to give updates.  The only logical thing to do to look big, was to raise my elbows.  I was then standing with elbows up, one hand in front, ready to spray, one hand on my radio, and I had to let go of my radio to get my HTC.  HTC3, as mine is designated, is slow to connect to the satellites to get GPS points, and is prone to not reliably updating my location on the screen.  I turn on the HTC, unlock the screen and wait for the screen to update, with elbows raised, a constant stream of "hey bear, whoa bear" coming out of my mouth.  I radioed my location, and the radio chatter began again.  I was also thinking the whole time that one should back away slowly from a bear.  These burned areas resemble logging slash, and I was quite convinced that backing away would result in me falling backwards, thus, I decided to stand my ground, elbows held high, thumb on the trigger.

Shatner, in an attempt to figure out where Stewart was, had Stewart fire a shot into the air.  I heard this request, and realized that Stewart is on the other side of the bear.  I braced for the possibility that the shot would frighten the bear into me.  Bang, the shot was fired, and it became clear that Stewart, Olmos and Fillion were a long way off.  Shatner had obtained visual on me by this point, and was 300 meters away.  The bear eventually disappeared out of view, and Shatner gave watch as I moved away from the point of first contact.

When I got approximately twenty meters away from the point of first contact, and Shatner radioed that a small bear emerged from the brush and was moving behind me.  I turned around, pepper spray still ready, and could not see anything despite being in the relative clear of the burned area.  Eventually I saw a yearling cub bound by, and I continued moving away.  The next call I got on the radio was that the cub was changing direction, then coming parallel to me, then overtaking me.  This forced me to head more directly towards Shatner.  As I began to cross between the cub and the point of first contact, Shatner radioed that he saw a larger bear emerging from the brush at the point of first contact, it was bigger than the cub, and was following my trail.

Shatner continued to navigate me away from the bears, but it required me to move into a thicker area that was difficult to walk through, where I had no visibility.  Trusting his guidance, I proceeded.  Olmos, Fillion and Stewart were within sight of each other, listening to the radio and organizing themselves when the bad news came.

"brian, I know it is thick in there, but you need to hurry up," then a pause on the radio.  I kept walking, singing Greg Brown, and try to think how I was going to walk faster, through brush and fallen trees, with a can of bear spray that did not have a safety tab.  I figured if I fell, Shatner would see a puff of orange spray, and could do something to help me.  I resolved to speed up, and then call came through, mere seconds after the hurry up call, "I am going to fire a couple of warning shots."

While I do not recall making this transmission, reports are unanimous, I responded, "Okay.  I am not happy," in a stern, grumpy, monotone.  While I do not recall reporting my unhappiness, I do recall thinking that while I did not know what Shatner could see, I probably did not want to.  I motored, as best I could, bear spray sans safety, stumbling through brush and fallen trees.

Eventually I got to Shatner, and then we walked to a nearby cabin.  Fillion and Stewart met up with Olmos in view, and we waited for thirty minutes, without the bears following.  Fillion, Stewart and Olmos sampled the top of the lines, away from the bears.  Shatner and I walked over to points east of the bears, and sampled.

The day was significantly stressful, and after working the adrenaline out of my system, I started to think about what led to the situation.  Working this summer, I have been making small compromises on my personal work safety standards in order to get the job done.  There were issues at the last project I was working, there were issues with the truck driving here, and there have been issues working here.  After yesterday, I requested that I not work without a partner again.  Thus, I have made progress back towards safety.  Other crew members have made safer choices, and fixed some of the problems that existed here as well.  Meaning others are making progress back towards safety as well.  As stressful as the day was, and as bad as the day could have gone, it is the occasional serious incident that reminds us the reasons that we have safety standards that are always followed.

Note:  I am not working with a crew of actors who have played spaceship captains, but changed names to protect the identity of people and entities that were portrayed in this post.