Дорин Тови - The Coming Of Saska

The area had been roped off to allow trodden-down vegetation to recover and nobody had camped there for weeks. The hikers had slipped in there to avoid paying camp fees, not realising that bears were going through it at night.

One of the boys, who had ginger hair, had been roused by a blow on the head. Fortunately it was a black bear. They thought he’d mistaken the red hair for a marmot. He’d taken a swipe and had run like mad when he heard the screams.

The boy had had to have his scalp stitched but was otherwise unharmed. Had the blow come from a grizzly, it would have killed him.

What with hearing about that, and my bedtime reading of Night of the Grizzlies – we were now in Glacier Park where it had happened – it was small wonder that I woke around three in the morning, with a distinct feeling that there were bears around and a consciousness of being very cold. Clear white moonlight was shining through the camper windows and I realised that Charles, too, was awake. ‘Brrr... it’s cold in here,’ he said. And then, sitting up – ‘Great Scott! The door’s wide open!’

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Doreen Tovey

It was too. One of those temperamental locks again and presumably we hadn’t fastened it properly. But how had it come as wide open as that with the camper completely stationary? Had something clawed or nosed at it? I expected to see a hump-backed head at any moment. Charles shot out of bed, grabbed the door and pulled it shut. ‘It’s all right now,’ he said. But was it? Supposing the door came open again when we were asleep and there was a bear outside... and it came in and there we were with no escape way through to the front?

I lay awake for the remainder of the night asking myself why I never learned... what was I doing getting mixed up with bears when I could be snug in our little valley at home? A question I asked myself even more emphatically next morning, on a cliff face high above the Logan Pass.

This, we’d read, was the best way in to Granite Park. To leave the camper at the top of the Pass on the Going-tothe-Sun Highway and walk the seven-mile Highline Trail.

‘It invades the haunts of mountain goats, big-horns and cougars,’ said the guide book, ‘and is above timberline throughout its length.’ It mentioned also an alpine meadow studded with glacier lilies and gentians and that further on there were slopes of the spectacular bear-grass; tall, with upright plumes, like a sea of cream-coloured red-hot pokers; so far we’d only seen it in photographs. Bears and deer frequented the slopes on hot days, it said, to escape the torment of the insects lower down... adding as if anything more were needed, that ‘nutcrackers, eagles and mountain-loving birds make this their airy home’.

Carried away by that picture I overlooked the bit where it said that the trail was gouged in part out of the sheer cliff...

until I was actually on it, clinging like a limpet to the back 111

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The Coming of Saska of Charles’s belt, with my legs turned to half-set jelly and Charles telling me not to look down.

This was right at the beginning – where, striking off from the road at the top of the Pass, the trail runs immediately on a horizontal ledge around the cliff-face with the road dropping sharply away below it. For a while the trail is actually right above the road, like a gallery. How could I not look down when, every time I put a trembling foot forward, far below me was the continual, eye-catching, movement of cars negotiating the Pass?

I felt like a fly on a wall. I wished I was one. I’d have suckers on my feet. ‘Would you like to go back?’ asked Charles. ‘I’m going to see that grizzly,’ I said. So on we went and half-way along the ledge – wouldn’t you have bet it – we met a girl coming towards us and I had to let go of Charles to let her pass. Charles swung round her. She swung nonchalantly round me. ‘Don’t you like heights?’ she enquired as she passed. When I asked Charles afterwards how he thought she knew he said she didn’t need to be clairvoyant. ‘You looked as though you were tightrope-walking over Niagara,’ he said, ‘and boy, was your face green!’

I made it, though. We reached the end of the ledge at last and soon we were out on an easy mountain track. There were other steep bits ahead, but none as bad as that first one. I was glad I hadn’t turned back. The trail ran level for about three miles with tremendous views to the valley below; then, passing over the saddle of Haystack Butte, it began to climb gradually upwards. We were crossing a scree slope now... under the razor edge of the Garden Wall, as they call this towering section of the Great Divide. Above us, among the rocks and scree, we could see marmots 112

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scuttling about... a prime attraction for hungry grizzlies.

Below us, on our left, were odd patches of alder trees and berry bushes: there could be a bear in any of those.

We trod as quietly as possible. We scanned the downward slope through binoculars. Never a sign of a bear. Until, as we reached a spot where a small stream trickled across the path, Charles stopped suddenly and said he could smell wet dog. So could I. As if someone had given a Saint Bernard a bath... a sign that a bear had crossed the path not long before. There was a tree patch below us; the stream trickled into it; we sat on the path and watched. We saw her within minutes. A silver-tipped grizzly female. Her coat a little ragged – bears’ coats are not at their best in August

– but still she was magnificent, with a thick, silver-tipped ruff like a husky dog’s, silver frosting on her great dark back, and the powerful humped neck that is typical of the grizzly.

She was lazily cropping the bushes. Fortunately the wind was against us and not once did she look up in our direction.

We watched, scarcely able to believe it... I kept telling myself that this was real... and suddenly, as we moved, we saw two cubs close beside her. One as dark as she was, one much lighter; probably he took after his Dad. They were eating too and seemed very obedient and docile, except that when she moved they dashed with her like playful kittens. How many had experienced such a moment as this? I thought of Andy Russell’s words: ‘To share a mountain with a grizzly for a while is a privilege and adventure like no other.’

We watched until we heard voices in the distance and saw a party of hikers coming towards us, then we got up and strolled on casually, as if we’d been taking a rest. We hoped the hikers wouldn’t look down as they passed the 113

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The Coming of Saska spot where we’d been sitting, and they didn’t. They were too busy talking to one another. The bears would probably have heard them and taken cover anyway, but we didn’t want people gawking and pointing at them... maybe getting scared and throwing stones to drive them away. There they were, secluded and happy on their mountain. There we let them remain.

I didn’t feel so noble that afternoon, I’m afraid. It was around five o’clock and we were up at Granite Park Chalet...

sitting on the terrace, looking out at the mountains, talking to other walkers who were staying up there for the night.

We’d have to start back in about an hour, I commented.

We had to get back to Logan Pass. Not the way we’d come, though. We were going down the Alder Trail, which was quicker, and I’d read there was a good chance of seeing a grizzly going round the steep bends.

‘You’re going down tonight ?’ said the naturalist who was with the walkers. ‘Boy, don’t you go down the Alder Trail.