Tracking Grizzly Bears in the South Chilcotin Mountains
Summary: Tracking Grizzly bears and other wildlife on a Trails to Empowerment tracking trip.
My fellow guide, Alexia, and I started our trip like all of our wildlife tracking and conservation pack trips with the riding orientation so the guests learned how to saddle, they got to know their horses and we got to see how they handled the challenges of the River Ride.
The next morning we saddled up and packed up our pack horses. We wound our way up the B+F trail, an old mining trail named after the two miners who had made it. But like all the trails in the area, they most likely weren’t the original users of it. The First Nations had been travelling these mountains from Lillooet every summer for 10,000 years. The wildlife had made game trails here thousands of years before that. We were all part of the infinity of nature. It made us aware that we really were just visitors here and the animals would always know the area better than us.
We arrived at camp mid-afternoon and once we’d unpacked, we set up staking spots for the horses. We needed the horses close by so we could be up early and out late, as sunrise and sunset were the prime wildlife viewing times. With the stakes set up now, when we got back from our evening wildlife scouting we just had to unsaddle the horses then tie them to their stakes. We left the pack horses in camp and rode out through Eldorado Basin and the little offshoot valleys to see what we could find.
There are no guarantees in wildlife tracking, but our guests really wanted to see a grizzly bear. We knew the best spots to see them, so we hit all of these. Being in the right place at the right time was our best chance. We stopped in the centre of the basin and glassed the side hills to the north. That was the prime grizzly spot, we saw bears there every year, sometimes grazing right alongside our horses, but we didn’t see any. I led everyone up to the side hill meadows on the other side of the basin. We saw a couple of mule deer does, but no bears.
The next morning we saddled up and made the same circuit. No animals. Wildfire smoke from up north had rolled in thick overnight so the animals were probably hiding out from it. After breakfast, we were ready to head out on our day ride, the Ridge Ride loop which was as close to a guarantee of seeing mountain goats as we could get.
The ride was a horseshoe of mountains above our Eldorado Camp. When we got to the first lookout point, I looked in the direction we would be going to look for goats. Just as I was explaining that this was a good place to scout for goats, I made out some white dots on the ridge ahead. We all got out our binoculars and I directed our guests so they could see them too. From this distance it was hard to tell how many were nannies and kids, but we would soon find out. I knew they weren’t billies because the male goats hung out by themselves. A large group had to be nannies and their accompanying kids and yearlings.
I kept the goats in the corner of my eye as we rode up the ridge. If they moved, I wanted to see where they went. We lost sight of them as the ride took us around the outside of the mountain ridge, but soon we had them back in our sights.
As we approached the area where the goats were enjoying the late morning sun on some rock bluffs, I told my guests to stay quiet so we didn’t spook the herd. As I was leading I was the first to peek over the edge and see the goats below us. The lead nanny looked up and saw me. She didn’t seem worried by my presence, she stood up and her attentive herd followed her, side-hilling the ridge. The goats were right below us on the rock bluffs so we couldn’t see them. I knew she was heading to a saddle between two mountains. We were heading there too and I slowed my horse, Apache, a little so we wouldn’t get there ahead of them.
I couldn’t see them until the lead nanny came up to the saddle just 20 feet in front of me. She seemed a little startled that we were now so close, but she looked over her shoulder, right into my eyes and a moment of perfect, wordless understanding passed between us. She carried on leading her herd over the saddle and onto the other side of the mountain, the shady side. With midday fast approaching, it was probably time they would have moved over to this side anyway. Goats have thick coats and at this time of year they were still shedding their winter hair which gave them a straggly appearance. Even at the top of the mountain it was over 25°C in the middle of the day and that was too much for the goats to stay in the sun. They needed the shade so they didn’t overheat. I counted seventeen goats: twelve nannies and five kids.
I held Apache still so the goats could pass us then we carried on our way along the ridge while the goats moved to the other side of the mountain. It had been a true nature connection to see the goats so close. To look the lead nanny in the eye, to share with her without words that I was the Lead Mare of this group of strange looking animals and we were just passing on our way, we didn’t mean her or her herd any harm. In return she had trusted me with the safety of her herd, allowing us to see them as they walked slowly past us instead of running away.
We carried on up to the highest peak of the ridge. This was where we stopped for lunch and was usually a good place to see goats on the shady side of the mountain. There were a group of goats laying down in the sandy shale. They were catching the last rays of sun on this side of the mountain before the sun moved around on its journey through the sky.
We sat down just below the ridge with our binoculars to watch the goats. At first we thought there were five nannies and three kids, with one nanny-kid pair off to the side of the main group. We tried to work out who the lead nanny was. There were two nannies without kids laying close together and we figured she must be one of them.
But the longer we looked, the more kids we saw. A kid had been sleeping behind one of the two supposedly kid-less nannies. Just when we thought we’d figured out who the lead nanny was, the one without a kid, the goats got up and started moving towards a creek for water, revealing a fifth kid. Normally a lead nanny was too old to have kids of her own, but this didn’t seem to be the case here. Each nanny had a kid which was good news for the goat population. Now we didn’t know if the lead nanny also had a kid or if this group had no leader.
The kids scampered after their mothers as they climbed the near-vertical shale slope to the creek. When they had all had a drink they disappeared over the ridge of a mountain that branched off from our horseshoe mountains.
Alexia and I told our guests everything we knew about mountain goats. After lunch we began our descent and collected goat hair and scat for DNA analysis. Then we took a detour off to the other mountain to see if we could see the goats again. From this angle they were a long way away, but we could count five white spots which were the nannies in our binoculars. The kids were keeping close to their mothers and it was hard to differentiate them from this distance.
We made it back to camp in good time, accompanied by the whistle of marmots. We only saw one although the area was usually crawling with them. Maybe they didn’t like the smoke either. The day was rapidly cooling off. When we headed out for our evening ride it started raining heavily. We saw a mule deer doe in camp and one wet doe but all the other wildlife was hiding out. In dripping rain gear, we headed back to camp. Of course, the only way to see wildlife was to be out there, but the guests weren’t too keen to stay out longer in the downpour which was uncharacteristic of the dry South Chilcotin Mountains.
I knew the guests were disappointed they hadn’t seen a bear. But we had one morning of scouting left to try. The next morning was bright and sunny, the smoke cleared by the rain. A change in the weather was the best time to see wildlife. After hunkering down from the rain, they were hungry and moving around. Alexia spotted five goats the moment she stepped out of the tent, high up on the ridge. Although they disappeared over the ridge before we could get binoculars on them, we thought it was probably the five nannies and kids from yesterday, we just couldn’t see the kids without binoculars. Alexia stayed at camp to prepare breakfast and start packing up. I led the guests to our usual spot where we scouted for the bears. Nothing there.
In another direction, I saw five goats right up on the ridge. We went on a ride to try to get a better view, but then they were lost around the other side of the mountain. Back to the bear-scouting spot. I scanned the side hills, looking for a sign of a bear. There was a brown spot that hadn’t been there just now.
I glassed it while still sitting on Apache. Just as I got the binoculars focused on the bear, one of the guests asked if that was a bear she was looking at. It wasn’t just a bear, it was a mama grizzly with her two half-grown cubs. Right where they were supposed to be. Last year there had been a mama grizzly and her two young cubs in this area. They must be the same family, the cubs one year more grown up.
With my directions, all the guests found the grizzlies in their binoculars. I made a plan of how we could get closer to the bears, both without spooking them and with keeping us safe. The valley was a kind of T shape. We were currently in the vertical part of the T and the bears were right where the horizontal and vertical parts met. The valley was wide enough that we could ride into the right “arm” of the T and look up a chute in the valley to the bears in their side hill meadow.
As you never knew how long wild animals might stay around, I made sure we stopped to take pictures every few minutes. We lost sight of them as we went behind a bunch of trees. At this point a young two-point buck, his antlers still in velvet at this time of year, appeared in front of Apache right on the trail. He looked straight at us. I stopped everyone so we could look and not spook him. He wasn’t afraid. He seemed really curious. He walked above the trail past all of us, checking us out. I wondered if he’d ever seen horses before. Then he carried on his way and we went on ours.
We branched into the right “arm” and then got off the horses so we could take pictures more easily. The bears hadn’t moved so just as I planned we could look right up the chute to them. At this time of day the thermal currents meant the wind was blowing down the mountain. This meant our scent and sound was being carried back into the valley and not up to the bears. Now the bears could see us but we were at a far enough distance that mama didn’t think we were a threat to her cubs.
We took photos and watched the bears until they finished grazing that area and wandered behind some trees. I was appreciative to see the bears and that the guests had all been able to see not just one but three grizzlies in the wild.
By the time we’d got back to the original scouting spot, the bears were visible again. We rode back to camp, craning our necks to look over our shoulders until the bears were out of sight once more. We crossed paths with a doe, I concluded it was probably the same doe we’d seen on the first night as she was in almost exactly the same spot. At camp we told Alexia the story of the goats, deer and bears. The change of weather had really brought out the wildlife. All the wildlife viewing had put us at least an hour behind schedule, but this was the kind of delay that no one was upset about.
We packed up and began the ride back to the ranch. We saw a lone marmot at Eldorado Pass. No matter how many times I’d seen the wildlife, it was always a privilege to see goats, bears and all the other animals in the wild. I was always appreciative for it and that my knowledge of the animals’ behaviours and habitat allowed me to find them for my guests.
The next morning we introduced our guests to bareback riding and target shooting at our biathlon target. We wrapped up the trip with lunch. Then it was time for the guests to all go home, onto their next adventures. I was sure the thrill of seeing the mama grizzly and cubs and the mountain goats up close would stay with them for a long time.
You can read this story and more in Charlie Botting’s latest book, Lessons From a Lead Mare, to learn more about the ranch community and the ways you can connect to nature. You can purchase her book from fortress-press.com.
Does this sound like the nature connection you want to experience? Take a look at our wildlife tracking and conservation horse pack trip here then complete our Wilderness Readiness Survey here to begin the booking process.
