There's Bears in Bella Coola

Williams Lake to Bella Coola

When I was in high school, English was not my strong subject. Reading Thomas Hardy novels, trying to understand Shakespeare and writing essays about it all was not my thing. But I did like grammar. It had rules that could be memorized and applied. So I do find it funny that to this day, I still say “There’s bears in Bella Coola”. And I don’t think I am the only one. I remember in grade 7 or 8 English class having a discussion with the teacher about “There’s bears in the woods” being grammatically incorrect and having a classmate getting worked up about the whole topic and exclaiming “But there IS bears in the woods!”

Anyway there ARE bears in Bella Coola all of the time, but right now the salmon are running and so the grizzly bears have made their way down from the alpine areas to feed on the salmon.  So why did we hesitate in going? It is a 450 km side trip to Bella Coola and the ferries were all booked to go from Bella Coola to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island so we would have to turn around and drive 450 km back the way we came. We stopped at the Williams Lake Visitors Centre to get more information and were told the wildlife viewing platform (that is there to safely view Grizzly Bears) would be open starting September 1. Given that it was August 31, I think that was the clincher for us to make the trip.

The drive out to Bella Coola is quite pretty – you drive through the prairie like valleys (the Chilcoutin Plateau) which is surrounded by boreal forest but with those tall jagged mountains in the background. There is also evidence of the 2017 Williams Lake area forest fire where many people lost their homes. There also seems to be lots of ranches in both the plateau as well as down in the valley. I am not sure the deal with the fencing in this area because we saw cows on the side of the road many times.  Once you get to the Bella Coola valley, you are in the coastal rainforest, with the lush green vegetation and those beautiful spruce trees and giant ceder trees. And although you think your adventure will be the bear viewing it actually starts at “The Hill” to get over Heckman pass and down to the Bella Coola valley. I looked up the info in the visitors guide to write this (as I was not counting on the way down or up) and there are 11 switchbacks with short grades up to 18% and no guard rails. I wasn’t driving but my palms were sweating. What’s even more crazy about “the Hill” was it was the will of the townspeople of Bella Coola to build it. Back in 1952, the town hired a bulldozer that started working its way east carving a road in the side of the mountain. The province eventually gave them some money but it still sounds like it was mostly funded by the town and volunteers provided the labour. They hired another bulldozer to come from the other side and in September 1953, the 2 bulldozers met. Even now, I think it is actually the townspeople (not the province) who maintain the road.

We spent a total of 3 nights in the area. Most of our time was at Tweedsmuir Provincial Park alternating between the wildlife viewing platform and the Fisheries Pool campground. The viewing platform is an area by the river that is surrounded by electric fence where 2 park staff are present from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm and then it is closed at night. There are a few picnic tables so the 2^nd time we went, we were better prepared and brought a book as you sort of need to hang around and wait for the bears to show up. The Fisheries Pool was previously the site of a salmon hatchery but is now a park campground and day use area. It is also beside the river. There is no electric fence and although the park staff come by fairly often, they are not there all of the time. There is an “area” that park staff tell people to congregate in if the bears are close so that you are a group of people rather than one person (which is more intimidating to the bear who can't see all that well). We saw a total of 6 different grizzly bears at both the viewing area and the campground as well as one bear that was walking along the highway. In the morning at the Fisheries Pool the bear was literally 20 m from us (so we were definitely in that “group area”). Now as many people know, I have always had a fear of bears. When Mike and I backcountry camp, as soon as the sun goes down, I start thinking the bears are hiding behind trees waiting for me to get out of my tent. So here it was interesting to see them up close doing their thing which was to catch and eat salmon. And yes they knew we were there but they weren’t hiding behind trees waiting for me to get out of the van.  Is my fear gone? Probably not but it was good exposure therapy for me!

Eventually we started making the long drive back to Williams Lake and stopped at a really pretty rec site on Tatla Lake for the night. We were the only ones there so we hadn’t closed the curtains in the van and our lights were on (as it now gets dark around 8:30 pm). Mike saw movement outside the van and for a moment he thought it was a bear...but nope – it was a cow with another following behind. They were just standing there and staring at us through the window. The dogs eventually caught on that we were interested in something outside the van and started barking.  The cows promptly took off from wherever they came (probably to go hang out at the side of the road again).