Larger Than Life
Just over eight years ago, my wife Elizabeth and I embarked on our first trip to the Yukon.
It was a last-minute adventure sparked by a joyous conversation at a family reunion. My cousins, Sara and Diane, had lived in Whitehorse for years, and when we said we wanted to visit their northern city, they told us to meet them there in a few weeks. That openness to host at the drop of a hat, led to a whirlwind vacation, lifelong family bonds, and a love affair with the land of the midnight sun.
Fast forward nearly a decade, and our last-minute adventure has transmuted into a nearly biannual pilgrimage. We have hiked, driven, camped, rafted, and relaxed everywhere from the Laird River Hot Springs to the Arctic Circle.
During the many adventures, I have photographed everything from rockstar urban foxes to cheeky stone sheep, but one animal eluded me no matter how many miles we ventured. The grizzly.
Since Liz and I honeymooned in Costa Rica, I have developed a list of animals I hoped to encounter - ranging from the guaranteed to the good luck with that. In Costa Rica my unicorn was the tapir, on the east coast of Canada it was the puffin, in South Africa it was a hyena, and in the Yukon, it was the grizzly.
If you take a quick look through my portfolio, you will notice that I haven’t photographed a single one of those species in the wild (I do have some blurry hyena shots). Truth be told, I often miss out on my dream shots, but the hunt for bucket-list species is part of the fun. Sometimes missing a shot, or not getting an opportunity to take one in the first place, lights a fire that pushes you forward and makes you think outside of the box. By the time I made it up to Kluane National Park this summer, that fire had all but gone out. After four trips to the Yukon, and three to Alaska, I was beginning to feel like grizzlies didn’t exist.
That’s where my cousin Sara stepped in. Unbeknownst to me, Sara had set up a casual lunch meeting with award-winning photographer Peter Mather. After a delicious meal at Gather Café and Taphouse, and some thoughtful career advice from Peter, the question of what I hoped to photograph on my trip came up. When I said my bucket list was a grizzly, Peter smiled and said he might be able to point me in the right direction.
Over the next few days, Peter sent me several reels from Wildlife Photographer Alanna Rose. Known on Instagram as kluaneprincess, Alanna regularly captures photos and videos of grizzlies in stunning detail. The only problem was that her stomping grounds were three hours away from where I was staying, and I would only have a single day to shoot in the area once I got there. While three hours isn’t much of a drive for a boy from Manitoba, my consistent bad luck at finding a bear to photograph left me feeling underwhelmed about the trip.
Despite my reservations, I decided to follow the some of the sage advice Peter had shared over our lunch and invest as much time in the field as possible. In turned out that my mini excursion would put that principle to the test.
To make the most of my time, I planned to break up the trip into two days. The first night I would drive to the gorgeous Canyon Country B & B, just outside of Haines Junction, and search for bears in the evening before heading to my finally destination the next day.
In total, I spent nearly eight hours driving through prime grizzly country with the picturesque Kluane mountains surveiling my path through the wilderness. But, by the time I stopped at the Kluane Museum of History, I hadn’t seen a single animal. Fearing that my lacklustre spring of photography had blossomed into a bummer of a summer, I thought that a break to stretch my legs was for the best.
My stop would end up being serendipitous, as the woman working in the gift shop turned out to be artist Taylor Hunter, relative of the Kluane Princess herself. Over the course of a few conversations, Taylor was kind enough to share several tidbits of information. The first was that Alanna Rose was in Manitoba, the province I has just come from, the second was that she had seen grizzlies regularly for weeks, the third was that the grizzlies came out in the evening – approximately 12 hours from the current time. Repeating my newfound mantra of investing time in myself, I returned to my vehicle and had a nap.
Truth be told, I took several naps over the course of the day, waking up to search for wildlife, have a snack, or read in the silence of nature. Eventually, I received a message from Alanna who sent some advice from my home province and wished me well. Then, as the sun began to lower in the sky, I started to search for grizzlies in earnest. I drove for what seemed like an eternity, parking incrementally so as not to disturb the bears should they be waiting in the brush along the road. As the light waned and my hope with it, I decided to call my wife, who had always been my good luck charm. No sooner had she answered the phone then, as if from nowhere, they appeared: a pair of two-year-old grizzly sisters, and they were gorgeous.
As any wildlife photographer will tell you, seeing an animal isn’t the same as photographing it, and my excitement was quickly tampered when I realized that the bears were walking away from the sun, leaving me with a complicated mixture of dark silhouettes and blown out sunlight. Thankfully, I had positioned myself in a spot that would allow the sisters to walk past me, if they felt comfortable, or walk away if they were skittish. By putting the wellbeing of the bears first, I allowed them to choose their comfort level and, without hesitation, they walked past my position grazing on flowers. Watching grizzlies snack on blossoms will forever be a highlight of my time up north. And when the smaller of the sisters turned into the sun to check on her sibling, real magic happened.
I drove the three hours back to Whitehorse elated. I sang, I laughed, I tried to solidify the memory of my encounter in as much detail as possible, but most of all I gave thanks. Wildlife photography can be an isolating endeavour, where artists are rightfully protective of the species they photograph. As with any craft, there are those who seek to help and those who aim to hinder. As the sun dipped low, and I pulled into my cousin’s driveway, I counted my blessings that I had discovered the former on my long road to grizzly country.
