Heading out

It rained yesterday, and today’s parting clouds reveal that snow has reached the tree line of the lower peaks. Our neighbor Bob came over in the morning drizzle to say goodbye before heading home to Utah. He’d seen the otters that have eluded us on this trip, while not even looking for them. That seems to be the way it is with wildlife spotting.
Our two weeks in the Grand Tetons have encompassed the beginnings, full-blown splendor and now, seemingly, the closing days of autumn. We arrived to the first touch of color in the trees and within a week brilliant yellow cottonwoods competed with orange-gold aspens and scarlet chokecherries in eye-popping brilliance. Now, already, some trees are bare and the increasingly chill wind brings a swirling shower of golden leaves fluttering to the ground.
Buffalo and serviceberries along trails have been browsed clean by bears, and we’ve noticed the tips of all the bull elks’ antlers are white, their surface probably worn down by constant sparring.
We shared a campfire the other night with Bob, who was here for a photography workshop at Yellowstone. While a coyote yipped nearby, he spoke of his frustration at not capturing what he wanted in his photographs, the clear skies depriving him of the Ansel Adams-style clouds he craves. Still, he was putting in long days, in search of that elusive Kodak moment everyone seeks in these parts. We wanted animals, he wanted clouds. We preferred the Tetons’ jagged peaks and sage meadows to Yellowstone’s fire-scarred forests and geothermal wonders.
We all agreed we were in a magical place.
We chatted about the high-altitude prices of real estate in the area, making those in Napa Valley pale in comparison. Even Dick Cheney is reportedly building in Idaho. “All the millionaires are leaving Jackson,” Bob said. “Only the billionaires can afford it.”
Snow is predicted Thursday. Most campgrounds in the park are closed, and ours will shut down in another week. Animals seem scarcer.
We took a last drive on Antelope Flats, then looped around the park. As we passed the Jackson Lake dam, Terry spotted it: a young grizzly heading our way. He crossed the road in front of us -- our grizzly moment. We saw him first. Within seconds, there was a mini bear jam, and within a minute he was gone. Such is the sheer improbability of being in the right place at the right second in time.
The elk are on the move, and so are we. Tomorrow we’re off to Montana and Idaho.

Finally, a grizzly

Each day has been a new discovery. We drove to Kelly warm springs, caused by the massive Gros Ventre landslide in the ‘20s. The water remains unfrozen during the bitter winters, once a welcome resource for the settlers on Mormon Row and still visited by local bison herds, who wallow in its steaming mud on frosty mornings. Farther up, we saw the slide itself – the largest movement of land ever in the U.S., now covered by a patchwork quilt of blue-green spruce and lemon yellow aspen. The lake formed by the slide has a beautiful campground, where we could stay for only $6.
One day we found a series of badger holes at historic Mormon Row, where early settlers homesteaded, leaving behind picturesque barns, houses and buck-rail fences now part of the park. Strong diggers, the badgers had flung out rocks the size of grapefruits during their excavations -- in search of. hibernating ground squirrels, we later learned from naturalists. Some small animals were already hibernating in September and one, the marmot, goes into such a deep “sleep” its body temperature drops by half and it wouldn’t rouse even if dragged from its hole.
A coyote raised a litter of pups here at the campground this spring, and we often hear the yip-howls in early morning or night. I found her den, surprisingly close to the road. Sometimes coyotes hunt cooperatively with badgers, one unearthing and the other snatching prey. As I write this at our campsite, we can see a coyote off in the sage, throwing back its head to howl in the classic pose captured in Southwestern tourist knickknacks. Our neighborhood bull moose just wandered through, prompting a frenzied chase by those big-lens photographers.
I completed the test and got my Junior Ranger badge the other day, holding up my right hand and promising to “respect, appreciate and preserve the natural world,” while an impatient tourist rolled his eyes, waiting behind me to talk to the ranger at the visitor center. I absolutely was not the oldest Junior Ranger on record, the kindly ranger told me, saying he’d sworn in a 91-year-old the other day.
Our friendly campground neighbors, Norma and Gary, have been coming here for decades and they’ve seen it all: a young bald eagle accidentally bumped from the nest by a sibling to crash to the ground (he survived) and a mother grizzly grabbing a minutes-old elk calf, growling a warning to her two hungry cubs to remain in the protective cover of the trees. It was Gary who came over with news of the black bear the other night, prompting us to abandon dinner plans and dash off to Jenny Lake.
There, I overheard talk of “another carcass … grizzly at the dam” so we headed there the next evening, noted the “bear jam” of cars and parked. Nearly a mile out on the dam was a group of spotters, including two rangers with scopes. As the light quickly faded, we saw the grizzly working the carcass of an elk, which by now resembled an elk rug. She was the two-year-old offspring of #399, and another ranger had seen her drag the dead elk from the water several days ago. She’d been guarding it night and day, driving off even the opportunistic ravens who crept up in her shadow. A mass of coots darkened the shallows of the lake, Canada geese honked in the distance and other elk bugled in the willows across the road while we watched the grizzly. Her silver-gray body appeared massive even at this distance, and we observed the powerful hump of muscle at her shoulders. She was gorgeous.
The bear’s mother, Grizzly #399, had achieved a degree of fame two years ago because she raised three cubs often in view of humans, delighting spotters and rangers alike. A male cub was frequently spotted in Willow Flats; the whereabouts and gender of the third was unknown.
We returned at first light the next morning and the grizzly was still there, now with a coyote skirting her warily. He came close once but never risked the bear’s wrath, and finally seemed to abandon hope, crossing the dam and trotting off in the meadow.
A return to the scene of the black bear was less pleasant. The stench of the rotting elk was overpowering, and a mob of photographers – including a tourist bus – had driven the bear into the shadows of the trees.
“Send a tourist in there,” bellowed a Scot in shorts and an open vest that displayed a bear-size belly, fiddling with the long-lens camera atop a tripod. “Maybe that’ll drive the bear out.”
We left.
Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/ADayInTeton02#5253034245516140114

Shooting wildlife

I stood brushing shoulders with the man in the baseball cap as we stared at the elk carcass through binoculars, maybe 60 feet away at the edge of the woods. Terry had set up the spotting scope in the only other vantage point, just behind us, but most of the others were 30 feet away, some sporting telephoto lenses the length of baseball bats. The black bear had left an hour and a half ago, the crowd told us, but one woman who’d been there all day had some prize shots.
We’ve learned the protocol of wildlife viewing. Everyone’s here to view it and shoot it, if only with a point-and-shoot, like me. Tips on finding wildlife are shared generously, and it’s bad form to be blasé about someone’s first moose, even though they frequently wander through your campground practically within reach.
Volunteers with the park service set up spotting scopes for all to use, and dispense a wealth of information, along with herding viewers off the highway as 18-wheelers fly by. But the photographers with the big expensive telephoto lenses rule the roost. They plant their tripods in the prime spots, taking up a big chunk of real estate for the duration, and even if they’re chatting several feet away from their cameras, one clearly must ask their permission to step into their viewing spot.
So the guy we were with had found the only other vantage point, and being late arrivals we joined him.
Huge flies buzzed over the carcass and a raven landed in a nearby tree.
“So the bear’s gone?”
“Oh no, the bear’s there. She’s just moved and is lying down behind the elk.”
“But they said…” I realized the crowd’s prime viewing spot was prime no longer. Then something moved. A round black ear. The bear.
Of course we didn’t tell the smug ones, but spoke sotto voce among the three of us.
“Is that…?”
“Yes, a foot.”
Then the head appeared. The bear was tagged, and wore a collar. She scratched behind her left ear like a dog. We were enthralled.
A young blond woman joined us, but the bear was out of view. She and her husband had viewed sunrise at the Oxbow, then headed up Two Ocean Road, a prime bear spot. We’d been up there several days ago, realized that was the place where we’d ridden our bikes and seen bear tracks the last time we visited years ago, but saw nothing. They’d arrived at the lake at the end of the road soon after first light, heard a loud roar very nearby, and as they headed for their car, the bloodcurdling screams of “something being torn apart.”
“And I thought I’d wanted to see a bear,” she said as she walked away.
In front of us the bear rolled over. Four paws in the air.
The bull elk had been there two days, probably killed during the rut by a rival, a ranger said. The area was closed off with plastic tape like a crime scene.
Another woman arrived and we all squeezed together so she could get a look. An RV passed slowly and we all smelled it at once: “They’re leaking propane.”
But within minutes we realized there’d been an imperceptible shift in the unfelt breeze and we were smelling the elk. There was a crashing through the underbrush so close we jumped. Then the eerie bugle of an elk – very close. The bear was up instantly, sniffing the wind, big black nose twitching. Then she was on point, staring into the clearing beyond the trees. Within seconds, an enormous bull elk trotted through the clearing, impressive rack held high. Could it have been the victor, checking to see whether his rival had been permanently vanquished?
We all thought it may have been.
…………………

We returned to Gros Ventre campground in the darkness, exhilarated. Driving along the river where we see bison each day, we dimmed our lights at the approach of an oncoming car, lessening our field of vision. Just then, from the corner of my eye, I caught a moving shadow, Terry slammed on the brakes and the herd was upon us, crossing the road within feet of the front bumper, the big bulls, as always, stopping dead in the center of the road and giving you the stink eye.
Now when we come home after dark we drive extra slowly. We’ve decided to call this busy road Gros Gauntlet.
Over 100 large animals are killed yearly by cars in the park, and hitting a 2,000 pound bison would probably kill your car.
Next installment: we see our grizzly.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TetonScenics#5252205664191238610 and http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/Yellowstone#5252212187166229682