Silver Creek Bear Farm

Two and a half years ago Ethan and I drove a loop starting in Garnet Creek jumping across to Talc Creek and ending on the East Harrison. It was a lovely drive with some amazing valleys to explore. So today, Geoff and I hoped to do the drive in reverse, starting on the Harrison and then exploring Talc Creek. Unfortunately, the start of Talc Creek presented a locked gate! Not at all what we were expecting. It seems that with the increase in back-country campers in the area, most of the roads are getting gated. So with no way to enter the Talc valley we decided to continue north up the Harrison and cross Cogburn Creek to run up that road but it too was gated! Now we were getting frustrated.

I felt we should just keep heading up the road and so we drove up to the Silver Creek log sorting yard and then continued on. We soon came by a side road to the east which had some large logs partially blocking access which we had never explored so in we went. We ended up spending the whole day in this relatively small area. The area had multiple side branches for us to explore and some lovely sights of the mountains and greens of the mossy understory. On our first side branch we stopped at the end of the road and climbed up some tree fall to get a view to the north. It was an OK sight but not great. We then drove to the end of another branch where we were had to stop as the road continuing on was not drivable, so we decided to hike out on it to a lovely moss and fern covered area. While there we heard some logs dropping or branches breaking and at the second time Geoff got concerned then when I mentioned that I had also heard them both we figured there might be an animal lurking not far away. He fired off a couple rounds of his .22 and we then went back to the car so he could get his bigger rifle. We returned for a few more photos and then left the area.

We drove to the end of another side road and there we got out and clambered up a small ridge to gather some photos of the area. I spotted some interesting trees to photograph. As we retraced our drive I looked up another side road and spotted a bear on the road right near a turn. We hocked the horn and it quickly scurried off around the bend and up the road. We drove on up this side road but never saw the bear again. We quickly drove this branch and then returned to the mainline where we drove back to the next fork. This one opened up a whole new area for us to explore and so we ended up driving a fair ways south as we slowly gained elevation.

On the first road in this new area we had a sharp switch back as the road climbed the slope of the mountain and as we continued up Geoff looked down slope at the road we had just driven up and saw a large black bear about 30 meters from the side of the road! We decided to stay where we were and watch the bear for a while. He was busy eating berries and really wasn’t interested in us. The Salmon berries were ripening well and he was enjoying a good meal. We drove the short distance to the end of this branch and then had to come back down passing by where the bear was. We did so and stopped along the road closest to the foraging bear. He merely looked up at as and continued eating, then as we weren’t moving he lay down on a log much as a dog would do and watched us. Geoff fired off some rounds of his SKS to which the bear looked up but couldn’t be bothered to move. Geoff fired off another sequence, this time the bear casually got up and walked away. He really didn’t seem to care about us much at all, considering it was still open bear season, he should have been a bit more wary.