After starting this thread last night, I stayed up too late, got up late, lost all motivation, and failed to get in a morning run. Ironically, it is not because I was watching the bearcam, because neither at Brooks Camp nor at King Salmon do I have connectivity available to me that is good enough to watch it. But since we get to see it for real that is probably not too tragic. 

As for the running? No problem! Just run in the afternoon, right? 

Well...I didn't do that either. The weather in the morning was pea soup fog, but it was supposed to improve. As I was contemplating my laziness and formulating a plan for the day, my wife mentioned that she was shipping fish to a friend of ours in Wasilla today. Really? We need to break in the airplane engine with some good long cross countries...

So I checked the weather, which was improving, and I had a decent window to get to town and back, so we loaded up the fish we were sending to our friend, and I launched out of here to Wasilla. I was met at the airport by our friends with two truck tires my wife bought over the phone while I was in the air, as well as a bunch of produce, so we swapped out the fish for produce and tires, and I filled the tanks and launched back. Track here:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0EbNt0baZq6qx0XUZzE24MdYXfSzHmQ6i

End result, got back a little late, but the plane runs great. Yay! So tomorrow, tomorrow I will run again. 

People wonder why I like to train for marathons in the winter...summer is just crazy around here. In a good way. 

So having failed on the running front, I'll try to answer the additional questions that have popped up about our ursine pals. 

And King Salmon is now on my bucket list of places to visit!  I'll let you know when I'm coming!  

Deal. 

which means either that Troy has to post more often or the rest of you need to elevate your game

Ribs, I have to say the level of conversation here is consistently outstanding. I often find I shortcut my daily responses because I just don't have the time to dedicate every day, but thank you very much for the kind words. But it is a pretty elevated game here already...

I never heard of anyone throwing rocks at a bear and living to tell about it.

It is definitely not the sort of thing we like visitors to see us do. Context and details are very important. That is why the interpretive rangers play an important role, because they can let the onlookers know why we are doing what we are doing. But it is the sort of thing that you really need to reserve for times when you are absolutely sure of the bear. Little bears are told what to do by all the bears they run into. They are used to getting pushed around. In a certain sense, we try to train them at that stage if they are hanging around camp, when they are accustomed to getting bossed. Nobody every tells the really big bears what to do. We aren't volunteering to be the first to try...

do they keep fish counts into the Brooks River anymore?

The weir was discontinued long ago. An escapement tower counts the number of fish entering the Naknek River system as a whole. And in August, there is a spawning ground survey that is conducted by airplane, but that is a pretty ballpark number. Finally, we have a fish jump count that is done every hour at the falls during July, but that has varied over the years because there were some years where the fish ladder was available and other years when it was not, which is about the only obvious effect on the fish jump numbers.

First, how are all those bears finding out about the good fishing in this particular spot? 

A number of them come with their moms, then just keep coming back. Some seem to just wander in. 

Are they using social media, can they get cellphone reception up there to call one another, or do they have to just put some posters up on the trees? 

Or maybe they have an information network we just can't recognize yet...all those bear mark trees could be the poster poles?

And, did anybody get signed authorizations for putting them on camera?  If not, I bet you hear from an angry manager, publicist, or attorney.

Shhhhh.

I'll do better on the running front tomorrow. Really.

Awexome!

 

Mariposai - dinner sounds delicious!

 

MikeE - nice racing for you and your DS!

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