7-27-09 River where bear encounter occurred

7-27-09: A rather long day started out auspiciously enough with our first bear encounter. As we were packing up camp, I (Mike) noticed a flash of black out of the corner of my eye streaking between some trees. I briefly thought that it could be a black bear but more likely was a raven flitting between branches. As it went toward the river, I ambled on over to the beach overlook to check it out and was surprised to see a large black bear struggling against the current attempting to come back to our bank of the river. I hollered for Patty and the kids to come over and look and I grabbed Sasha’s collar to prevent her from tangling with it. Patty made it over to the overlook, about 10-15 ft above the beach, just as the bear reached shore directly under her. As it clambered out of the river and started to ascend the bank directly toward her, I noticed a particularly swift retreat by my aforementioned spouse. Having never before seen such a rapid movement by her, I correctly deduced that she felt the bear to be an imminent threat to her health and future well-being. As I have enough trouble raising our progeny with her sometimes reluctant but always available assistance, I quickly calculated the rapidly approaching increase in my workload if something happened to her. I therefore stood up above the bear off to Patty’s side and told the four-legged brute that was fast approaching the ‘love of my life’ to “GIT”. This poor half-drowned bear that a short time before had been minding its own business wandering through the peaceful forest looking perhaps for a jar of honey, glanced up at this half-man half-dog apparition standing on the riverbank it had just recently acquired through no insignificant effort. Puzzled by this alien creature it decided the near-drowning experience it had just survived was after all not such a traumatic experience and was in fact a rather pleasant swim on this hot day, so he elected to go for another dip, thus ending our first bear encounter.
We drove back down to Whistler to enjoy the numerous bike trails in town then we loaded up into the van and headed N toward Prince George. We found a campground in Quesnal and settled in for the night. What a day!