I know that some of you guys aren’t really interested in bear stories, so maybe this post is not for those readers (just to warn you guys:)).
I just finished reading a book which is called “The black grizzly of Whiskey Creek”. Why am I so eager to write something about it? Well there are several reasons.
First of all, Whiskey Creek is situated in Banff. Banff is a place we have visited in June. So we know where the story took place.
Second reason, I’m very intrigued by bear stories, bear habits, …
And the last reason: while reading some chapters, my heart was pounding and my adrenalin was coursing because sometimes it got really tense.
Sid Marty, the author, was an ex warden and he was there when everything happened. I don’t have the intention to tell you guys the whole story but at least I will tell you what the book is about.
Back in the 1980s there were a lot of problems with bears going to garbage dumps and feed on it. Wardens were pretty busy with trying to handle the situation. But besides that, everything else in Banff was going like it always was.
One day in August, 2 friends where going to the Whiskey Creek meadows to go fishing. Suddenly out of nowhere, a bear was charging them. The bear terrible mauled one of the guys… The wardens closed down the area and started a big search action for the bear. But they didn’t really know what they where searching for. Was it a grizzly or a black bear? Every lead was pointing in a different direction. After a few days they shot a bear of which they thought was the killer.
Apparently they did not capture the right one, because a few days later a second mauling was reported. So again, they used everything in their power to capture the bear. But a third mauling appeared. It was a 19 year old guy who was attacked. He was critically wounded. His scalp was torn from his head, he was bitten in the arm,… Why am I mentioning this? Well, although the guy wasn’t sure that the bear had left the mauling site, he went to a nearby pond to wash out his wounds and clear his head. He saw how badly he was wounded in the reflections of the water. Still he managed to think straight, start walking and try to find help.
I think it’s so weird that even when you head is that badly wounded, your brain is telling you to keep on fighting and to move on. If you think about a situation like that, a normal reaction would be to loose consciousness (not only because you saw the wound and part of your skull, but also because the loss of blood…). But it’s like your brain knows that if you go in a state of unconsciousness you will probably die…
After the third mauling, a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of hard working people, they succeeded in catching the black grizzly. It appeared to be the largest grizzly ever seen in Banff National Park and like I said, it was a grizzly instead of a black bear.
I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in bears and who likes to find out more about how everything works in national parks.
The authors website
Kris Taeleman | 
) have arrived in Vancouver and everybody in Vancouver is hooked. At work everybody is working with the intranet TV broadcasting on their second monitor and cheering every time Canada gets a medal or scores in hockey. So far Canada has 5 medals of which 2 in snowboarding events and we are of course very curious of what the Belgian Ladies Bobsleigh Team is going to do.
