Carried away by that picture I overlooked the bit where it said that the trail was gouged in part out of the sheer cliff...
until I was actually on it, clinging like a limpet to the back 111
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The Coming of Saska of Charles’s belt, with my legs turned to half-set jelly and Charles telling me not to look down.
This was right at the beginning – where, striking off from the road at the top of the Pass, the trail runs immediately on a horizontal ledge around the cliff-face with the road dropping sharply away below it. For a while the trail is actually right above the road, like a gallery. How could I not look down when, every time I put a trembling foot forward, far below me was the continual, eye-catching, movement of cars negotiating the Pass?
I felt like a fly on a wall. I wished I was one. I’d have suckers on my feet. ‘Would you like to go back?’ asked Charles. ‘I’m going to see that grizzly,’ I said. So on we went and half-way along the ledge – wouldn’t you have bet it – we met a girl coming towards us and I had to let go of Charles to let her pass. Charles swung round her. She swung nonchalantly round me. ‘Don’t you like heights?’ she enquired as she passed. When I asked Charles afterwards how he thought she knew he said she didn’t need to be clairvoyant. ‘You looked as though you were tightrope-walking over Niagara,’ he said, ‘and boy, was your face green!’
I made it, though. We reached the end of the ledge at last and soon we were out on an easy mountain track. There were other steep bits ahead, but none as bad as that first one. I was glad I hadn’t turned back. The trail ran level for about three miles with tremendous views to the valley below; then, passing over the saddle of Haystack Butte, it began to climb gradually upwards. We were crossing a scree slope now... under the razor edge of the Garden Wall, as they call this towering section of the Great Divide. Above us, among the rocks and scree, we could see marmots 112
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Doreen Tovey
scuttling about... a prime attraction for hungry grizzlies.
Below us, on our left, were odd patches of alder trees and berry bushes: there could be a bear in any of those.
We trod as quietly as possible. We scanned the downward slope through binoculars. Never a sign of a bear. Until, as we reached a spot where a small stream trickled across the path, Charles stopped suddenly and said he could smell wet dog. So could I. As if someone had given a Saint Bernard a bath... a sign that a bear had crossed the path not long before. There was a tree patch below us; the stream trickled into it; we sat on the path and watched. We saw her within minutes. A silver-tipped grizzly female. Her coat a little ragged – bears’ coats are not at their best in August
– but still she was magnificent, with a thick, silver-tipped ruff like a husky dog’s, silver frosting on her great dark back, and the powerful humped neck that is typical of the grizzly.
She was lazily cropping the bushes. Fortunately the wind was against us and not once did she look up in our direction.
We watched, scarcely able to believe it... I kept telling myself that this was real... and suddenly, as we moved, we saw two cubs close beside her. One as dark as she was, one much lighter; probably he took after his Dad. They were eating too and seemed very obedient and docile, except that when she moved they dashed with her like playful kittens. How many had experienced such a moment as this? I thought of Andy Russell’s words: ‘To share a mountain with a grizzly for a while is a privilege and adventure like no other.’
We watched until we heard voices in the distance and saw a party of hikers coming towards us, then we got up and strolled on casually, as if we’d been taking a rest. We hoped the hikers wouldn’t look down as they passed the 113
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The Coming of Saska spot where we’d been sitting, and they didn’t. They were too busy talking to one another. The bears would probably have heard them and taken cover anyway, but we didn’t want people gawking and pointing at them... maybe getting scared and throwing stones to drive them away. There they were, secluded and happy on their mountain. There we let them remain.
I didn’t feel so noble that afternoon, I’m afraid. It was around five o’clock and we were up at Granite Park Chalet...
sitting on the terrace, looking out at the mountains, talking to other walkers who were staying up there for the night.
We’d have to start back in about an hour, I commented.
We had to get back to Logan Pass. Not the way we’d come, though. We were going down the Alder Trail, which was quicker, and I’d read there was a good chance of seeing a grizzly going round the steep bends.
‘You’re going down tonight?’ said the naturalist who was with the walkers. ‘Boy, don’t you go down the Alder Trail.
The bears’ll be about now... it’s their evening feeding time and you don’t want to turn a corner into a hungry bear. If you’re going, you go fast down the Loop Trail.’
We did. Provided with a tin filled with stones by the naturalist and instructions to rattle it all the way, we were on our way within minutes, watched by the walking party from the top of the track.
The Loop Trail, despite its name, is the most direct route down to the road – four miles straight down the mountainside by a rough, precipitous track. It is so called because it emerges on a spectacular loop in the highway where the road switches suddenly from north-west to south-east. It was quicker. It was straight. There was no chance of a bear being round a corner. In one way I was 114
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Doreen Tovey
sorry, but the naturalist obviously knew best. The one thing that had me nervous – I knew it from reading Night of the Grizzlies – was that the Loop Trail ran adjacent to the campground where the girl had been killed that night, and that, while there might not be any corners for them to be around, grizzlies were known very often to use this trail.
There might not be many corners but there were an awful lot of bushes about. The sort that one could easily imagine bears behind, on the banks of the narrow, sunken trail. I rattled the tin, even while I hated doing it. What was the point of frightening the bears when we’d come specially to see them? There is a sinister air, though, about the overhung Loop Trail. On it one remembers the tragedy. So I rattled like mad, sat down several times... we were going fast and the way was precipitous... and, when we were almost at the bottom, with a foot-bridge across the stream ahead of us, a sure sign of civilization... I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I shouldn’t have rattled. We might have seen another bear and now it was too late. There wouldn’t be any down here.
We had oranges in our pockets. ‘Let’s sit down here and eat them,’ I said, anxious for the last bit of atmosphere.
‘Not till we get to the road,’ said Charles. ‘The smell of oranges carries.’ I followed him, thinking how silly that was... a well-used footbridge here, the road only yards ahead.
We crossed the bridge. There was a notice-board beyond it, carrying the usual warning to hikers about bears. At least – it had carried it. The notice had been ripped. Half of it lay on the ground, together with the pulled-off top of the board.