I ended my 2019 photo tour season in mid-September with my final trip into the Great Bear Rainforest.  The Great Bear Rainforest is special to me because it’s the first place I visited on the BC Coast, and is the trip that got me started down the path of leading photo tours.

Spin Cycle

I lead this second trip just after one week off from the previous trip, and I was headed in with some expectations based on my experience the week prior.  The salmon run on most of the streams and rivers we visited was going very strong, especially compared to my previous trips, which could have been partly attributed to the fact that I was visiting the area about one month earlier than I normally go.

During the trip we were treated to a variety of bears.  Black Bears, Grizzly Bears, including moms with cubs and even the rare Spirit Bears.  Our Spirit Bear sightings didn’t come easy, with the first one we saw only showing up for a brief moment near the end of the day.  Our second sightings allowed us a little more time with the Spirit Bears, and our final sighting was just a brief glimpse of one on the shoreline from the sailboat.  Despite the number of years I have been visiting the area, I still find every Spirit Bear sighting is a rare treat, and I am as excited as the first time I saw one.

Fishing from Kelp

One of the other highlights of the trip was just the number of moms with cubs, with both black bears and grizzly bears.  There were a couple of instances where there were more than one mother and cubs out in our sight at the same time. And it was incredible to see how trusting these mother bears, of both species, were of bringing their cubs out around us, and even allowing the cubs to be closer to us than they were to their mother, which shows an incredible amount of trust by the mothers.

But as always, the trip is not only about finding bears.  My favorite thing about this trip is that you never know what you are going to see, especially when it comes to the “not bears” species.  One of the most unique experiences I think we had is the opportunity to closely photograph a Great Blue Heron as it fished from kelp.  Besides being able to closely watch and photograph the Great Blue Heron, I also appreciated that our expert guide, and group, was able to leave the Great Blue Heron as it continued to fish, so we did not impact on the fishing.

We also had a couple opportunities to photograph Bald Eagles, Humpback Whales, and Harbor Seals along our travels and while out in the zodiac.

If you would like to experience the Great Bear Rainforest trip with us in the future, visit my Photo Tours Page for more information, or contact me for more information.