Asleep again. Biscuit is feeling very lazy on June 18th. Her reaction to us was as if we had never left and we had slept in the same den for the winter. Photo taken from 8 inches.





Biscuit eating sedge. A hot May put plant growth ahead of normal so there is lots to eat if you are vegetarian, which these bears have to be at this time of the year.




Biscuit's claws have grown all winter but will soon ware down digging mice and roots and chasing salmon over rocks.





Maureen and Biscuit. This looks like one of those hunting magazine illustrations of a Kamchatka beat hunt, but this bear is just asleep and trusting. We work hard to keep her safe here in this remote part of the world.

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

Maureen and I are back in our cabin at Kambalnoye Lake for a seventh season in a row. I had a week in Petropavlovsk before Maureen came from, Canada. That week was spent getting permission to stay in our cabin, working on my Kolb aircraft, buying food and lining out another year of our protection for South Kamchatka Sanctuary, which we are funding for the forth year. Getting permission to fly this year is not as easy as it has been. There are some hard feelings over missile shields and US air bases, now virtually in what was the USSR before some countries were split off. Hence, more rules, more red tape. I came here on the same helicopter as Maureen and our supplies - something that has never happened before. I am supposed to be cleared to fly within a week from now and will hitchhike on a supply helicopter back to the city. By then our container will hopefully have arrived in Avacha Bay harbor and I can clear our things through customs. We have stoves, saddles, pepper spray and electric fences for the rangers and a couple items for our friends at the flying school.

In 1996, as payment for the privilege of living within the sanctuary for our first few years, we brought a Kolb ultralight identical to mine for the sanctuary. (If we had been scientists doing this study, we would have gotten to stay here for nothing). The Kolb was used beautifully to train would-be rangers to fly until it caught fire on the ground in 2000 and burned severely. Peter and Eugenie are slowly rebuilding the Kolb and next year it will fly again.

The helicopter flight to Kambalnoye took three days. When we came over the last pass before getting to our cabin, there was a bank of fog that blocked the way. We had to retreat to the salmon research station at Kurilskoy Lake which is managed by a good friend - lucky for us. Then we had three friends who came along to help us pack our several thousand pounds of gear and food. (Nothing stays in the cabin over winter). There was also three flight crew, so it was quite a crowd to impose on even a good friend. Alexei Maslov made it into a long party. He has an incredible log banya which seemed to be fired up the whole time we were there. Maureen had just caught a cold and this seemed to help her get over it in record time.

There were five bears grazing along the river. There is no salmon for them yet and when the many salmon do come up stream there will be about 50 to 70 bears in the area. This is the sixth year the electric fence has been operating around the buildings. Alexei and his wife Katya say it has changed their life and they have not had to kill a bear since we put it up. Having to kill bears for causing damage or creating the feeling of danger was something that happened often in pre-fence years.

The weather became cloudless and we got the rest of the way here on June 16th. The lake was open - the earliest we have seen. There are still huge snow drifts left and lots of bears around the lake; several mating pairs. We were hoping one of the mating pairs would be Biscuit but that is not happening yet.

The morning of the 17th was beautiful again. We saw Biscuit crossing a drift and I went to say hello. When I called she started running down the drift but at about 50 meters she slid to a stop and started digging a hole in the snow. She had her head deep in the hole as I walked up to her only a few feet to one side. This was her demonstration of how relaxed she felt even though we had not seen each other for 8 months. When she lifted her head out of the hole she then began to run around me in smaller and smaller circles until finally she almost swiped my feet from under me. I told her I was glad to see her too. She then rolled in my tracks in the same way she has done on our first meeting of the year ever since she was a year old.

Later that day, Maureen and I had finished a few important chores and decided to go spend more time with her, but we could not find her. It was not until today that we saw her in Chico Basin. These four photos record Maureen's introduction to a much bigger bear than she left last August. There is no vestige of cub anymore. She looks adult. We hope she acts adult and looks for a male soon. There is still about one month in which this could happen.

- Charlie