“AS BIG AS THEY ARE, A CARIBOU’S ANTLERS CANNOT PROTECT IT FROM A POWERFUL GRIZZLY.”
Just as Dad had said, the path wasn’t very long. It cut a narrow swath through the forest and ended at the wide rocky bed of the Teklanika River. The glacial river was the same gray color as the rocks. It didn’t even look like real water. The powerful force from the slow movement of glaciers ground up rocks and filled the water with grit, making it look more like liquid cement. Instead of stretching from bank to bank, the water rushed in narrow channels that intertwined and alternated with wide gravel bars. Buck and Toni stood on the bank a couple of feet above one of the gravel bars.
“I can see why the junior ranger book said the rivers here are called braided rivers,” Toni said. She started to turn back toward the campground, but Buck jumped down.
“You shouldn’t be going out there,” Toni said. Buck ignored her and walked away.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Toni said louder. “You shouldn’t go out there.”
Buck stopped and turned around. “What’s the big deal? It’s not like we’ll get lost on a riverbed.”
“What if a bear’s out there?”
“If there was a bear out here, you’d see it.”
“Not necessarily. It could be hiding.”
“Where?”
“There,” Toni said, pointing to a grove of willow trees growing on one of the gravel bars just upstream from them. “That’s so thick, you can’t see if there’s anything in there or not.”
“If you’re so worried, we won’t go that direction.” Buck turned downstream. After a few yards he turned back to Toni.
“Are you coming or not?”
“I guess,” she said, “but only because your dad told us we had to stay together.”
Toni jumped down, and they walked to the edge of the first river channel. It was only about two feet wide, but the water was so gray, it was impossible to tell how deep it was. Buck squatted at the edge and reached in up to his elbow.
“It’s freezing!” he said, and splashed water at Toni. Toni splashed him back.
“And gritty,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “I wouldn’t want to have to drink it.”
They jumped across the narrow stream and ran to the next channel. The water in this channel was racing, wild and turbulent. It was way too wide to jump across. They followed the churning water downstream until they came to a long mudflat. It was the color of a dark rain cloud and looked really gooey. Buck stood in the gravel at the edge of the mud, bending his knees and swinging his arms forward and backward.
“You aren’t going to jump in that, are you?” Toni asked.
“Why not?”
“You’ll sink in over your knees.”
Buck grinned at Toni, still bending his knees and swinging his arms.
“I’m not coming in after you if you get stuck,” she warned.
Buck laughed and sprang as far as he could, but when he landed it wasn’t gooey at all. It was almost solid, like wet sand. Buck stomped around and looked at his footprints. The soles of his shoes made a pattern of little triangles in the gritty mud. Toni joined him. Her shoes left rows of zigzags.
They continued walking downstream, sometimes on gravel bars, sometimes making tracks on mudflats. They had just run to another mudflat and Buck was mid-jump when Toni yelled out.
“Watch out! Don’t land on them.”
Buck’s feet landed only an inch away from two different impressions.
“Wow! That’s a bear print. Look at how long the claw marks are. It could rip you right open with just one swipe.” Buck slashed through the air with his fingers curled like claws.
“That other one’s a caribou,” Toni stated.
“How do you know? It could be a moose or maybe a deer.”
“I bet you it isn’t. I bet you it’s a caribou.”
“What are you going to bet?”
“A chocolate bar.”
“I don’t have a chocolate bar.”
“Yeah, you do. I got one for each of us at the mercantile. You in?”
“In,” said Buck. He pulled out his camera and took a picture of the tracks. Then he put his foot between the two prints and took another picture.
“You’re going to lose,” Toni said, squatting down to examine the prints. “First off, there aren’t any deer in this part of Alaska.”
“How do you know?”
“I read it in the junior ranger booklet.”
“It could still be a moose,” Buck said, shrugging.
“Nope,” Toni said. “There are pictures of animal tracks in the booklet too. A moose track is long and looks like an upside-down heart divided in half. Caribou tracks are more rounded, kind of a horseshoe shape.”
Saying nothing, Buck quickly walked away, kicking at the gravel. But suddenly he stopped short.
“Toni, look at that!” he said, instantly forgetting his irritation at being tricked out of a chocolate bar.
“What?” Toni asked, hurrying to catch up.
About two hundred yards downstream, the riverbed turned to the right. Standing on a gravel bar was a huge bull caribou. It was stripping leaves from willow bushes.
“Wow! Look at the size of his rack,” Toni said. Its antlers curved in a huge semicircle. “Have you ever seen a caribou before?”
“Not in the wild.” Buck took out his camera, zoomed in, and clicked. “It’s not paying any attention. I bet we could get closer.”
“It says in the booklet not to approach wildlife.”
“We won’t be. If we go over to the bank, we can creep closer through the woods. It won’t even know we’re there.”
“Okay,” Toni agreed. “It’s a few feet higher up on the bank too. You’ll be able to get a better shot.”
Buck and Toni crept toward the bank, keeping the caribou in sight. The caribou didn’t notice them as they sneaked closer through the cover of the forest. As Buck took more pictures, it continued eating leaves from one willow to the next along the near side of the wide band of turbulent water.
“Holy cow!” Buck suddenly cried out.
A huge grizzly rushed out from a thicket a little farther downstream and headed straight toward the caribou. The grizzly covered the hundred yards in just a few seconds, leaving the caribou no time to turn and run. The caribou put its head down in defense, its rack extending toward the bear. It charged, but its threatening rack did not intimidate the grizzly. The bear attacked. It forced its head between the lunging antlers and raised up on its hind legs, its front claws gripping the sides of the caribou’s neck. The caribou continued its headlong charge. It pushed the bear backward into the rushing water, but the bear hung on and the caribou was pulled into the water too. It twisted and bucked over and over, trying to throw the bear off, water flying in all directions. But the bear hung on.
With each twist, each turn, each buck, the bear gained more control. Then, in one quick motion, it forced the caribou’s head to turn, giving the bear just enough room to dodge its head under an antler. Buck and Toni watched, wide-eyed, as the grizzly clamped its teeth tight into the caribou’s neck. The caribou bucked violently, but now the bear’s weight was on top of it. The massive grizzly wrestled the majestic caribou down into the rushing water. Then, its teeth still biting into the caribou’s neck, the bear savagely shook its head until the caribou’s body went limp.
Buck thought the bear would let go, but it didn’t. It easily pulled the dead caribou through the water to the edge of the gravel bar. Then, moving backward, the bear struggled to drag the heavy carcass halfway up onto the gravel bar before it started to feed.
Buck had been holding his breath the whole time. He had been so mesmerized, he hadn’t even noticed that Toni had taken his camera from his hand.
“Holy cow,” he said again. “Did you see how he hung on? It was like watching a rodeo.”
“Got the whole thing on video,” Toni said, keeping the camera aimed at the bear.
“Look at him eating. He’s just ripping the meat off of it. And did you see how fast he ran?”
Buck’s words had left his mouth without thinking, but both he and Toni instantly grasped their implication.
“We’d better get out of here!” Buck said.