3. Independent Campers

The flight to McNeil river sanctuary is about an hour across the Cook Inlet passing the volcano island of Mt. Augustine. It was very cloudy and the top was obscured but it was still a good sight. The plane lands on the lagoon at high tide and we climbed off on to a spit of gravel that is between the lagoon and the sea just where the camp is set up. The camp consists of a few wooded huts where the rangers live, the cook house, the sauna (more about this later) and the outhouses. So first thing to do was to get the tent up and food packed away in the cookhouse. Although bears are actively discouraged from coming into the camp area, food is not allowed outside the cookhouse so that bears never associate food with humans. Bears come first in McNeil and this policy covers all human activity so that the bears have become habituated to humans as non threatening animals and there has never been an incident of aggressive interaction between bears and humans in the thirty odd years that the sanctuary has been in existence.

The tent we had hired was an A-frame type and quite a bit bigger than those of our fellow campers. The ranger said he hoped we would not get blown away so we found a site that was surrounded by bushes about six feet high that seemed to afford some shelter and made sure that the pegs were well dug in. Ideally one should take an igloo-type tent that does not get bothered so much by the wind, but we were lucky and did not have any major problems.

After meeting everyone else in camp we settled in to cook supper. Most other campers had brought cooler boxes and had fresh food which they supplemented with the freeze-dried camping kind. The water is taken from a creek near the camp which has to be brought to the cook house in large water cans by wheelbarrow. This is a shared task and Adrian joined a few of the other men to go to the creek to replenish the supply. Then one has to either boil the water for 5 minutes or filter it before it is safe to drink. We had a water treatment pack which was quite involved and needed tablets and filtering through cloth. It was very cumbersome and the water tasted quite unpleasant afterwards. Eventually we decided that boiling was a better option especially if you wanted to use the water for tea or hot food. Some of the other campers had filter bottles and these seemed to be more useable. After dinner we were given our chance to use the sauna. This is a lovely wooden hut with a wood stove and a huge pot of water for washing. The floor is slatted so you can stand and have a wonderful splash in the warmth of the hut. It is really welcome after a very cold day of bear viewing.