The first stand was at the mouth of the river but there were no bears in view, we quickly moved on to the second stand where we saw a mother bear with her cub (bears 21 & 22). She stood up as she spotted bear number 23 that was joined by bear 24. They were all quite a distant from us so we moved on and stopped at a designated stopping area along the river where two male bears (probably brothers) were swimming and play fighting (bears 25 & 26). We stood outside the bus and watched them play in the misty river. One of the bears did some digging into some rotten wood, probably looking for bugs & grubs.

On to another stand along the river which had been quite productive for bear views before our visit but today it was raining, raining heavily, which had significantly increased the river flow at this narrow point. The flow was too strong for bears to fish, so again we moved on quickly to better spots.

We carried on along the river stopping each time we saw bears – another pair of sub-adult bears (bears number 27 & 28), a lone bear number 29 and a mother with two cubs (bears 30, 31 and 32). We also visited two more stands where we watched bears 33, 34, 35 and 36 catching salmon in the wider shallower sections of the river.

Three hours after we started our tour around the stands a call out was made signalling the end of our allotted time. Our bus was pointed back towards the mouth of the river – but through the windscreen of the bus we could see a mother and cub and Alan managed to grab a through the window bus moving shot of bears 37 and 38.

We had seen 18 different bears an excellent tally for 3 hours of viewing – the only thing we could have wished for was for the rain to have stopped at some point! Alas it didn’t so we have a lot of atmospheric misty shots!

Back onto the boat we headed straight back to Campbell River, making no diversions for other wildlife, the weather was not great and we got the impression Leigh would rather have us all back safely, which was fine by us and we arrived back just before 6pm.

We got up early before breakfast and went to the local salmon hatchery at 6:45am in the hope of spotting an early morning black bear – no luck – but we did hear a few days later a grizzly bear was spotted at another hatchery nearby (occasionally a grizzly swims across to Vancouver Island, usually they are darted and moved off again).

Back for breakfast at the hotel, packed up and left at 8:45am back to the Hatchery which opened at 8am (closes at 3:30pm). It was raining & windy again and I sent Alan out to explore the hatchery on his own. Don’t worry there were other people walking around in the rain too. One of them had seen a black bear just as the hatchery was opened but it was a very brief sighting as it ran up the river and wasn’t seen again. Apparently the bears have learned to avoid opening hours!

Today was a slow drive day from Campbell River to Port Hardy and along the way we very briefly called into to Telegraph Cove, it was so busy we decided to keep going to Port McNeil so Alan could see where the Sea Wolf Adventures meet point was.

We checked in to our Port Hardy hotel at 2pm and had a late lunch at the pub in hotel and then spent the rest of the afternoon looking through photos and getting our gear ready for the next day.

Today’s mileage: 287km 178 miles