This is a shot taken in July of 2007 along the Charley River in northeastern Alaska. As we rounded a bend in the river, just upstream from it’s confluence with the Yukon, we spotted this grizzly bear digging for Bank Swallows – a feeding behavior that few have ever witnessed.
Fortunately, the winds were in our favor and we were lucky enough to be able to drift within a few meters of this bear and watch him for at least two minutes. It was another amazing encounter (for we had already seen a Lynx earlier in the day) along one of the most spectacular, remote, and fun rivers in Alaska.
The Charley is an amazing raft trip and has been called the best whitewater rivers in Alaska’s interior. Our SOAR inflatable canoes handled the first 2 days of class III whitewater with aplomb, and were sized perfectly for some of the shallow upstream channels.
