Outdoors

11/29/09, 7:46 pm, By D. Bunker

Dirt Bag for a Day - North Pt. II

By D. Bunker -

Editors Note: Yes, this is where Dirtbag was when you were staring out your window. Click here for the first installment. Part III coming soon (it's like Twilight ...we're milking it as long as we can).

Bears enjoy hot springs.

It's something we didn't think about until we saw a few blocked-off trails and large warning signs around Liard Hot Springs — a steaming series of pools minutes from the Yukon border.

Little did we know, hot springs seem to attract aggro, nihilistic, depraved bears.

But more on that later.

Just minutes off the road from a mind-blowing Northern Rockies fall color show, the Liard River springs seems like a very good idea.

I had only showered once since a glacial river bath just north of Whistler.

A soak in the pools was a must. And bear were the last thing on our minds.

The springs drain water into a network of warm swamps, creating a tiny tropical hot spot in this brutally cold climate.

Think of it as Club Med for moose, bison, bear and just about every other four-legged creature in the area — a mini Caribbean for bone-cold caribou.

But, as we soon learned, a natural hot bath does little to mellow out the predatory instincts of the local fauna.

Apparently they want to snack and soak at the same time.

As pair of Canadian hunters were eager to recount to us as we warmed soup on a campstove alongside the trail to the springs, this is where one bear mauled a whole collection of soakers, killing two.

The story, told in graphic detail but in a arrestingly succinct manner, was truly gruesome.

...And, it turns out later when I googled it, completely true.

But there's little else — besides the prospects of a grizzly treating you like a cocktail wiener — that would keep Alcan travelers from the springs.

A long boardwalk leads you through a mini Okefenokee Swamp dropped right into the middle of the far north. Here, you can often see moose feeding on the plants in the shallow, steaming water. The main pool, a mix of stream water and steaming hot spring water, is huge, and ranges in temperature from scalding to tepid.

We met some friends of the Palins from Wassila, Alaska while soaking and an assortment of other travelers, and the conversation, predictably, turned to moose hunting and moose v. car accidents.

We headed off to the upper pool when we ran into the first "problem bear" sign.

Luckily we heeded the warning. One thing I noticed in northern Canada and Alaska is that signs are understated.

In the lower 48, you learn to treat signs as extreme cases of hyperbole.

A 25 mph curve likely means you can take it at 45 mph.

In the northern reaches of the hemisphere this is not the case. Small signs that say nothing more than "bump" typically precede an earthquake fault in the road that if taken at the wrong speed will break your car in half.

The Alcan's many "frost heaves" — where the asphalt is pushed up in humps from the melting and freezing of water or moisture below the road bed — are often only marked by a miniscule colored flag or two.

After catching air a few times, you just learn to pay attention.

I can only imagine that the "problem bear" sign would have read something like "certain death by bear mauling awaits anyone who travels this path" in the U.S.

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