Tourist Questions - Denali State Park (Kodiak: live, cost, airport)

[JavaPhil]

Originally Posted by starlite9

Ma Bears are really protective of their young for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is that if a Bore kills and eats them, the mom will go back into heat again and mate with that Bore....

Well they say that every one needs a little love every now and then. And if you have to to do that to get "that", into every life a little rain must fall

[notreesininceland]

Originally Posted by Marty Van Diest

Those bears were amazingly tolerant of TT. I think he wanted to get eaten. The sad thing is that he took his girlfriend with him.

The brown bears at Katmai do everything possible to avoid human contact since they usually have easy access to food (grass and salmon). However, during hyperphagia when they are genetically programmed to stock up on food, they can turn deadly. This was exactly the time when the Treadwell tragedy occurred. TT was the first fatality in 75 years at Katmai. But the Treadwell story is more complex that people generally make it out to be. There are two good books written on the Treadwell episode, one by Nick Jans and the second by Mike Lapinski. And there's the film Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. Jans is an Alaskan and Lapinski lives in Montana. Both are well-versed in Alaskan bush country. Their treatment of Treadwell is surprisingly nuanced and they present all sides of his composite personality. He was not the nutcase his detractors make him out to be. There has to be something extraordinary to a man who survived 14 years in the most demanding conditions imaginable. So, Timothy did master the conditions. Sure he took chances, and his mistake lay in not equipping himself with an electric fence and/or bear spray. That could have saved him. While we are free to pass value judgments on him, he stood by his convictions, however misguided. Again, read these accounts first before you form your opinion.

Now, the most accurate details of what actually happened on that fatal afternoon of Oct 5, 2003, have been written up by Kevin Sanders. The reconstruction of the events that lead to the attack are a hypothesis but Sanders' is the best one available (see the link given earlier). Six minutes of the attack were captured on tape before it ran out. Jans and Lapinski both published their books soon after the tragedy in 2003, and if you read them carefully there are are small, albeit important, discrepancies in their respective accounts. Sanders got it right because he waited until enough data from the investigation had become available. Also, by the time Sanders got around to doing the story, key personnel from Park Service and Alaska Fish & Game had left their jobs, allowing them to talk freely without the constraints imposed by their agencies.

There is an excerpt of the audio tape of the attack doing the rounds on the Internet. I have asked Sanders about it and he maintains it is a fake (he hasn't himself heard the original tape). Still some others assert that it is part of the real tape leaked by an official who made a copy during the investigation. To listen to it, go here -


YouTube - Audio of Timothy Treadwell's Last Moments ("Grizzly Man")

[notreesininceland]

The Treadwell account by Kevin Sanders -

Timothy Treadwell Incident--A Full Report and Examination

[Rance]

Hell read this and the "into the wild" books then do everything they didn't do. You'll survive.

[Marty Van Diest]

I read the Jans book. I think that TT would have eventually been eaten no matter what. The way he treated the bears was absolutely irresponsible. Bear spray, electric fence, even a firearm cannot overcome the way he treated the bears. He did everything short of sticking his head in their mouths and it was only a matter of time before one of them did him in.

I agree that those bears are pretty tolerant. I have not messed with the Katmai bears, but have spent time in many areas just outside of Katmai and noticed the same thing of those bears. Generally they leave you alone if you give them room. TT was constantly pushing the bears, thinking he and they were good friends. When you are constantly pushing something that is higher up the food chain than you are, eventually you will become their food.

[warptman]

Everybody loves a nutt, especially the bears of Katmai!

[Rance]

He wouldn't have lasted a day playing with interior o rnorthern grizzlies. He tried cheating hanging out with well fed bruins. You can only push the envelope so far.

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by notreesininceland

The brown bears at Katmai do everything possible to avoid human contact since they usually have easy access to food (grass and salmon). However, during hyperphagia when they are genetically programmed to stock up on food, they can turn deadly. This was exactly the time when the Treadwell tragedy occurred. TT was the first fatality in 75 years at Katmai. But the Treadwell story is more complex that people generally make it out to be. There are two good books written on the Treadwell episode, one by Nick Jans and the second by Mike Lapinski. And there's the film Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. Jans is an Alaskan and Lapinski lives in Montana. Both are well-versed in Alaskan bush country. Their treatment of Treadwell is surprisingly nuanced and they present all sides of his composite personality. He was not the nutcase his detractors make him out to be. There has to be something extraordinary to a man who survived 14 years in the most demanding conditions imaginable. So, Timothy did master the conditions. Sure he took chances, and his mistake lay in not equipping himself with an electric fence and/or bear spray. That could have saved him. While we are free to pass value judgments on him, he stood by his convictions, however misguided. Again, read these accounts first before you form your opinion.

Now, the most accurate details of what actually happened on that fatal afternoon of Oct 5, 2003, have been written up by Kevin Sanders. The reconstruction of the events that lead to the attack are a hypothesis but Sanders' is the best one available (see the link given earlier). Six minutes of the attack were captured on tape before it ran out. Jans and Lapinski both published their books soon after the tragedy in 2003, and if you read them carefully there are are small, albeit important, discrepancies in their respective accounts. Sanders got it right because he waited until enough data from the investigation had become available. Also, by the time Sanders got around to doing the story, key personnel from Park Service and Alaska Fish & Game had left their jobs, allowing them to talk freely without the constraints imposed by their agencies.

There is an excerpt of the audio tape of the attack doing the rounds on the Internet. I have asked Sanders about it and he maintains it is a fake (he hasn't himself heard the original tape). Still some others assert that it is part of the real tape leaked by an official who made a copy during the investigation. To listen to it, go here -


YouTube - Audio of Timothy Treadwell's Last Moments ("Grizzly Man")

Having spent a lot of time where Tim was eaten on the same trails, the bears don't care too much about humans there because he was their only source of contact for the most part and never considered him a threat unlike the bears that live around people.

As far as the tape goes, it is a fake. You can hear the echo of the voices in the room, and if the wind was blowing as hard as "Whomever" is blowing across the mike was, you couldn't have heard the voices at all. It was dark outside and Tim had turned on the camera with the lens cover over it to record the sounds of what he thought was going to be him scaring this bear off, instead he recorded his demise and that of his girlfriend.

As the bear noises go, the only time they make sounds is when they are giving out a warning and posturing, when they are attacking, they don't make a sound, the growling is all Hollywood.

Then the little oddity of the girlfriend hitting the bear in the head with a frying pan, in the original tape, you can clearly hear the "BONG", and Tim yelling at her to run. That wasn't the case in this little production, although entertaining, it was just a production in someones living room.

[notreesininceland]

Originally Posted by Rance

He wouldn't have lasted a day playing with interior o rnorthern grizzlies. He tried cheating hanging out with well fed bruins.

What's your point? Treadwell was well-aware of the behavioral differences between coastal and interior grizzlies. He was also aware of the risks he was taking. Repeatedly he keeps reminding us on videotape that he could be killed and eaten at any time.

Treadwell's biggest contribution was not to science or to bear ecology. Nothing he did at Katmai could be mistaken for serious scientific fieldwork. His lasting contribution was the footage - both videos and stills - that he managed to shoot.

To me an additional charm of Treadwell was his eccentricity, increasingly tolerated less and less in our world today. Of course, my eccentricity may be someone else's stupidity, but sad would be the day when the very idea of eccentricity is banished for good from the American spirit.

[aurorawatcher]

He just acted irresponsible. And he cost his girlfriend her life because of his temper tantrum when he went to fly back home. In the end 2 lives were lost and 2 bears were killed for it.
I am surprised he went that long with out becoming a statistic.