2024 was also a major bear year for me! A solo bear foraging near
War Creek in April; signs of bear seen during a tracking course in
June: a log ravaged for its bugs & a meadow-adjacent den site; the
8-bear weekend: a mother & 2 cubs on the ridge below Desolation,
a mother & 2 cubs on the East Bank Trail, and a mother with 1 cub
alongside Gold Creek Rd the next day; bear prints in the sand along
the Chilliwack River, followed by spooking a browsing bear up on
Copper Ridge later that day; & finally, our last work project of the
season surveying print-riddled dozer lines on Chelan Ridge.

Aaron Wells led our team of volunteers in a 5-needle pine
monitoring project up the Cutthroat drainage in July
of 2023; he just published our findings for the WA
Native Plant Society; see more info here:
WBP Project - Elfinwood Ecology
My photos from the project here

 

The good stuff starts a little over 4 minutes in

Slides discussing the diet of wolves of the Methow (Okanogan),
compared with cougars and/or wolves of NE Washington

Tracks from the Lookout Pack, our local group of Gray Wolves,
while skiing with Lily in 2022, then while running with Lily
in 2023 - both times up Lookout Mountain Road itself

In August of 2024, we saw and heard (howling every morning)
evidence of the Chopaka Pack in the Pasayten Wilderness
around Spanish Camp, just shy of the Canadian border

Then in October of 2024, I had the extremely fortunate experience
of encountering what I presume to be a single member of the
Lookout Pack. This time I was trail running solo in the
rain on a Sunday afternoon up a drainage off the
Twisp River. A kind of obsession has begun.

Washington Gray Wolf 2023 Annual Report

Lookout Pack Monthly Updates