Stan and I watch the river together at 2:15 AM. Still nothing.

Things are really not looking good. We've sat the river for three nights now and there's no sign of any bears. We've covered a lot of ground in the last few days, hiked dozens of miles, looked at different terrain and waited patiently in key travel areas.

While Stan and I finished up our last evening on the bank of the river we needed a new plan. We decided to head back to camp early (7 AM), sleep for half a day and head down river for several miles.

We reached the plane camp by eight and while Stan did some chores, I quickly glassed the hills opposite camp. High up in the sheep country was a grizzly a big one. Stan put the scope on him and confirmed it as a bigger than average bear. Suddenly, I noticed a second grizzly several hundred yards away but still thousands of feet up the mountain however this one was in a possible stalking position!

Video: we spot two grizzlies across from camp(760k)

This was too much. After nine days of hunting we spot two grizzlies across from camp. What made it more painful was that these were the third and fourth bears seen that were out of our legal area. We pondered the fact that of the three grizzlies seen, all were high in the mountains above the sheep. I wondered if we were spending too much time in the lowlands. We packed up our frames and headed out for a big push to the plateau and high country.

As the sun sets shortly before midnight, we glassed several caribou on the big flats but no bears

The hike down river took us longer than we planned so we camped on the banks of the Johnson - 5 miles from the plane camp to an area of vast gravel flats. We were too low to do any appreciable glassing that evening so we hit the sack early. We would need our energy for another big push to a high country spike in the morning.