So we have had our 15 minutes of fame. One quiet middle-of-the-week night last month the story of how Kristin and I first came to Wild Bear Lodge (then Grizzly Bear Ranch), turned it into a struggling eco-business, and our on-going efforts to end the grizzly...
I have an overdue confession to make. And it's nothing to do with bear-viewing. On 1st Sept 2012 I crashed my new airplane. I kept fairly quiet about it at the time, though some of you - especially those who have been at the ranch in...
In all the long years I worked as a journalist, I never really worked with television. Once in a while I might be caught on the margins of a wide pan at a well-covered newsy event, and one time my Mum claims (possibly falsely) to have...
Being a bear guide is a grubby business. You spend much of your life crawling around in the wilderness, poking at old bones and sniffing out secrets, and trying not to get eaten by a bigger animal than you. A little bit like politics, then. With...
She was the first wild grizzly bear that Kristin and I ever saw. As we came around a corner one October afternoon just over a decade ago she sat in the middle of a wide trail, so stuffed with apples she could barely move, under the...
We put a lot of effort into revamping the ranch last year. Two new cabins, an extra floor on the main house, and a whole new power and water system. All in all it took eight carpenters and builders nearly five months. Then there was a...
We can't remember a spring like it. It seems that every time we turn a corner we come across another bear. There is a grizzly mum with three yearling cubs that we have seen several times. It might just be the same family of bears we...
As insular as our little world is in this idyllic corner of British Columbia, I realise, of course, that my great backcountry skiing venture - largely a retail event so far - is not exactly headline news. That accolade probably goes to Putin's homophobic extravaganza on...
I had been mulling over the decision for weeks. It's not, after all, a small commitment to make. The skis are the least of it. All wood and pastels and go-faster stripes, you fork out several hundred bucks for them. Then come the boots. Great misshapen hunks of plastic...
Who would ever have thought that the great white north, land of snow, ice and endless frozen tundra, could get so excruciatingly and relentlessly hot? As I write this I am stripped to the waist, sweltering in the shade, with two fans whirling above my head...