After hiking three quarters of an hour through forest we reached the Bear Falls. Andy had a cold and did not think it was very much fun at all. It was a sunny day but on this side of the river there was shade and quite chilly. I was afraid we had gone there for nothing, expecting a lot and having to hike back disappointed.
We sat down on the rocks, had a snack and watched the water fall. My tactic was to look at one spot and wait. If you have ever tried looking at running water for a long time you would have noticed that it screws up your vision. Everything starts moving when you look at something else afterwards. I looked for a long time and was almost ready to give up. But then there was the first one. The first salmon that tried to get up the water fall. He just suddenly jumped out of the water and up what looked impossible to climb.
Our hopes had been to catch a bear hunting for fish in the stream but the bears were nowhere to be found this day. But looking at the fish as they tried to get upstream was definitely worth the effort. There was salmon and trout as far as we know. Some were a lot larger than I had imagined. My guess is that they were around 60 cm and others maybe only 20 cm. It turned out to be very amusing to watch them fighting against the raging water. At this spot they tried to pass a step that was about 1 meter high. It did not look like any of them made it but they probably did. In some cases though it was obvious that they were washed down the falls and had to start all over again.
A number of years ago the water in the river was reduced due to upstream industry. It made this waterfall impossible to climb and the amount of fish was also reduced. Luckily they decided to do something about it and built a staircase for the fish. Now the numbers are back to where they were before.
We stayed at the falls for an hour or two, spotting one fish after the other jumping more or less successfully through the water. After a while though the cold got to us and we hiked back through the beautiful forest.
