Caprice Stoner has managed Alaska Bear Camp, a distant fly-in wilderness camp in Alaska’s Lake Clark Nationwide Park, for twenty years. And she or he’s not planning on leaving anytime quickly!
Nat Hab acquired the distant camp, set in one of the crucial coveted bear-viewing areas in Alaska, in 2022, after the household house owners who based it within the early Eighties opted to promote it. Bear Camp’s 10 deluxe tent cabins are constructed on a pioneer homestead that’s now an inholding in southwest Alaska’s Lake Clark Nationwide Park, a roadless coastal wilderness within the shadow of the icebound Aleutian and Alaska ranges.
Caprice Stoner has managed Bear Camp, a distant fly-in wilderness camp in Alaska’s Lake Clark Nationwide Park, for 16 years.
From the Deep South to the Final Frontier
Alaska is dwelling to 95% of America’s brown bear inhabitants, and the tidal flats, sedge grasses, plentiful berries and spawning salmon make this area one of many world’s greatest habitats to draw them. And so they have been Caprice’s summer time neighbors since she discovered her method to Alaska in 2006.
Along with overseeing Bear Camp’s operations, she has change into a naturalist information herself, introducing visitors to the wonders of watching wild brown bears of their native habitat—and galvanizing them together with her deep ardour for conservation. But a dialog with Caprice reveals she isn’t native to Alaska: you’ll hear a mild drawl that reveals her Tennessee roots, a spot she returns to every 12 months when Bear Camp, open from late spring to the top of August, shuts down for the season.
Caprice grew up on 10 acres on Lookout Mountain close to Chattanooga, the place she spent most of her time exterior together with her 4 siblings, mountain climbing, biking and using horses within the woods. “I used to be about 11 years previous once I realized I wasn’t just a little boy, and I used to be sorely upset,” she says. “I used to be bent out of practice when there was one thing ‘just for boys.’ Dad sat me down and mentioned, “You are able to do something a person can do once you put your thoughts to it, however I anticipate you to be a woman when you do it.”
> Try Nat Hab’s Ladies’s Journeys, together with Alaska Bear Camp, and examine Nat Hab staffer Meg Temporary’s journey at Bear Camp together with her mother!
But Caprice’s distinctive profession within the wild open air didn’t begin till she was 40. She had studied enterprise administration in faculty within the Eighties, had two children, and later discovered herself working for Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta as a make-up artist for CNN and The Climate Channel when she determined she wanted to get again to nature.
As a baby, Caprice reveled in wild locations all around the U.S., exploring together with her household for a month every summer time and two weeks within the wintertime. Her dad was an avid fisherman and hunter, and he or she credit him with instilling a conservation ethos in his children, which has formed her whole life, together with her ardour for working in conservation tourism at present.
“He all the time taught us to go away issues higher than you discovered them, don’t take what you don’t want, use water fastidiously, don’t litter,” and so on. She grew up assuming everybody inherently knew these items, however as she got here to find in any other case, she has devoted time to instructing “go away no hint” ideas to different trainers, together with leaders within the Boy Scouts and Woman Scouts organizations.
She has lengthy held a deep love for wildlife, nurtured by her brother, “who was like Grizzly Adams — he would seize animals, and he liked them.” Later, she discovered the larger advantage of leaving wildlife undisturbed, however the experiences of her youth laid the muse for her enthusiasm for bears and defending their well-being.
After her father died in 2005, the self-proclaimed “daddy’s lady” and “tomboy” knew it was time for a change. Her children had been in faculty, and he or she had the liberty to return to the outside. She moved west within the winter to show snowboarding at Deer Valley in Utah. Desirous to proceed her sojourn exterior with a seasonal summer time job, she spied an advert for a place that caught her creativeness: a distant bear-viewing camp in Alaska wanted a supervisor.
She despatched her resume by way of snail mail and had a phone interview with the earlier proprietor. Caprice held a personal pilot’s license, and whereas she couldn’t fly vacationers, her familiarity with navigating difficult climate gave her a leg up in speaking with the bush pilots who introduced visitors to and from the camp. She received the job.
Making the Wilderness House
Working a camp on this setting was no peculiar tourism endeavor. As she functioned because the “climate tower” for the incoming and outgoing planes, she additionally needed to change into aware of how you can conduct herself amid dozens of bears at dwelling in her instant environs. When Caprice first arrived, it was famend bear information Drew Hamilton—a longtime Nat Hab Expedition Chief and bear conservationist in Alaska—who skilled her. And Drew continues to be concerned with operations at Bear Camp at present.
As supervisor of Bear Camp, Caprice oversees a complete each day schedule of actions, lodging in 10 weatherproof tent cabins, procurement and preparation of spectacular meals by the camp chef, and high quality requirements, together with meticulous security coaching. Caprice is hunter-safety licensed, as are all of the guides at camp who carry weapons for additional precaution, regardless that the bears are totally disinterested in people when there are plentiful meals sources from nature available, together with the area’s well-known salmon runs.
Visitors arrive at Bear Camp by way of a bush airplane flight throughout Prepare dinner Inlet from Homer on the top of the Kenai Peninsula. Skirting the snowy slopes of the Redoubt and Iliamna volcanoes, the airplane lands on the seaside in entrance of camp, the place guests typically see their first bear on the strategy. Caprice is there to greet the arrivals, welcoming them to this snug, low-impact base she has helped to create within the coronary heart of the bears’ habitat.
Along with managing the each day operations of Bear Camp, yearly, Caprice seeks to enhance her information and coaching as a naturalist and journey journey skilled by getting new expertise and extra information certifications. She has additionally labored as a mountain climbing, biking and kayaking information and has an in depth background in interpretation of pure and cultural historical past.
Elevating the Bar on Bear Conservation
Caprice is most pleased with the conservation achievements she has labored to lift the bar on. Lately, as bear viewing within the Chinitna Bay area of Lake Clark Nationwide Park has change into way more widespread, she has labored with the park service to create constant guidelines and practices for respectful, low-impact bear statement.
The bears are snug with people after they know what to anticipate—and when people act and deal with the bears the identical means, they discover folks predictable and thus not a menace. Standardized habits amongst viewing teams, whether or not at Bear Camp or past, permits the bears to flourish. This makes a giant distinction in a context the place bear tourism has advanced from one airplane arriving each few days to a dozen flying into the nationwide park each day in excessive summer time, every with six vacationers aboard. (Nat Hab’s non-public Bear Camp itself holds simply 14 visitors; the opposite arrivals go elsewhere in Lake Clark Nationwide Park.)
Caprice can also be devoted to creating certain the camp and its visitors go away as gentle an imprint on the land as potential. With few guests and lodging in sturdy vinyl tents, visitors can hear the bears shut by. “They’ll be 20 yards away, chuffing, the cubs mewing and crying…you lose that have once you’re in hard-sided buildings,” says Caprice.
Bear Camp sits adjoining to designated Essential Wildlife Habitat, with no entry for people from Might 1 to August 31. The zone is a protected buffer the place bears can eat sedge, mate and nurse their infants with out interference. The camp’s prime viewing websites are on the japanese fringe of that habitat overlooking the whole huge meadow the place bears roam freely. Bears are on view on the seaside, too, and when the tide is out, “they go clamming like there’s no tomorrow,” says Caprice. The bears have come to really feel snug sleeping instantly behind the kitchen cabin, and visitors see them going forwards and backwards from the meadow to the seaside.
Caprice taking a much-deserved break on the seaside.
The bears don’t pay camp visitors a lot thoughts, nonetheless, as their solely concern is feasting on the season-long buffet nature has unfold earlier than them. On guided walks, from elevated platforms, and from the camp deck itself, visitors spend hours watching them. In June, moms with playful cubs are distinguished, whereas July and August carry the fish feast that prepares the bears for an extended winter.
Summer season days at Bear Camp are very busy for Caprice, however the rewards greater than outweigh the workload. “It’s an exhausting job,” she says. “I get very drained, however I don’t get uninterested in it. I get vitality by seeing the twinkle in anyone’s eye after they can hear a child purring as he’s nursing, or a bear steps round us like they simply don’t care. For them to comprehend and take dwelling with them how necessary this place is, this spot on the map—it’s our mission. Folks go away with tears of their eyes.”
Caprice says she has earned respect over time for the job she has carried out, together with from her household. “My children used to assume I used to be form of loopy,” she reveals, and so they miss her when she’s away all summer time – so do her 5 grandkids – however the camp has satellite tv for pc web now, and so they like to FaceTime.
Managing a wilderness camp amongst wild brown bears in roadless Alaska just isn’t a job that many southern grandmothers are drawn to…however Caprice Stoner pulls it off with pleasure and aplomb.
Go to Alaska’s brown bears safely and sustainably! With non-public heated tent cabins, sizzling showers and chef-prepared meals, visitors relish actual comforts on this exceptionally distant space. Study extra about Nat Hab’s Alaska Bear Camp journey and name 800-543-8917 to order your area.
