Caprice Stoner has managed Alaska Bear Camp, a distant fly-in wilderness camp in Alaska’s Lake Clark Nationwide Park, for 20 years. And he or she’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 house 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 season neighbors since she discovered her technique to Alaska in 2006.
Along with overseeing Bear Camp’s operations, she has turn out to be a naturalist information herself, introducing friends to the wonders of watching wild brown bears of their native habitat—and provoking them along 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 along with her 4 siblings, mountaineering, biking and using horses within the woods. “I used to be about 11 years previous after I realized I wasn’t a bit boy, and I used to be sorely disenchanted,” she says. “I used to be bent out of form when there was one thing ‘just for boys.’ Dad sat me down and stated, “You are able to do something a person can do while you put your thoughts to it, however I count on you to be a woman whilst you do it.”
> Take a look at Nat Hab’s Ladies’s Journeys, together with Alaska Bear Camp, and examine Nat Hab staffer Meg Temporary’s journey at Bear Camp along 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 everywhere in the U.S., exploring along with her household for a month every summer season and two weeks within the wintertime. Her dad was an avid fisherman and hunter, and she or he 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 right this moment.
“He all the time taught us to depart issues higher than you discovered them, don’t take what you don’t want, use water rigorously, don’t litter,” and so forth. She grew up assuming everybody inherently knew this stuff, however as she got here to find in any other case, she has devoted time to educating “depart no hint” ideas to different trainers, together with leaders within the Boy Scouts and Lady 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 beloved them.” Later, she realized the larger good thing about leaving wildlife undisturbed, however the experiences of her youth laid the inspiration for her enthusiasm for bears and defending their well-being.
After her father died in 2005, the self-proclaimed “daddy’s woman” and “tomboy” knew it was time for a change. Her children had been in faculty, and she or he 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 season 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 through 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 friends to and from the camp. She bought the job.
Making the Wilderness House
Operating a camp on this setting was no odd tourism endeavor. As she functioned because the “climate tower” for the incoming and outgoing planes, she additionally needed to turn out to be conversant in the right way to conduct herself amid dozens of bears at house in her speedy 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 right this moment.
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 further precaution, regardless that the bears are completely disinterested in people when there are plentiful meals sources from nature available, together with the area’s well-known salmon runs.
Company arrive at Bear Camp through a bush airplane flight throughout Cook 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 usually see their first bear on the strategy. Caprice is there to greet the arrivals, welcoming them to this comfy, 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 mountaineering, 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 happy 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 turn out to be way more well-liked, she has labored with the park service to create constant guidelines and practices for respectful, low-impact bear commentary.
The bears are comfy with people after they know what to anticipate—and when people act and deal with the bears the identical manner, they discover individuals 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 developed from one airplane arriving each few days to a dozen flying into the nationwide park each day in excessive summer season, every with six vacationers aboard. (Nat Hab’s personal Bear Camp itself holds simply 14 friends; the opposite arrivals go elsewhere in Lake Clark Nationwide Park.)
Caprice can also be devoted to creating certain the camp and its friends depart as gentle an imprint on the land as attainable. With few guests and lodging in sturdy vinyl tents, friends can hear the bears shut by. “They’ll be 20 yards away, chuffing, the cubs mewing and crying…you lose that have while 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 jap fringe of that habitat overlooking all the 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 comfy sleeping instantly behind the kitchen cabin, and friends see them going backwards and forwards from the meadow to the seaside.
Caprice taking a much-deserved break on the seaside.
The bears don’t pay camp friends a lot thoughts, nevertheless, 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, friends spend hours watching them. In June, moms with playful cubs are outstanding, whereas July and August deliver the fish feast that prepares the bears for a protracted 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 appreciate and take house with them how necessary this place is, this spot on the map—it’s our mission. Folks depart with tears of their eyes.”
Caprice says she has earned respect over time for the job she has performed, together with from her household. “My children used to suppose I used to be sort of loopy,” she reveals, they usually miss her when she’s away all summer season – so do her 5 grandkids – however the camp has satellite tv for pc web now, they usually like to FaceTime.
Managing a wilderness camp amongst wild brown bears in roadless Alaska 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 personal heated tent cabins, scorching showers and chef-prepared meals, friends relish actual comforts on this exceptionally distant space. Be taught extra about Nat Hab’s Alaska Bear Camp journey and name 800-543-8917 to order your area.
