Fahrenheit—low enough to cut their metabolic rate
in half, but high enough for them to react to danger.
Then, crawling on forearms and knees, I followed
Wes, feeling only slightly more secure knowing that
he’d be chomped before me if the bear charged.
When we rounded the tunnel bend, wide eyes
flashed at us. He was still awake. I quickly snapped
the photo above. Wes told me to stay put while he
backed out and prepared another dose of tranquil-
izer; if the bear escaped half sedated, he could fall
into the canyon below.
The bear started crawling toward us until I was
forced out of the den. We frantically blocked the
exit with backpacks and sticks as Wes jabbed him
again—but he powered through our barricade with
groggy steps and began to crawl down the snowy
slope. Jeff and Jordan lunged for his back paws,
straining to hold on to him; Wes jumped on his back
and grabbed his collar.
The bear pulled them down the hillside and came
to rest in the lower branches of a pine tree. The tran-
quilizer had kicked in—he was asleep. Wes and his
brother changed out the radio collar and checked his
health, but we had one more daunting task: getting a
limp 350-pound bear up the snowy embankment and
safely back to his den before he awoke. We pushed
and pulled with every muscle. Before the sedative
wore off, we succeeded.
When spring came, signals from the bear’s new
radio collar showed he’d resumed his everyday life—
avoiding any more contact, we hope, with humans. j
Corey Arnold is a photographer, National Geographic explorer,
and fisherman based in Portland, Oregon. His photographs
appeared in the October 2016 issue of the magazine.DECEMBER 2019 37