The Rocky Mountain wilderness of Banff National Park is steely, unforgiving territory, an eruption of rock and ice so short of food that grizzlies here grow smaller than their coastal, salmon-chomping cousins. But one winter a decade ago, in a cramped den dug high in the treeline, a grizzly sow gave birth to a future giant. He began life, as grizzlies do, a hairless cub of just 500 g. Mother’s tutelage lasted four years, longer than for bears in easier locales. Lessons dealt in the main with local geography: good spots for a meal, danger zones better missed, and how in Banff the two frequently overlap. “Bears move around the landscape in this giant pinball game,” says Parks Canada carnivore specialist Mike Gibeau, “bumping into people here, bumping into people there.”

He committed to memory the best places to forage for wasps, ants and, in late summer, buffalo berry (tiny, intensely sour and crucial for fattening up prior to hibernation). But his mother likely also led her son to the CP Rail tracks, where jostling hopper cars have for years spilled grain, corn and peas—irresistible candy for grizzlies. On the whole he heeded mum, and had few brushes with people (he remained untagged by park wardens and unremarked upon as a “problem” bear). When he finally set out alone and fully grown, a vast home range of 1,500 sq. km opened up before him. Wardens who did spot him described an enormous animal, as big as 270 kg, the largest in the area since the mountain parks began bear-proofing dumps and garbage bins decades ago. His paws were big as catchers’ mitts, his claws—used less on flesh than for unearthing hedysarum root, glacier lily and dandelion—scythes long as knitting needles the colour of pine bark. Among Banff’s 60 grizzlies, he was the dominant bear, particularly with breeding females. Continue…