Bear of a job

When a 1,000-pound polar bear is moving toward you, it’s best to get out of the way.

Unless you’re a photographer, like Tim Christie.

Then, you click away, even when your guide — packing a shotgun, mind you — is standing there urging you and other photographers to “get in the van!”

Christie laughs about it now.

But then, zeroed in through his Canon R5 — tunnel vision, if you will — he focused solely on the magnificent, ferocious beast.

The huge male lumbered along, massive paws leading the way ... and Christie heard nothing.

He feared nothing.

For a brief moment, the tumultuous world became simple — just Christie and a bear.

Until finally that guide with the gun had enough because that bear was too close, perhaps 75 yards. She screamed, adding profanities for emphasis. This time, the group scrambled to the safety of the van as the bear passed.

“Amazing,” Christie said of those few minutes.

The 35-year North Idaho College instructor retired in 2007 — but not really. He’s been just as busy adding to his impressive portfolio and online photo collection as when he was teaching college students the art of the photo.

Christie never wonders what he’ll do on a given day.

“I have 50 things I could do today,” the 74-year-old said.

In the past year, Christie twice traveled to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, to photograph white-furred-but-black-skinned bears around Hudson Bay.

The first time was the last week of October and a few days of November. On that trip, he saw seven bears, photographing five.

The second visit, about eight days, was in mid-February and he stayed at a lodge about 100 miles east of Churchill. Over two of those days, he captured stunning photos of a sow and two cubs viewed through his 800mm lens.

The trips are a gamble because there is a strong possibility no polar bears will even be found. Hudson Bay encompasses 1.2 million square kilometers, making it the second-largest bay in the world.

Still, Christie was not deterred.

“I’ve been photographing for 50 years and I’m used to going places and not finding what I want to find,” he said.

The weather around Hudson Bay is life-threatening. We’re talking 35 below zero even if the sun is shining and down to 65 below with wind chill.

Raised in Butte, Mont., Christie is accustomed to bone-chilling cold. But even this was unlike anything he had faced.

“This cold is killing cold," he said.

So why risk it? Why travel some 1,200 miles, and then some, to take pictures of a bear?

It’s nothing complicated.

Christie is a photographer and he’ll do what it takes to get the pictures he wants. This is a guy who once nearly got yanked out of a tree by a grizzly bear in Montana.

And polar bears, he says, are beautiful.

“Bears fascinate me. I love bears,” Christie told The Press. “They are just such amazing animals.”

He loved watching polar bears, seeing how they act, what they do and how they survive in a harsh environment. He is amazed they can cover so much ground in such difficult terrain.

“I’d go back to Churchill in a heartbeat," Christie said. "It was so much fun, it was so interesting and those bears are just fascinating."

One of the region's finest photographers, Christie is doing more than watching. He's eying those moments that you only notice if you're paying attention.

“What you want to try and do in a still image is capture something about that animal that when people look at the photograph they go, ‘Wow,'" he said.

He got those “wow” shots on his treks to Churchill and Hudson Bay.

One shows a large polar bear walking and looking toward him, giant paw extended.

In another, mama is breaking the snow, two cubs close behind.

In one, a cub seems to be giving mom a kiss.

In another, both cubs are curled up close to mom.

As beautiful and friendly as they look, polar bears are not to be messed with. You must keep your distance.

Carnivores don’t eat unless they kill something or come across a dead moose, caribou or beluga whale washed ashore.

Polar bears are generally hanging around Hudson Bay from early July to early November. Once the ice forms on the bay, males and females with yearlings seal hunt on the ice.

Pregnant females go inland and dig snow caves in preparation for the event. Hillsides, up from the shorelines, is where they give birth.

“They are staging, if you will, waiting for the ice to form,” Christie said.

The biggest danger to polar bears and their cubs, he said, is wolves.

One polar bear can’t fight off three of four wolves, he said, but if humans are around in vans, that means no wolves will be there, Christie said. The bears seem to know this.

“Bears are comfortable, but cautious, around people,” he said.

For his trips, an armed guide drove a group of photographers in a van in search of polar bears. Snowmobilers, sent ahead, much like scouts, cover more ground more quickly and call if they see bears.

It wasn’t until the sixth day of the February trip that a snowmobiler reported a sow with two cubs was out in the open.

It took Christie and the other handful of photographers two hours to get there. Then, they had only two hours before the sun went down.

That was enough.

“Magical,” Christie said of that time photographing the bear. “Absolutely magical.”

They returned the next morning, this time spending six hours on the ice in 10 to 15 mph winds. It was 57 below zero Celsius, 70 below Fahrenheit.

Even with a parka, boots, insulated overalls and pants, gloves, hat, hood and facemask, Christie was cold. Despite all that protection, and retreating to the van to warm up now and then, he suffered frostbite on his ring finger and his eyebrows.

“It’s the hardest conditions I have ever been in my entire life,” he said.

But in those two days, he estimates he captured more than 6,000 images.

The sore throat and congestion that came later were nothing, he said, for what he witnessed and brought back home.

He ranks the expedition up there with safaris to Africa and hearing lions roar at night to photograph brown bears catching fish in Alaska.

"Without doubt, it’s probably one of the most intriguing trips I’ve ever been on,” he said.

Christie returned to Coeur d'Alene awed by polar bears.

“Unbelievable,” he said.

Back home, Christie has been editing his photos, posting some on his website, timchristiephoto.com, and contacting different publications to gauge their interest in buying them.

He makes three calendars each year — wildlife, baby wildlife and bears — so his latest shots will likely be included.

He’s also working on a book of his 50 favorite photos with the back stories of how and where he got them. Polar bears will be among them.

And, of course, he is planning trips to the Canadian Rockies and the Tetons, perhaps even a return to Alaska.

He is at home in the solitude, peace and tranquility of the outdoors.

All Tim Christie needs then is a camera and patience.

He has both.

"That’s one of the things photography has given me," he said. "It has allowed me to see things that other people just dream of seeing, or never think about seeing."