Covered in icicles, a grizzly hunts for salmon

KLUKSHU LAKE :: THE YUKON, CANADA

Capturing this photograph of a grizzly glazed in icicles, illuminated by swirls of green in the night sky, was the payoff of a decade spent chasing “ice bears” in the wild Canadian Yukon.

The northern lights flare only a few times a month where I live, and just a handful of bears linger past the denning season to hunt late salmon runs. I knew from the start that bringing both wonders into one frame would be close to impossible.

But in 2021 I finally struck gold: A motion-triggered camera I had set near the tiny fishing village of Klukshu snapped this frozen hunter just as the aurora lit the sky.

While the bear is the star of this shot, my larger goal was always to tell the story of its prey—salmon. Dwindling salmon runs due to disease and climate change have been disrupting both people and predators in the Yukon, especially in places like Klukshu, where First Nation families fish the river and cure their catches in the town’s smoking houses.

I hoped that this rare image, taken barely 10 feet from a frost-coated giant, might help draw attention to the crisis unfolding in the Yukon’s rivers.

—Peter Mather