Don MacLaurin – Arrival at the Batzer Hut location (audio)
Audio credits: Oral Interview with Don MacLaurin; Interviewed by Jeff Slack; Source: Whistler Museum and Archives; Date: 2013.
Photographer: unknown; Source: Whistler Museum and Archives Society; Date: circa 1986; Don MacLaurin fonds.
Don MacLaurin recalled. “I was the guy that went up with the first flight with all kinds of equipment to get things ready. The other guys climbed up from Ford Creek. And we arrived at the top and here is this massive grizzly bear, which hadn’t been seen for decades in the Chilliwack Region. Over in the meadows to the North and here I am with an Ice axe, no trees and the helicopter was leaving so I asked the guy to buzz him. He buzzed him and he just looked up ignored him and went back munching and finally ambled off…The rest of the guys thought this was just a hoot…MacLaurin facing off in the alpine with this massive grizzly bear and that was the first indication that grizzlies had moved from the Cascade Mountains in the U.S. in to that area.”