The 1994 field season on Prince of Wales Island was very successful due to the 1993 discoveries made by Kevin Allred and other members of the Tongass Caves Project. I would like to thank Cat Woods, Terry Fifield, and Jim Baichtal for their logistical support and David Love for acting as my primary assistant. The project was funded by Tongass National Forest and the National Speleological Society.

Ten days were spent excavating Bumper Cave in the subalpine metamorphic karst near Calder Mountain. The excavation was completed in good order despite helicopter delays due to weather. Following a photographic survey a grid system was laid out and all surface bone was carefully mapped. As bones were cataloged and removed, sediment samples were carried to a wash station fed from a nearby stream by 1000 feet of fire hose. Over half a ton of sediment was screened in search of small bones. Larger bones were cleaned and packed at camp.

A nearly complete bear skeleton was recovered deep in the cave, parts of which were slumping into a water drain hole. Parts of at least seven other bears were also recovered, including two juveniles. Bones nearer the cave entrance were more disarticulated, less complete, and more weathered. Identification of the bears is problematic. All are larger than the black bears from El Capitan Cave, which in turn are larger than modern black bears, yet none approach the size of the grizzly giant from El Capitan Cave. The tooth patterns are not strongly indicative of either species and display considerable variation in the development of accessory cusps. Limb bones such as tibias have strongly-developed ridges indicative of grizzly bear, but no study has documented that such ridges do not develop on large black bears. A more detailed study of variations in both species will be necessary in order to make positive identifications.

In spite of the large collection of bear remains, the diversity of the Bumper Cave fauna is extremely low, even compared to the low diversity at El Capitan Cave. All the small remains studied so far appear to be of voles. A single claw found near the cave entrance may be from a carnivore smaller than bear, such as martin. This represents a very small number of species considering the extensive screening effort, but the site has three strikes against it in terms of diversity: 1) it's on an island, 2) it's at a high latitude, and 3) it's at a high altitude.

Prior to the Bumper Cave excavation a one-day trip was made to On Your Knees Cave on Protection Point. This cave contained the femur and several other bones of a bear (probably grizzly), a complete skeleton of a river otter, and abundant ground fish bone. It is therefore more similar to El Capitan Cave in its fauna than to Bumper Cave, though it is a smaller cave with less paleontological potential. It demonstrates, however, that otters are able to travel nearly a mile between their marine feeding grounds and their cave dens.

Between the above-mentioned trips two days were spent screen washing sediment in Devil's Canopy Cave south of El Capitan. This cave previously produced a marmot incisor that contained too little 14C for dating and therefore must predate the last glacial epoch. This makes sense since marmots do not live on the island today and have not been found in other cave deposits. The sediment in Devil's Canopy fills a passage and is quite bedded and sandy. A stream in the cave allowed for wet screening of this sediment on site. Only already-disturbed sediment was screened since the study was a preliminary one. This effort produced a marmot molar, a deer mouse jaw, and other rodent bones. This site deserves more work since it is the only known fossil locality of its age, but it will be very labor intensive and will require very fine screening materials since the remains there are very small.

Cavers on Dall Island discovered another bear skeleton that is currently under study. Identification is difficult because of its ambiguous size, but its robust build suggests that it may be an exceptionally large male black bear. This is of interest since black bears from El Capitan Cave are quite gracile and therefore appear to be females. Combining information from all these sites should provide a much clearer picture of bear ecology on the archipelago over the past 13,000 years since the glaciers retreated.