If your up at Whistler keep your eyes out for a rare black bear with light coloring.

“I have seen cubs ranging [from] black, reddish-brown, chocolate-brown to blonde (after summer bleaching of coat) but never have seen in this population a cub with pelage this light to almost white,” bear expert Michael Allen wrote in a bear-viewing report, according to CBC News.

https://twitter.com/carletonlodge/status/741988507984535552

Local tour guide, Kathy Jenkins, was the first to report seeing the rare cream-colored cub on Monday.

Biologists are trying to determine whether the whitish bear cub is an albino or a spirit bear, a subspecies of black bear known as a Kermode bear.

Kermode bears have been known to roam Central and North Coast regions of British Columbia, Canada. Spirit bears cream-coloured coats is due to a double recessive gene unique in the subspecies. They are not albinos and not any more related to polar bears or the “blonde” brown bears of Alaska’s “ABC Islands” than other members of their species.

 

Tim Konrad is the founder of Unofficial Networks and a passionate skier with over two decades of experience in the ski industry. In 2006, he launched the blog from Lake Tahoe with his brother John, evolving...