Day Hike with Ursus americanus

when you say “bumped into him” do you mean you bumped into him?

I assume not : )  How close were you?

No, maybe 40 yards.

Always fun to see one except when they’re slicing your tent open.

Yea, thankfully I haven’t seen one like that yet.

I’ve seen black bears within 40 yards a couple times.  Once it ran away.  The second time it made threatening gestures so I had time to get out my camera.

Kicked at what I thought was a pesky early morning ranger checking for permits. Nope. Two cubs. Sliced the tent open. Was wide awake after that.  Hang out a Whitney Portal campground with a bag of tortillas on your car seat and the windows open. You can swat at them with your trekking poles. A liberal serving of scotch beforehand… makes it seem like a good idea at the time.

The bears over on this side of the country are much more fearful of humans. I assume, but don’t know, that it is because they get hunted in most places. The GSMNP is the only place I know that doesn’t allow people to hunt them and I have never seen a bear hiking in that place, but I know there are encounters every year. In general in the Southeast they are also smaller so that could have something to do with it.

Most everywhere in Oregon and Washington the bears run away when they see humans.  I just saw one on the beach of the Olympics.  It’s rear end that is.  The next morning there were bear tracks all over near where I was sleeping.

That bear posing for me was April in the Enchanted Valley.  I think that happens every year.  Fairly low elevation so early season bear habitat, and humans go there, so the bears get tolerant.  Right after that the bear started getting into human food so they closed it to camping.  They have a frickin bear wire.  I hope they didn’t have to kill the bear.

Yeah, they are not too bad. I stumbled on one along the Northville-Placid Trail a couple years back. There were a pair of them. One trailed me about a half mile and I hid behind a rock waiting for him. As he came around the rock I jumped up and yelled “BEAR”, raising my arms. I almost fell over laughing at his startled look of panic and he ran like hell through the woods to get away from that vicious human thing.  About a week later there was a woman hiking through there that had a nasty encounter with the same(?) bear.  He grabbed at her backpack and she sliced his snout with a pocket knife and ran the 2 miles down to the State Campsite.

If I want to see a bear in NW Montana I go on a mountain bike ride:).  On a per mile basis i would guess that I see 10 times as many bears while biking.  Some years I see as many as 6 or 7; this year I saw two.  One was was a grizz in Glacier Park (while hiking), the other was a black bear (while biking) about 10 miles from the Park.  Both were less than a few hundred feet away and retreated when we saw them.  The black bear ran fast to get away from us.  The grizz withdrew a short distance, stopped and looked back at us, then disappeared into the vegetation.

Back before bear canister requirements in the Sierra, it was not unusual to have a bear in camp just about every night in the more popular camping areas. Would hear/feel their heavy paw steps, feel them rubbing up against the tent as they went through my gear looking for food. Was pretty much the norm. Got used to it.

Once, on a solo extreme bush-wack in a remote canyon I was sitting having lunch at a creek when out of the bushes comes mom and two cubs… they were within about 20 or 30 feet of me when they crossed the creek. Luckily I was down wind from them and they didn’t even notice me.

billy