how to be Bear Aware
I have read a lot of postings in the Internet about bears and being “bear aware”. Let me share my experiences with bears, some safe, some not so safe, some scary as hell. I have detailed these encounters in other posts, so these are condensed. Then at the end I will list my “rules”.
But first let’s start with some general observations:
You can predict the general behavior of a bear, key word here “general”.
You will constantly read webpages describing the differences between grizzly and black bears. In reality, in areas where grizzlies and black bears are both found the only thing that at the moment of the encounter that you can really have time to check is …………… if the bear is black, its probably a black bear; everything else is a grizzly. I know, that is not the way to differentiate them, but when confronted with one, you won’t be able to stop and measure ears, humps, paw prints.
There is difference between running into a bear alone or within a group. Unless you have the bad luck to run into a bear defending a food cache or defending cubs or a bear with bad intentions, being in a group makes you 99.999999% safe.
Let’s start with the first bear encounter of my life: 200 yards into the Huckleberry Trail at GlacierNP (“huckleberry” is the key word in this story, a mountain full of tasty bear food). Talking to myself at the start of the trail I stopped on my tracks when I notice a black bear off trail to my left, less than 50 yards, next to a tree. I stopped like I am supposed to do and then I noticed her cub coming out behind a tree. That is the super scary part: a cub next to the mother. I talked to the bear and slowly moved away, slowly. The bear was eyeballing me the whole time. I was scared shitless that I bear momma was so close to me. I eventually re-entered the trail with reinforcements.
This is where all the reading and preparation becomes meaningless since this is real. Will you run ? Will you freak out ? Will you spray yourself with the bear spray ? You can’t tell until this happens, specially if you are alone.
The second encounter was as close as a total disaster as you can think of: less than 1/2 mile early in the day into the Highline Trail in GlacierNP: that part of the trail is carved on the side of the mountain, so there is no escape, you just can’t easily leave the trail without going down an incline and probably stumbling and breaking your leg.
Just like the warnings about making noise when getting close to a corner ………….. a grizzly shows up 40 yards from me on a corner and I reach for the bear spray that I clipped to the backpack (BIG MISTAKE) and I can not unclip it. I just can’t unclip it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The grizzly bear is not waiting for me and keeps going forward, not aggressively but because the trail is better than walking on the side of the mountain (and seeing the tracks he was doing that for the past 3 miles). As an act of last resort (and stupidity) I take a step forward, raise my hands and yell at it to stop (JUST LIKE GANDALPH DID TO THAT DEMON!!!). At 20 yards, without even looking at me, the bear decides to get off the trail and on the high side on the mountain slope and bypass this noisy dude, yes he just went around me.
Once he is past me, he just returns to the trail, like I was just an obstacle to bypass. He then dealt with the people coming behind me and left the trail for good. For the people behind me it looked like it was not 20 yards but 5, so when they reached me all they could ask was if I was ok. From their point of view I was ready to be in actual physical contact with the bear.
The third encounter was scary for different reasons: Rocky Mountain NP. I am approaching a series of switchback doing down on a field of berries when a ruckus to my left reveals a black bear crossing the trail from left to right and disappearing under the berries plants to the right of the trail, about 20 yards in front of me.
The guy stars eating the berries and trashes the berries with enthusiasm (not like a gently giant eating them). I kept yelling at it for 10 minutes until he decided to leave the area, he was in no hurry. Once I continued hiking, those switchbacks were full of bear poop and I was scared the rest of the hike, specially on the way back when I had to hike up those switchbacks. The bear was only visible when he crossed the trail, when eating the bushes obscured him (spoiler: this is going to happen again).
The fourth encounter was a lesson in upwind/downwind: I am winding down a long day hiking in Denali’s Stony Pass area when I see a bus stopped on the side of the road. I use my camera lenses to see what I think it should be caribou since I saw caribou there the day before, but instead it is a gigantic blond grizzly bear and her two cubs. I am at 200 yards at that point, but downwind so the bear doesn’t “see” me. That was good, since (1) if the bus was not stopped I would have gotten a lot closer to her and (2) if I was upwind she would have smelled me and decide to remove the threat from the area. At some point when I was on the road, I was upwind and she clearly smelled the area and “saw” me. Time to stop a bus and get the fuck out of dodge.
Mom and the kids, from a safe distance:
The fifth encounter was the one when I thought to myself “it’s on like donkey kong”: I was hiking in a ranger led group in Denali NP in the Highway Pass area, no trails, just exploring an area. The group was ready to continue hiking when 40 yards to our left on a hill a blond grizzly is digging for squirrels along with her kid. We all start yelling at the bear, the bear squared herself towards us and starts charging towards up down the hill !!!!!!!! Not a bluff charge, an actual charge which became a bluff charge once she turned around. After 10 yards she stopped the charge and went back to digging for squirrels while out group was making a slow retreat.
I always read that a bluff charge was the bear stomping on its legs towards the intruders, so when the bear actually started running, I assumed this was a real charge.
I asked the ranger what would have happened if instead of 9 people, there were only 2 people and he mentioned that could have been a different ending to the story :O …………………… I was planning to hike that area alone until I saw it was a ranger led hike.
At a safe distance, I took a pic of the duo:
The sixth encounter is the scariest moment of my life:
On the Firebrand Pass trail in GlacierNP I am making noise in an area full of berries when "this" happens within one second (time travels slow in these situations): I hear the sound of something moving in the bushes to my left towards me and the first sound I identify as a squirrel moving but then the sound amplifies incredibly into a trashing of the bushes. At that point I know for certain that what is trashing towards me, ending ten feet from me, is a bear that I can’t see since it is concealed by the bushes to my left. Yes, ten feet, not yards, feet !!
I immediately stop and start yelling “hey hey hey!”, an expression that conveys in my brain the puzzlement of how this could be happening because I think I am this close to becoming bear food. I take a step back and within that second I have the bear spray out, with my fingers reading to release the safety. I am very good at having the bear spray ready to take out from past experiences. I am now yelling and taking a couple of steps back, still not seeing the bear, which fills me with dread that no matter how prepared I am, I don’t really know where it exactly is and how it is reacting to me.
Within ten or twenty seconds, the bear moves to a brush farther away from the trail and me, 20-30 feet? And there it happens, I hear the bear masticating its food. That is how incredibly close this asshole has come to me. Now I am at total panic, but controlled panic; I have taken a few steps back, I am making noise and I am aware of what is going on. I just can’t tell what is going to happen next.
Another jump to another section of brushes farther away from the trail gives me the exact position of the bear, now that I am alert to its exact location. It is now 20 yards away from me and I believe that my noise has annoyed it, not to run away or leave but just to find juicy berries farther away from the noisy racket.
Number seven, lucky seven:
I am hiking alone in the Mt Holmes trail in Yellowstone, a creek to my left, a hill to my right and a black bear coming towards me in a parallel path 20 yards up the trail. I stopped and made no noise at all (don’t ask me why); the bear keeps walking and smelling the ground, it will not look at me. He finally reached me in a perpendicular distance on these parallel paths; I don’t even take out the bear spray.
He just keeps going and then disappears behind a tree and then I decide to start walking again and continue on my hike.
WHAT TO DO, IMO:
Carry bear spray in a manner that you can deploy it immediately. Don’t clip it, don’t put it in a pouch that you will need two hands to take it out. You need to be able to use only one hand to take it out. What to practice: (1) taking it out fast, (2) point in the right direction !!!!
If you are in a wooded area or approaching corner, make noise. Just talk to yourself, sometimes yell to make yourself known if you are closed to a creek or river.
If you are in meadows or a valley, use binoculars to look out for bears. I don’t make noise since I don’t want the bear to see me if he is far away from me. In that case I am so far away that I can get away when I see a bear, change directions, and the bear will not be the wiser.
For hikes that are lightly trafficked, carry an SOS device; something that you can use to ask for help. I use a Garmin InReach; they are not cheap but pressing an SOS button in the middle of nowhere is priceless.
Do NOT waste time taking pics of a bear close to you. You are wasting one hand (and maybe both) that could be used to aim bear spray, make yourself bigger, etc etc etc.
Do not run, stand your ground. Even the first times I found myself that close to a bear I never ran. Can you practice this ? No. This is the part where you can only know if you are able to do this the time you run into a bear. The moment you turn your back and run, you are telling the bear “I am a deer, eat me”.
Hike in groups (I don’t) if you can wait at the trailhead and hike 5 minutes behind another group.
It is extremely rare that a bear will charge (not a bluff charge) a group with intentions of fighting. Most likely it is a bluff charge and after standing your ground, start retreating to de-escalate the conflict.
If you smell rotten food, GET THE FUCK OUT OF DODGE. Either a bear is guarding it or is on the way to eat it and defend against all.