Yup, another bear ………
I knew it, no matter how much I didn’t want to run into a bear again, I did it again.
The plan was to hike to Mount Holmes in Yellowstone or maybe Trilobite Lake, it would depend on timing. I started early since that was moving day from the West Yellowstone motel to the one at Gardiner.
So let me set this up: I am the second “group” on the trail and I am early. I know that early hikes are the most susceptible for bear encounters. I am about 1-2 miles into the trail and I have a creek to my left, I guess the creek is about 100 yards down the slope. I have a hill to my right, with just a few trees so I am able to scan the area pretty well. I want to say that the hill slope is about 30 degrees, the slope to the creek is a lot steeper than that. I keep an eye mostly on the hill since bears would be coming from that area.
At this point, I need to mention Stan Mills and his YouTube channel. I love his videos of hiking solo in Yellowstone and how many bears he runs into and the strategy that he uses. Ok ……. I am approaching a corner, not yet there, but I am looking at the creek. The moment I look right towards the hill I see a black bear walking:
This bear is coming towards me in a parallel line 20 yards up the hill. The moment I see it I just stop, I don’t make any noise at all. I think I did that since the bear never looked up at me, he was just smelling the ground and moving. He reaches my perpendicular position, still not looking at me. I keep quiet and do not even take out my bear spray. He then keeps walking and smelling the ground and I still do not move at all. Eventually he moves behind some bushes at a safe distance and I decide then to move and continue my hike.
Now, why I didn’t make noise ? I can’t tell, maybe because I thought the bear didn’t see me ? Because that is what Stan Mills does ? His approach is never to reveal himself to bears. My instinct was not to make noise and all I can do is speculate why this is the first time I don’t make noise on a bear. The fact that the bear did not bother to acknowledge me may have told me he didn’t see me, so why reveal myself at such a short distance; I guess that would have spooked the bear and that would NOT be good.
Am I getting too comfortable ? Will a bear eat me next time ? STAY TUNED !!!!
Anyway, I ran into this dude further in.
These guys bathe in dirt all over the place; you can see these circles of dirt and you know sooner or later a bison will come by and take a bath.
My knee was hurting when going downhill so I decided to go to Trilobite Lake instead of going up to Mount Holmes. Oh shit, apparently that trail is not that well maintained in some areas and it was a horrible climb at some point, it was very steep. I aborted going further after getting this view.
I think I was 2 miles from the lake and I was so afraid of the pain I was going to suffer on the way down that I turned around.
I think I crossed a couple of large meadows and in this park you can loose track of the trail, so the park service puts signs on trees (most of the time a red metal triangle attached to a tree that you can see across the meadow).
The scary part of the day ………….. oh no, not the bear …………….. I was coming back and all of a sudden I hear “hey”, yes a human voice that startled me. I have not seen anyone that day and all of a sudden I hear a human talking, but I could not see where they were. Another “hey” and I see this guy to my right. He and his girlfriend were camping and he wanted to know if I have seen any water sources. I pointed to him in the right direction and continued hiking.
