Thursday, July 30th - Close Encounters of the Ursine Kind

We decided to hike up Swiftcurrent Pass  it was finally a BEAUTIFUL morning – blue sky and no clouds in sight!

This was the weather we had 98% of the time last year, for an entire month…we hadn’t appreciated it then, I found out.
We headed out on the trail,

with a quick moose sighting at Fishercap Lake (but no twin calves like last year).

We talked to some nice people on the way - there were a lot of people on the trail.

After the swinging bridge we headed around and to the base of the switchbacks.

I was talking and not paying attention and at one point kept going straight when the trail turned sharply uphill. I tried to find a route through some cliffs and eventually realized…this just didn’t look right for such a busy trail. We back-tracked and found a very obvious trail…no idea how I had missed that! Apparently I talk too much while hiking :)   .

We headed up a ways and then stopped for lunch. As we ate, I was looking back at the slopes above the lake, across the little valley. I saw something brown and figured it was a moose – we’ve seen moose up there before. Then a little something dark came barreling along. “ROSIE! ROSIE! Bear!” I yelled and I grabbed the binoculars (I had decided at the last moment to bring them…thank goodness!). Sure enough, beautiful, classic, cinnamon colored grizzly with two dark cubs of the year!

 It was wonderful to see them in different terrain, farther from the normal spots close to “civilization”. We watched them for a long time and eventually she started making her way down. Whenever we looked up we saw a lot of people stopped up on the trail way above us…probably another bear up there. Eventually I realized "our bear"  was headed right for the trail. We had a decision to make...we could keep going up as planned and risk being the last ones down the trail later, knowing the bears were around. Or, we could wait for someone coming down and meet up with them. The more people the better, when you are hiking with a grizzly around. Rosie thought that was the better idea. The bear reached the trail and they disappeared into deep brush. Soon a moose came trotting by and out of sight…probably because of the bear.

Eventually an older gentleman showed up. He had lived in Alaska for years and now lives in Kalispell. We joined him and soon were also joined by a family of 3 from Elk River coming down from a night at Granite Park Chalet. Our group of 6 finished our descent from the switchbacks and saw a couple of people coming towards us. They told us the bears were just around the corner and 100 yards off the trail. This would turn out to be very incorrect – we reached that corner in 30 seconds and kept looking around at where they could possibly be 100 yards off trail on the west side of the river as they had indicated. We made a great deal of noise and saw and heard nothing. We got another 1/3 to 1/2 mile or so up the trail and thinking we probably had left the bears far behind, weren’t making quite as much noise.  The older man from Kalispell/Alaska had insisted on taking the lead due to his bear experience. Rosie and I were the last two in line. I had just commented on how thick the trees were when Rosie heard animal footsteps in the stream and the guy in the front yelled “Whoa! Get out of here!” and backed up a few steps. There was one of the cubs, crossing the trail less than 2-3 feet in front of him. Two or three feet!!!!! I pushed Rosie back as the guy in front continued to yell "SHOO!" at the bears and got my bear spray out and ready and yelled “we need to give her space, we need to move back!” and the guy in front didn’t listen…he kept yelling “shoo” and “get out of here” to the bears, as the sow and other cub crossed the trail!  I couldn’t believe it…that is precisely the worst thing to do in that situation, in my opinion. Then the bears were across the trail and off into the brush and the guy took off. The rest of the group went forward so I grabbed Rosie and pulled her after me to follow them…we didn’t want to get left behind not knowing where the bears had gone. We made a great deal of noise of course and a short time later got to the part of Bullhead Lake where there were lots of people.  They were all looking up, and there were the bears way up in the brush. The man who had been leading our group in had disappeared by this time but we stuck with the Elk River family. I wasn't too keen on hiking with him anymore anyway after that behaviour.
On the rest of the way out we warned everyone we saw to make a LOT of noise and keep their eyes and ears open and to not let their kids hike in front of them.
In hindsight, I don’t know what else we could have done differently except ask the person we joined up with for safety reason what he would do if we encountered the bears. If I had known he’d yell at them like that, I would not have been with him. For anyone who thinks bears are bloodthirsty creatures who stalk and kill people at any given chance, this should change your mind. That bear actually had every right to charge the man in front yet she didn’t…she restrained herself and got her cubs to across the trail. These were this year’s cubs too, when the mothers are the most defensive. She exercised considerable restraint in not charging or attacking. I still can’t believe it happened…we were 10 feet away. We met an off-duty ranger on our way out and told her about it and she told us to stop at the ranger station and tell them.

We showered, spent some time reading, and headed to Rising Sun for Jack Gladstone's campfire performance there.  We sat back farther than usual to give others a chance at the front row.  We set up the video camera and there were quite a few people there waiting when the Gladstone clan finally arrived.  We went to say hi and Mariah simply said "YOU LEFT!" (meaning several nights ago when we left during the night) and then claimed Scot cried for hours when they woke up and we were gone (she was kidding).  It was a GREAT show (well, they all are).  At the end, to my surprise, an old Owatonna friend walked over to say hi, Jill Myers!  She and her family had been backpacking in the park and now were camped there.  What a small world! I had known that she would be in the park, but didn't expect to see her.  We talked for a while and somehow got on the subject of Trinity hi-league trips and how we all got in trouble for singing the Indiana Jones theme song while going through US customs coming back from Victoria, British Columbia.  It was great to see her!

We were invited back to the Gladstone cabin for pie they'd purchased at a Hutterite stand that day so Mariah came with us and we rushed to the store in St. Mary to buy ice cream before they closed.  We made it with a few minutes to spare and then enjoyed some REALLY YUMMY pie!  We also got to see the "alien vegetable" they bought from the Hutterites.  I am sorry to say I didn't take a picture but I've never seen anything like it...many appendages. I'm not even sure what type of vegetable it was supposed to be.

We made plans for Scot to hike with us the next day while Jack was busy and Mariah was working and headed back to camp very late.