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Re: Bears
My experiences only as a tourist in a foreign country but my bear experiences nonetheless.
Best experience was some quiet 'used to idiot tourist' type black bears at the Trail of 100 Giants walk at Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP back in late May 2011. That year was a very hefty snowpack on the Sierras and there was feet deep snow remaining at the mid altitude part of Sequoia. My partner and I arrived at the car park to find just a single people mover van there with some overly boistrous what must have been school leavers as they looked like they were 14 but all had these huge sized cans of beer to hand. We passed them 100 yards from the car park and one yelled back "it's just a bunch of old dying trees". We ignored them and slowly made our way down what appeared to the the track although the snow drift still had large sections covered. AS we ventured past the massive timber columns of the giant sequoias we noted how insanely quiet it had become with low cloud blanketing the tree canopies and thick snow in many large patches we had never experienced such silence before being snow starved Australians.
Further down the trail my partner halted right in front of me and I walked right into her back. About 140 yards ahead a large black bear cub was plodding it's way through the snow towards us! I quickly switched my camera lens to the 70-200mm (first and last time it was a really smooth and silent transition) and began shooting as the cub advanced towards us seemingly without any regard for our presence which we certain it knew about. We held our ground as the snow either side of the trail was too deep to make any kind of escape and we knew remaining stationary was the best plan. It wandered to within 6 meters of us then saw us at the last minute, clearly unaware we were right there. It panicked and semi-tripped loosing it's footing in part as it made it's way onto the snow off the trail edge, regained it's footing and leaped onto a tree trunk only 20 feet to our left. It climbed slowly to about 20 feet above us and began wailing. I took a few seconds more for another set of frames then we knew it was time to move on and leave the cub well alone.
With hearts pounding and wondering if/when mumma bear might appear we scarpered back towards the car park. It seemed ages making our way back at a very quiet but rapid walking pace until we saw a park ranger holding his hands out signalling to us to slow down / calm down. We met in a wide open clearing and he said he had watched the encounter from some way back on the trail. He commended us on not taking flight and for retreating at the first possible moment. We walked back to the car park and he suggest he guide us along the opposite loop trail as he had seem a cinnamon black bear only hours before and we were still keen to see bears after our encounter. The ranger lead us right around the back of the loop trail to where the bear was spotted in an open patch of melt exposed meadow rooting for food. We observed the bear for maybe 20 mins and I took some photos with the 300mm/4 lens I was carrying all among these mighty sequoia trees. One of favorite overseas travel experiences - the silence of it all, the closeness of it all and the serendipitous nature of it all.
Worst bear experience was in Banff NP in June 2017. We came across a might 'Bear Jam' on the Icefields Parkway deep into the National Park. We had experienced Bear Jams before in Glacier NP on that same trip but this was something else. There was really skinny grizzly cub maybe weaned first year from it's mother trudging through the brown straw grass on the roadside with approx. 120 people following it like it was Forrest Gump on one of his epic runs. People were heading it off trying to get it to stand still for their phone cameras, more were pulling up and double parking in the middle of the road - it was a proper bear jam. As we crawled past this scene with inches to spare either side of our hire car a Jeep 4x4 came from the opposite direction too fast and braked hard loosing traction on the wet road surface and piled into half a dozen cars on the opposite side of the road in front of us. One guy had both legs broken and his passenger who was still in the car needed to be airlifted back to Calgary. That bear jam cost us half a day lost travel time but we missed the oncoming Jeep by a matter of three car lengths.
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Originally Posted by open roader
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