I'm lucky I guess.
The fact of the matter is that not everyone gets to have a bear
story.
The Sierra mountains in central California are home to some of
the most amazing topography in the lower 48. Incredible vistas,
crystal clear lakes and awe inspiring peaks. The greatest of
those peaks being Mount Whitney at 14,505 above sea level.
These mountains are also home to bears. Thousands of them
actually.
I had frequented these mountains for years on short
backpacking trips, never longer than a week or so with my
friends. My bear story occurred on one of those trips.
I was having lunch at about 1:00 PM with 3 other people with
whom I was backpacking. Were in the high country, at about
10,000 feet. We were camped about 200 yards from Charlotte
Lake in the Mineral King region of the Sierra Nevadas just
south of Mt. Whitney. We were having a friendly conversation,
enjoying a lunch consisting of reconstituted freeze dried food
and fresh fruit that we had packed in when all hell broke loose.
A huge cacophony of "CRACK" , "SNAP" and "RiiiiiiiPPPP"
came from the direction of where my tent was pitched! My first
thought was that there was an avalanche of boulders falling
down the mountain crushing my tent which was about 40 feet
away from where my friends and I had cooked lunch. When I
ran over to see what was happening I met Mr. Bear for the first
time.
He was cinnamon in color, and was quite large for a black bear
- about 600 lbs the ranger later estimated. He looked right at
me and then went right back to ripping the hell out of my tent.
Once we all saw him for the first time we took off running in the
opposite direction down a ravine to where the unmanned
ranger station was. A few moments later when we had gathered
our senses we realized that we had just left a bear in charge of
all of our food. We decided we go back and make a lot of noise
as a group and scare the bear off. We grabbed rocks and
banged them against the tin plates of our mess kits that we had
run off with and the bear decided we were too noisy to be
around and he lumbered off into a stand of pines just a few
yards from our camp. I had picked up a few rocks to toss at him
as he disappeared into the trees. I made a guess as to where I
thought he might be based upon my estimation of how fast a
bear might run. I threw the rocks into the middle section of the
trees only to be instantly surprised that the bear was at that
point exiting the stand of trees 30 or 40 yards farther than I
ever thought it possible for him to be. I estimate he was running
about 30 miles an hour over broken ground and knee high
boulders. I quickly stopped throwing rocks and lost any
bravado I might have felt a moment before. In a moment he
was down at the lake running full speed now down the flat and
wide meadow trail that led away from Charlotte Lake. I was in
awe not only at the speed of him but the size of his haunches. I
drove a Chevy Sprint at the time (1988) and his ass was
literally as wide as my car (a little over 4 feet).
That is a lot of ass.
For comparative scale, Kirstie Alley's ass is only 2 1/2 feet wide.
I spent the rest of the afternoon patching up my tent as best I
could. There was a 4 foot wide tear in the side of my tent. All of
the fiberglass poles were shattered. Fortunately my sleeping
bag was unharmed. I used some nylon rope and rigged the
tent to stay up supported by an overhead tree limb. It would
have to do for the next two nights until it was time to go home.
That night we sat around the campfire and laughed about our
experience, drank hot chocolate and really thought we had
seen the last of that bear. Each of the four people in our group
had camped dozens of times in these mountains and have
never even seen a bear let alone had an encounter with one.
We each returned to our tents and said our good-nights, never
suspecting to ever see that bear again. That night Mr. Bear
came back and ripped through several of the backpacks while I
slept and my camp-mates (my friend, his sister and her
husband)lay in terror. It turns out that the lady in our group was
on her menstrual cycle and she was terrified that the bear
would be drawn by that. In the morning they told me all about it.
I had apparently snored through the entire ordeal. They had
done a good job of storing food so fortunately the bear found
nothing to eat and left having caused only a minimum of
damage to the packs.
We were concerned now. We met up with the ranger that day
and told him of our encounter. He told us that if the bear came
back at night that we should not confront it. Rather we should
feign death and lay still without breathing. If the bear attacked
us we should roll up in a ball and protect the nape of our
necks. The rangers in the High Sierras are not anywhere on a
scheduled basis. They wander a broad area in the highlands
and for the most part are unseen for days at a time. A ranger
is expected to be able to hike 25 miles a day with a full pack,
even further with a small pack and canteen. Many rangers walk
this in a single night with only the moon to light their way. They
sleep in the open using only a small down-filled bag.
Walking 25 miles in Sierra's is no small feat. The air is thin
above 10,000 feet and most of the passes are 11,000 feet and
higher. A ranger in the Sierra's is practically super human. A
good weekend athlete from the lowlands might cover 11 miles
in a day with difficulty. The average couch potato American
couldn't do 5 miles unless it was all downhill.
When we returned to camp with the ranger, he commented on
my improvised shelter that I had salvaged from the remnants of
my tent. The ranger said,"That was pretty resourceful of you". I
beamed with pride. This was the equivalent in my eyes as
having Joe Dimaggio admire my bat swing. Without missing a
beat the ranger went on to say, "Except that it looks like a giant
food sack."
My heart sank.
That evening we said good-bye to the ranger and prepared for
our last night in the woods. It was a full moon and I really didn't
think too much about the possibility of us encountering the
bear again. It seemed unlikely as we hadn't lost any food to him
and since he hadn't been able to feed, I figured he would just
go away. The ranger said that the bear could travel as much
as 50 miles in a 12 hour period walking and running as it
searched everywhere for more and more food. He said that the
one we had been dealing with was indeed a big one certainly
600 lbs based upon our description and the tracks it had left. I
know that a Kodiak or a Polar bear would dwarf this bear, but
that didn't make me feel any better.
When we went to bed I was able to see the full moon through
the hole the bear had torn in my tent as I lay in my mummy bag
and looked forward to the next day when we would be hiking
out. I made sure I knew where my flashlight and my 3" pocket
knife were and drifted off to sleep.
In the Sierra's, at least in my experience, it is not uncommon to
wake up several times a night. That is why I really didn't wake
with a start. I opened my eyes and stayed laying very still as I
looked up at the nylon roof of my tattered tent as I lay on my
back in my mummy bag. Something was different though.
There was a circular shadow about 18" in diameter in the
moonlight directly above my face. That seemed a little funny.
Then the circular shadow moved a little bit and that was even
funnier.
Then the shadow sniffed me.
That wasn't funny at all.
I immediately knew that the bear was back and the words of the
ranger were the first thing I thought of - to stay still and to not
breathe. My heart was pounding in my chest as I began holding
my breath. The shadow of the bear moved up over my head
a bit more and he pressed his snout directly against the tent
and sniffed again. I could literally hear my heart pounding in my
ears as he continued to sniff the area directly over my face. I
was completely immobilized by the mummy bag so struggling
against the bear would have been impossible and ultimately
uneffective even if my hands were free. The head of the bear
was three times the size of my own. I began straining against
the effort to hold my breath and blew out just the smallest bit of
air so I could breathe in again. The bear immediately pressed
his nose directly against my face and inhaled deeply with a
loud snort.
This was all I could take. I immediately sat bolt upright and
screamed "Get the FUCK away from me you fucking bear -
Aahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!". I heard my voice echo across the
lake.
A moment passed and my not so stalwart friends asked in a
sotto voice "Charlie, are you alright??" - Not that they were
prepared to do much about if I wasn't, but at least they asked.
I told them what had happened and then climbed out of my tent
and walked around the tent to see the size of the foot prints
around my tent. It had really happened. I wasn't dreaming. I
had come literally nose to nose with a bear and didn't have a
scratch on me. It was pretty embarassing to have screamed
like a 10 year old girl but it beats becoming a midnight snack for
a wild animal the size of telephone booth. The next day we
laughed and joked and someone said to me, "Well, you've got
a bear story now." And you know what? He was right.
The overwhelming experience of having a hugely powerful
animal consider eating
you is something that you just can't duplicate. I didn't really
mind the fact that the bear might kill me as much as the fact
that he was seriously considering ripping me open and eating
my liver.
The message really is that when you enter the Sierras and get
back into the back country there really isn't any law that a bear
cares about other than the law of thermodynamics. A bear
burns a lot of calories. The bear has to replace those calories,
plus pack on a ton more calories in order to live through the
incredibly tough winter. Almost everything else is meaningless
to a bear or to any other animal in the wild.
A bear is going to get those calories.
