I was talking the other night at a get together about seeing wild animals while hiking. I have seen a lot over the years, but what I never forget?
My first black bear.
Up close.
I had in theory seen bears from a far distance, where you saw blackish blobs hundreds of feet below a ridgeline, of them tootling around in a hanging valley meadow. Where yes, you could kind of make them out, but you were no where near them. But this time? The bear ran right in front of us. A few feet away.
I was hiking on The Wonderland Trail at Mt. Rainier National Park with my oldest son that day. We had put in a long day, going to the suspension bridge on the Carbon River and then we headed back. We had just reached the end of the spur trail (the Wonderland Trail comes down from Ipsut Pass and turns at the Carbon River floor). There was a spur trail of the Wonderland back to the car campground, where often people started dayhikes then. It was so long ago, the road to the Ipsut Creek Car Campground was still open to cars as a road (the road was destroyed in the fall/winter of 2006/07).
We were close to my vehicle when a black bear ran in front of us. It was highly spooked out. It turned out it was a young, 3 year old, bear who had been booted out by mama that year and was spending too much time in the car campground trying to get food. A campsite thought it great to set its dogs onto the bear. And the bear was running when it crossed our path.
I was so excited, my hands were shaking. And being I was using a very old digital camera by today’s standards (a whole 3 megapixels that camera shot…..) my photo was blurry as all get out. I got one photo. Nowadays I’d have snagged like 10 shots in that time, and they’d be a GB each. Oh, the old days…..
But I didn’t care. My son was 5 that year, and was all excited. He wanted to chase after it. The bear stopped for that half second, looked at us, and then took off into the temperate rain forest of the Carbon River.
3 months later he’d see his second black bear when we walked around a bend in the trail…on another section of The Wonderland Trail, halfway across the park, and have a bear in the trail in front of us. Which I got no photos of. And that was OK. We have our memories, no?
~Sarah