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steve s
Trad climber
eldo
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Great story and thread! Also some good info about dealing with bears which most climbers should at least be prepared for.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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I've had lots of bear encounters in Idaho, Wyoming, BC, and Yosemite. However most of my personal experience stories have been related elsewhere on ST and don't really stand up to the ones on this thread in any case.
However some stories from my 'helicopter cousin' in Alaska may be worth passing along. He flew many combat missions in Vietnam in Huey Cobras and then returned to the states as a commercial pilot. For a while we shared a business in Oregon with a Kaman Huskey UH-43B…until it flung a blade in the air one day...so I got to hear a bunch of stories. I can't vouch for any of them, but they are fun to tell:
One time he and a girlfriend were making out in a Cessna 180 parked in the snow next to a runway. A mama grizzly with a couple of cubs came walking across the runway and by chance towards their plane with the windows mostly fogged up. The girl freaked out and made some noise, but my cousin managed to get her to quiet down. The mama veered towards the plane and picked up the smell and started acting disturbed, while the cubs just kept going. As the cubs wandered off, the mama got distracted and snorted and walked off after them.
So my cousin had a contract to fly all over parts of Alaska and land next to streams to collect samples of wet sand and code them to map positions…looking for gold bearing sands. Since these were salmon streams, there were often bears getting interested in the noisy helicopter. So he would fly above the bears and attract them off a mile or so from where he wanted to land, then zip back and collect a sample before the bears could catch him on the ground. The vibrations of the helicopter worked nicely to shake out the gold flakes to the bottom of the plastic bags. Needless to say, he kept some of the more interesting samples for himself.
He told another interesting story about an old grandmother who used to walk the beach by herself. One day she walked around a big boulder to find a large grizzly walking around towards her from the other side a few feet away. The startled bear reared up on it's hind legs and gave a great roar. So she reciprocated, waving her arms and giving her best roar. The bear politely agreed and they each turned around and walked back retracing their steps.
He also told a story of a group of marines who decided to go off grizzly hunting in a jeep with a mounted M-60 machine gun along with their M-16s. When they didn't return, their friends went looking for them the next day. They found the Jeep tipped over, the Marines dead with all their ammo expended, a blood trail starting about 100 yards out leading to the Jeep, and the dead grizzly some distance off from the Jeep.
Ok, so to repeat, I can't vouch for any of these stories…or a zillion other war stories he told me…but I am guessing they were not invented out of thin air...
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Great stories, Tom! The most amazing thing, though, was the couple making out in a Cessna 180!
Brian - your thread got hijacked by bear stories. Sorry! That must have been a hellish experience.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Shooting a bear at 200 yards is just foolish. If people shot every bear that acted aggressive, at that distance, they would run out of bears up there. I waited until the last possible second, knowing I would put one good slug into its chest. Hopefully that will slow him down, and you can pump 4 more into him. Then wait 30 minutes and go over to put another round into him. An injured griz is bound to be pissed off.
In village Alaska, bears are a regular topic. I remember floating the Unalakleet River during salmon spawning season, and the river banks were covered with HUGE tracks. They get really big on salmon streams.
After we were dropped off, the eskimo who had taken us 75 miles upstream in his boat equipped with an outboard jet for shallow water, told us,
"Don't worry about the bears. They never bother anybody". On that trip, I saw an enourmous bear swim the stream below us in the late twilight. He looked like a dinosaur, he was so big. Not one bear bothered us, and the ones who saw us ran away at top speed. They get hunted in that area.
All of these bear rules go out the window in the national parks. In those places, such as Yellowstone and Glacier, along with the Canadian parks, the bears have near constant interaction with people. They aren't scared of them, because nobody hunts them. Most of the real horror story predatory attacks seem to happen in those areas.
I've spent a lot of time in Yellowstone. Even went on a cross country ski trip in winter once. It is a terribly spooky place, because the bears are accustomed to people and are not scared of them in the least. I really fear the dark in those places, and at this age, not much scares me. Alaska or backcountry Canada is different, and most encounters are similar to the ones I described.
I know that Obama signed a law permitting the carry of loaded firearms in National Parks a while back. Still, if you kill a bear, they treat almost treat it like killing a person. You can get charged with fines and all that. I've met a lot of guides, and they say that pepper spray works, but the bear has to be less than ten feet away for it to work.
Anyone up on polar bears? I've never seen one, but have seen many fresh tracks. They are considered marine mammals, and rarely stray very far inland.
The oil companies on the north slope know the denning sites, and if a female dens up near a drilling pad, they do all that they can to run it off. They have to halt all operations if a bear is denning nearby. They call it "hazing," and there is a fair amount of info about it on the web if you look. They strafe them with helicopters to run them off when they are denning up. It all really stinks (and I am IN the oil business).
I used to write about the Arctic Refuge. Nobody calls it ANWR except the pro-drilling folks. A journal article, some op-eds, even being on AM talk shows, where I had to answer stupid questions. The average American is pretty stupid, but occasionally I was faced with a good question.
I was around when seals were sunning themselves 100 yards away on the ice, saw HUGE footprints regularly, but never saw one.
I think that our very own Reilly here was in Kaktovik, an eskimo village on the North Slope, after they had killed a bowhead whale. Somehow the bears know, and they swim long distances to pick at the carcass, which is drug over in a shallow water bone pile. Tons of bears show up for this, including grizzlies from inland.
I don't know how the polar bears know to come, because they don't get a whale every year, and the wind is always blowing the wrong direction for them to smell it.
Lots of polar bear photos are taken at the Kaktovik bone pile.
They have them wander through the village (pop 170) in the winter. Everyone has CB radio's in their houses, so they know it and protect the kids on their way to school.
Polar bears don't kill very many humans. Their range only overlaps right at the coast. The tracks are easy to recognize. Here is a big one:
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Anyone up on polar bears? I've never seen one, but have seen many fresh tracks.
I've encountered a polar bear right up close and personal. Very, very scary.
I'm on deadline for the end of the afternoon, but will try to post something tonight.
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Chewybacca
Trad climber
Kelly Morgan, Whitefish MT
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Glad everyone (including the bear) survived the op's encounter. I'd be interested in more detail about how the biting victim escaped the bear's grasp. I imagine the bear felt it had neutralized a threat and let him go.
An acquaintance was bitten on the leg in Sept. He had a surprise encounter with a sow and cubs. As she was chewing on his leg he managed to get his bear spray out and shot her point blank in the face. She and the cubs rapidly left the scene. Being a resourceful old school climber he grabbed some duct tape from his pack, patched his wounds, limped to the trail head and drove himself to the hospital. The climber and bear are both doing well.
Here is a link to a brief article on the encounter- http://www.krtv.com/story/30156623/hiker-survives-attack-by-grizzly-bear-in-glacier-national-park
Here is a bluff charge a grumpy sow made at me. I slowed it down to 25% of normal speed. The telephoto lens is a little deceptive, she never got closer than 100 ft. to me.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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There is some pretty good bear info coming out of this thread, particularly from base104 and the people from BC and Montana. I've been a student of wildlife behavior since I was a kid, and it seems like the best thing you can do is keep updating your learning to go into these areas.
And there's a lot of question about whether a gun is better than pepper spray.
OK, this has had an analysis done by qualified people, one being Stephen Herrero of University of Calgary. Their conclusion was that your chance of coming out alive and unhurt was significantly greater using bear spray. Check out the study your self to see how it was handled because the period of data collected is different (bear spray has only been available since the 80's, whereas firearms...)
http://wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/bear_cougar/bear/files/JWM_BearSprayAlaska.pdf
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Whatever we do, we can NEVER be absolutely assured of our saftey in Grizzly Country.....and that is good.
Good, primarily because there still is, and hopefully always will be, Grizzly Country. Enter at your own risk with the chilling but exciting realization that humans are not always the apex predator.
I would hate to be in a world devoid of the wild and the unpredictability that it brings.
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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There's an absolutely excellent video called "Staying Safe in Bear Country" which you can locate online. Best thing I've seen. It was done by Phil Timpany, a cinematographer friend who used to live here in Atlin and practically lived with bears for years. It demonstrates very graphically how bears react in contact with humans, and how humans should react. Some of the bluffing charges are positively hair-raising and make you realize the problems you'd have taking one down with a gun if he was serious. Also shows an advancing black bear in definitely predatory behaviour reacting to pepper spray. It confirms and expands on the behaviour that Base104 has mentioned.
I have to include a funny polar bear story. Twenty-odd years ago I used to be the Asst. Regional Director for Renewable Resources of the Baffin Island district, which is now Nunavut. (Read Chief Game Warden.) One of the jobs of the community Officers was to chase polar bears out of the settlements. We hired a new guy, just out of University in Ontario to fill the job in Resolute. Explained to him that he would be using a 12 ga. with a plastic bullet called a Ferret slug to sting the bears and chase 'em out. The magazine behind the Ferret was filled with Brenneke Rottweil 3" magnum slugs, which are devastating at both ends of the gun. We also told him not to deter a bear unless he had a good local hunter with a big bore rifle backing him up.
So eventually the time came, he called out a hunter who had agree to back him up, and they approached the bear in town. He checked to be sure the hunter was ready, and stung the bear at about 30 yards. It just pissed him off and it came for him. He had a brief peripheral vision of his backup vanishing, but managed to drop the bear almost at his feet. Looked around and found the backup had split. A great learning experience.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Bears have the biggest problem staying safe in "Bear Country."
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Bears don't love the inhospitable places where they now live, they were forced there by the spread of civilization. There was a time when the the densest Grizzly populations were where Santa Barbara now is. Hey, they liked that famous good weather just like we do and the streams had not been polluted by man and had bountiful salmon runs.
Let them have free reign in that harsh environment we forced them into. Places where you won't find a Google Campus, almond farm or a manicured golf course.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Shetville , North of Los Angeles
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This Norwegian friend , a hunting guide up in Fairbanks , shared a story about migrating polar bears near an indian village that trashed some hunters ATV's that were left unattended...
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Totally agree with you, Donini. Magnificent creatures, and far more complex and ordinarily less aggressive than usually recognized. Unfortunately, there is sometimes a survival scenario. The video I mentioned has some great hints on coexistence.
Rottingjohn - polar bears also have a remarkable appetite for unattended snowmobile seats and inflatable boats. Some good stories there, too.
We had a bear nose print high on our picture window for as long as I could preserve it there. I encouraged his departure but treasured his memento.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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I have to include a funny polar bear story. Twenty-odd years ago I used to be the Asst. Regional Director for Renewable Resources of the Baffin Island district,
My story precedes Wayne’s by a decade or so, and is definitely not as funny. Thirty-odd years ago I spent a fair amount of time on Baffin Island, at first just as a climber/skier, but the second trip partly as a hired gun for the Canadian equivalent of the Park Service, employed to “find out if certain routes were suitable for ski traverses.”
Yeah, eat your hearts out. It was the ultimate ski-mountaineering wet dream made real. Except for the part that turned into the ultimate ski-mountaineering nightmare made real.
Paring it down for this Bear Thread, part of the deal involved the first traverse of the Penny Ice Cap (where the last Ice Age started). To get us to the starting point, at the head of the Coronation Glacier, a couple of the Auyuituq Park staff put our gear on komituks and towed us behind their snowmobiles from Pangnirtung, up the fjord, up Weasel Valley to Summit Lake (where we dropped a month’s supplies), then down Owl Valley, back onto the ocean, around the headland, and up Coronation Fjord.
The idea was that they’d drop us at the fjordhead, where it looked like there was a relatively low-angle moraine we could use to access the glacier. And once up on the glacier, well, theoretically at least, we’d be able to get to the icecap, and from the ice cap eventually back south to our cache at Summit Lake.
Things went relatively smoothly until we started up Coronation Fjord. It was early May, and the snow/ice situation was weird. Melt-out up there starts from the ice/snow boundary and works its way upward. Which is fine, because it doesn't snow all that much. But Coronation is what they call a "wind fjord," and a lot of snow gets blown onto it. At this early stage of the melt, we encountered about a meter of powder on top of about 20 cm of slush on top of the ice. The snow machines couldn’t deal with it. Their tails would plow down, sending a rooster-tail of freezing salt slush into our faces (we were riding the komituks), then up, then dig in again, then up, ad infinitum.
Which would have been fine anywhere else. We’d just have said: “park these beasts, and we’ll get off and ski from here.” But while Ryan and I were as brave as any two of you, we weren’t stupid. Who wants to get off and ski up a glacier that is so thick with polar bear tracks that there was hardly an undisturbed patch of snow? Our drivers were armed, and we were on noisy machines, so better to continue right to the fjord head before dismounting.
Alas, it was not to be. The machines simply couldn’t make way as the powder/slush mix got deeper, and there was no choice but to start the non-motorized part of the expedition from about two-thirds of the way up the fjord. But no problem, right? We’ll just borrow our drivers’ rifles, and if there are still any bears coming down from their winter sleep (which the drivers said there certainly wouldn’t be), we’ll be ready to deal with them.
That met with a polite “No f*#king way we’re letting these rifles out of our hands.” Accompanied by “But no worries. These tracks are old. No way any more bears are coming down at this time of year.”
So we packed our loads, and skied off toward the ice-cliff that marked the point where the glacier ended and the ocean began. Too far to go without a camp, and we set up the tent in the midst of a zillion bear tracks, chanting over and over “The tracks are old. The bears are long gone” until eventually we fell asleep.
Waking up alive seemed to offer some proof that yes, the bears were indeed long gone, and we packed up and skied in much better spirits toward the point where the moraine came down the side of the ice cliff. It was a fine morning, and it looked like our guess that the moraine would be a straightforward avenue up onto the glacier was going to be proved right.
We skied right up to the ice cliff where the glacier fell into the ocean. Hundreds of feet high, and obviously impassible, but the moraine at its side looked relatively low angle.
But as we headed toward the moraine, we saw a pair of tracks leading down from somewhere up above, and ending just out of our sight at about the point we were headed for. “Hmmmm. Well, yeah, the bears are long gone, so these ones probably just wandered a little further seaward along the moraine, in a hollow out of our sight.”
Right. Onward. And then, when we were about 25 meters from the moraine, the cutest little polar bear cub imaginable stuck its head up and looked at us.
Kind of like lions. Or grizzlies. Or whatever deathdealers – if there’s a cub, then mama is somewhere nearby.
Up the moraine was out – that was straight into the jaws of death. Back down the fjord was out – that was straight into midst of about five million bears who clearly were not “long gone.” All that was left was to start skiing across the fjord, hoping that there would be a way up on the other side, and that mama wouldn’t show up until we were far enough away to be safe. A little over two km, on powder over slush, with 30 kg on our backs, and a top speed that wouldn’t scare a snail.
Still, since there wasn’t any choice, we turned and started slogging parallel to the ice cliff.
We made maybe 100 meters before mama popped up beside the cub, scoped us out, and started down the moraine.
Think about it. It had been months since she’d eaten, and not only was she ravenously hungry, but she probably saw us as a threat to her baby. If either of us had been religious, we’d probably just have knelt down right there and tried to become one with god, hoping that if we did that, being torn apart and eaten might not hurt too much. But since faith was in short supply, the only option was to keep on trucking and…
…and what? Postpone death by a minute or two?
I’d like to say that there is some useful material in this story that might help someone else in a polar bear confrontation, but I can’t. We didn’t decide to run, or to stand our ground, or to shout and wave our ski poles. We did the only thing we could, which was to slowly trudge through the slop toward the far shore as the bear quickly gained on us.
Fragile humans, about to enter the food chain from the very top.
But I’m here, writing this, and Ryan made it out with me. Why? Because, with mama bear only about twenty meters behind us, we passed a small berg, probably calved off the previous summer, and now frozen in the sea ice right at the base of the glacier. When we rounded it, we saw an opening in the glacier, guarded by a bunch of lumpy ice cubes – a crevasse, approached end-on rather than from above.
So we scrambled over the cubes, and into the crevasse, and then along its floor. Not thinking, just reacting. Same as you, or anyone would do. If you are being chased by a tiger, and see a door, you don’t ask what horror might lurk behind the door, do you?
Still on skis, we shuffled along a twisting path between walls of ice that grew higher and higher. Would the bear follow us? Had she lost interest when we turned out of sight behind the berg? We had no idea. All we knew was that there was no turning back, so we kept ski-trudging along the flat bottom of the crevasse.
Which may have some of you calling BS. Why kind of sh#t is this guy talking? Crevasses don’t have flat bottoms. How can he say they skied along a nice snow sidewalk two to three meters wide at the bottom of a crevasse?
Well, if we’d had functioning brains, we’d probably have asked the same question. But, believe me, being stalked by the greatest predator on earth turns off the analytical part of your mind.
At least for a while. Until, about ten or fifteen minutes past certain death, your ski pole punches a hole in the snow in front of you and you stare down through that hole into the great blue forever, and realize that you are on a sunken snow bridge, which is no doubt about to collapse under you and send you plummeting to your death.
F*#k.
Can’t go back. That way is guarded by a zillion hungry polar bears. Can’t stay here, cuz after the food is gone we'll die. So… onward.
“Should we rope up?”
“F*#ked if I know.”
We roped up, and trudged onward. Ice tools and crampons were in the cache at Summit Lake, so we couldn’t climb up out of the crevasse, but only go forward, and hope… Twice our hope seemed to shine, and we ascended low-angle ramps to the surface, but both times we found ourselves on a small isolated point, and had to head back down. But the third ramp led to the main glacier, and we…
It would be nice to say we bent down, kissed the snow and lived happily ever after, but the glacier was covered with bear tracks, and instead of worrying about dying when the snow beneath us collapsed, we were back to worrying about being eaten.
Fortunately, by this time we were both so physically and emotionally wasted that we didn’t care. We just set up the tent, hit the first aid kit for a couple of valiums, and passed out.
About ten hours later we woke up to a total whiteout. F*#king wonderful. We won’t even see the bear that kills us.
But what can you do? What we did was ski gently uphill for another two days of fear. Or, rather, about a day-and-a-half of fear, because at that point we realized we hadn’t seen any tracks for a couple of hours, and that we would probably live.
So, there's a polar bear story, from someone who, even thirty-five years later, has no idea why he survived.
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Ghost: hollllleeee fucK.
you did not disappoint and you certainly did not overhype...
one of the most insanely incredible real life stories i've ever heard...
thanks for taking the time to write it up!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Yes, thank you for an utterly gripping story!
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, ghost... oh my.......... :O
thanks for sharing your story...
thanks to the allmighty over us all, you are here...
and made it through, :O
also, thanks for the shares, on the whole thread, and the
info from kunlun_shan... (hope i spelled that right)...
VERY awful stuff, that so many folks have seen,
as well... whewww...
and from jan, as the japan, area...
and for many other stuff, here...
thanks all!
*the scientist guy, link, too...
the video...
hey there to tami, too...
i will go read the link that brian started this with...
thank brian...
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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lord have mercy
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