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Gimp
Trad climber
Missoula, MT & "Pourland", OR
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Have seen many Grizzlies in Alaska and Montana but the closest I have ever been to a cub was a couple of years ago in Alaska when my son and were hiking along a trail that paralleled one side of an oxbow lake and we looked on the other side and saw the cub grazing on the spring grass. Mom was rustling around in the bush on the slope above the lake.
Cute and magnificent "little creature"
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Canada is still there, so he must have.
A great story to add to a thread with a few of them, Ghost. Thanks for putting that up.
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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GREAT story, Ghost! Incredible adventure - and better you than me. I could picture the whole thing. Eyes like targets. Glad you made it.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Incredible adventure - and better you than me.
I'm sure you can believe me when I say that Ryan and I were both wishing it was someone else and not us.
As to why we survived, I'm not sure. The one thing that is fact, and not conjecture, is that the bear didn't charge down the moraine after us. She walked. A lot faster than we could ski in the slop with our heavy loads, but still walking, not running.
If she'd been intent on killing us from the beginning, it would have been all over in less than a minute, but, for whatever reason, she didn't just run us down and kill us.
If we hadn't found the opening into the icefall (hidden behind the small berg), she'd have caught up to us within another minute or less. And then? Who knows?
Was she just curious? Maybe unsure what these creatures were?
No idea. All I know for sure is that once we turned the corner on the berg and scrambled into the slot, we never saw her again. That, and that she was probably the last bear to come down that year.
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kaholatingtong
Trad climber
the city for a change
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Wow, what a tale! Gets my heart rate up just reading it, I can only imagine what it was like to experience. Thanks for sharing this with us all.
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Steven Amter
climber
Washington, DC
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Ghost:
Awesome story. Hell, it could be turned into a short film. The "old tracks" part is hilarious.
In the more than two months I spent in Baffin, I never saw a bear.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Cool, S Amter,
glad ya made this one 'pop up', great bump!
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Ghost !! wee ooe shared a gut check! (not sure how I'da' fair'd?)
Also I am not the one to tell the story of the guys from the Gunks,
who were held at bay, starving after days of climbin'
stuck by an aggressive bear between them and their provisions,
dropped on the glacier,
I don't remember much more,
other than it was a hard-core badadze named Michael Dimitri,(?)
someone must know the saga?
It always seems that Steve Grossman knows all
& if he doesn't know then
Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
Jun 19, 2015 - 11:12pm PT
Scott's story of the FFA was saved, and it's in this thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/2513603/Southern-Belle-Thread-Anyone-have-the-text
I also saved Hank's story (attempted 2nd free ascent), and it's in my March 20, 2009 post to this thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=568523&tn=40
Both of them are also saved on my "Long Hard and Free" page:
http://www.stanford.edu/%7Eclint/yos/longhf.htm#half
(A link to the story of the 3rd free ascent by Will Stanhope and Alex Honnold is also there).
. . .
will be able to find it,
by magic to me it seems,
it is a archive thing for them
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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In the more than two months I spent in Baffin, I never saw a bear.
Reading your various posts, I think you were there later in the year than I was -- by which time the bears are all out on the floe edge.
Both my trips were for late April and the month of May. Ice still in, but -- theoretically at least -- the female bears and their cubs are already down from the winter dens on the glaciers. Theory doesn't always translate to reality, though, and we met one straggler.
Also, I think you were in the Mt. Thor area, and I doubt there have been any bears in the Pang fjord or Weasel Valley area for at least fifty years. Far too many people with guns there. Which makes it a lot easier to sleep at night.
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