North America > United States > Colorado > Rocky Mountains > Articles > Bear Necessities

At up to seven feet long and 425 lbs in weight, a grizzly bear can peel a walker out of their Gore-Tex quicker than you can skin a banana. So when you're walking in the Rockies it pays to be 'bear aware', and there's no end of people waiting to dish out advice.

Most of the folk who live around the Rocky Mountains have a stockpile of bear stories and are keen to tell you their method for avoiding a run in with a grizzly. Unfortunately, when I finally stumbled across a ‘griz’ that advice wasn't readily to hand. I was hiking along the ten-mile Iceberg Lake Trail on the eastern side of Glacier National Park, a relatively busy footpath named after the small bergs which float in the eponymous lake in summer. The path passes up through huckleberry bushes, which are prime bear feeding territory, into shady, fragrant forest and across dazzlingly bright streams, with the blue-shadowed, serrated ridge of the massive Garden Wall arete bearing down on you from the west and marking the Continental Divide.

I’d read various bear books and noted the signs tacked to trees along the trail which warned of grizzly sightings in the vicinity, but I was still somewhat nonplussed when I rounded a bend in the path to see four people some distance above the path waving at me and frantically pointing downhill.

It occurred to me that there must be a reason for their manic and strangely silent gesticulations, and as it slowly dawned what that reason might be so I looked more carefully in the direction they were pointing to see a full-grown grizzly foraging through the bushes about 300 yards below me.

Fortunately he didn’t spot me and over the course of a couple of minutes ambled off into the bushes and was lost from sight, I had enough common sense to watch quietly and not to follow him, and I got to enjoy an unforgettable kind of mountain experience which is virtually impossible to repeat in Europe. And on the way back down to my car I even saw another two black bears foraging through the bushes high up on the mountainside.

Luckily I hadn’t come close enough to the bear to have to use any of the advice I’d been so freely given on what to do in a man-bear situation, the best of which to my mind comes from Bill Bryson – "always hike with a slower runner than yourself".

Several outdoor types I met in the Rockies had had some kind of bear ‘experience’, although few had actually met a bear up close. Most of the more horrendous tales you hear seem to happen to ‘friends of friends’ and have the same familiarity about them as urban myths here in the UK. More typical were people living on the edge of towns who’d had their trash cans rifled by black bears (as John Muir said, to a bear "almost everything is food except granite", and there are reports of them even trying to eat an AppleMac computer); Rob, a friend living just over the border in British Columbia told me how "…every autumn I see black bears rolling around drunk on rotten, semi-fermented apples in my back garden"; and a ski instructor from the same town described "…shooting around a bend in a forest road on my mountain bike and almost running into a bear. We were both terrified and shot off in opposite directions, only to meet again on another bend a few hundred yards later and tear along parallel to each other for a few seconds until the bear eventually crashed off into the trees".

No-one I met, though, had been unlucky enough to be attacked by a bear – indeed, friends living close to Glacier were somewhat miffed when I returned with my bear story, complaining that ‘We’ve lived here five years and I still haven’t seen a grizzly’.

Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules as to what you should do if you come into closer contact with a bear than you might wish to. Even reading a definitive bear book such as ‘Backcountry Bear Basics’ by expert Dave Smith, who has spent over thirty years living in grizzly country, you come away with the message that experts still can’t totally agree on the best way to deal with a bear encounter.

The essential advice when you’re on the trail, however, is to make plenty of noise to warn bears of your presence and give them time to scarper, since the one thing that is agreed upon is that bears are no more eager to come into contact with humans than we are with them. Smith advises clapping and shouting "Hey bear" at intervals, having little time for bear bells which attach to your rucksack and tinkle gently to warn of your approach – as the local joke goes, ‘How do you recognise grizzly scat? It’s the stuff with the bear bells in it’. It may seem a bit strange to be wandering through the mountains creating a hullabaloo, but it’s better than walking around a corner to encounter a startled grizzly, and everyone else will be doing it so you won’t feel like an idiot (this is America, after all…).

Useful advice is always easy to come by when you’re on the trail too. When I was hiking in Glacier I met a ranger who informed me that "It’s better not to be out close to sundown when bears start emerging from their dens, and you shouldn’t really hike alone". Since I was doing both, then and there, I guess he was being diplomatic by not expressing any further opinion on my actions.

Should you chance across a bear then the first thing to remember is don’t run – as Montana’s Flathead National Forest say in their bear advice literature, ‘a grizzly can easily outrun the world’s fastest human’. Nor will climbing a tree help – you really think you can get up that fir faster than a bear? Stand your ground, avoid direct eye contact, which the bear will see as a threat, and there’s a good chance it will simply look you over and amble off. If, however, it decides to attack, then as the Rough Guide to the Rockies so succinctly puts it in a two page section on dealing with bears, ‘things are truly grim’.

Playing dead is the generally accepted way of dealing with a grizzly attack – get into a foetal position, protect your head "and think of Jesus" says David Stanley, a bear expert from the Alaska-Yukon region. Which isn’t much use if you’re a non-believer, but you get the drift.

With black bears, however, you’re advised to fight back, which is all very well as long as you’re sure it’s a black bear rather than a grizzly which is bearing down on you – and how many people can distinguish between the two when face to face with several hundred pounds of angry bear meat is a moot point. Dave Smith points out that if you fight back against a grizzly "the severity of your injuries will usually be worse" but adds laconically that if the attack lasts for more than a minute you will probably have to fight back to have any chance of surviving. So don’t forget to set your stopwatch…

Having said all this, the one thing that’s worth bearing in mind before you scare yourself witless about the idea of ever setting foot in the Rockies is that bears will not be lurking around every crag and fir tree waiting to pounce on you, so unless you’re very unlucky or very foolish the chances of being attacked are extremely slim.

And don’t let yourself be psyched out by the local’s little mind games. I recall how one summer before a hike up into the Bitterroot Mountains to overnight alone at the 6,000-ft West Fork Butte lookout cabin, which is rented out by the Forestry Service, I’d lodged at a delightful B&B in the nearby and very lovely Lochsa Valley. The owners, a gregarious couple of anglophiles called Ruth and Jim May spent most of the evening I was there plying me with tales of neighbour’s dogs and cats being taken by bears and mountain lions, and friend’s close encounters with grizzlies, moose and other large, fierce creatures apparently jostling in the queue to have a set to with a human.

Most of it was tongue in cheek, including Jim’s question "You do have a shotgun with you – don’t you?", but this kind of conversation has a habit of surfacing from your memory as you hike all alone along quiet empty trails high up in an isolated, unpopulated mountain range that sits astride Idaho and Montana, two of the remotest, least populated states in the USA. The only thing that surprised me bearing in mind the previous night’s tales was that I couldn’t hear the wildlife crashing around in the trees as they tussled for a vantage point from which to ambush me. Yet by the time I left this small cabin with quite possibly the most wonderful view in the USA the only wild mammals I’d seen were a white-tailed deer and a few chipmunks.

To put things into perspective, there have been only ten fatal bear attacks in Glacier National Park since it was established in 1910, which is an average of one per decade. Considering the fact that 1.73 million people visited the park last year it would seem that the bears are probably going out of their way to avoid humans.

Nevertheless, the fact that you might just come face to face with a bear adds a new and altogether more serious element to hiking in the Rockies. After my experience in Glacier I cast aside the usual English reserve and followed the example of the locals on my ventures into the mountains in Montana and Idaho, singing, shouting, whistling and clapping as I made my way along the trails and touting a can of bear spray should the worst happen. I was also careful, if camping, to ensure that any food and/or rubbish was stored well away from the campsite in air tight boxes and inaccessible locations since bears have a phenomenal sense of smell. I’m pretty sure a bear ambled through my campsite near Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains one night, but he didn’t find anything to eat so didn’t stick around.

The majority of the Rockies’ upland landscapes have barely changed since explorers Lewis and Clark first traversed the region almost 200 years ago, and creatures that are higher up the food chain than humans are as much a part of that landscape as the mountains, forests, rivers and lakes. Whilst that makes a trip into the mountains potentially more hazardous, it also takes you closer to Nature than you’ll ever get in Britain or Europe. And as Dave Smith says ‘…if we can accommodate bears in our world, it will be a better place for us to live’.



INTO THE WILD
It’s not just the Rocky Mountains that are teeming with bears, mountain lions, moose and other ornery critters. Once outside the wildlife depleted peaks of the UK and Europe there’s plenty of animal life that can give you the kind of holiday souvenir you’d rather not have, so here are some tips on how to avoid the worst of them.

Name: Grizzly Bear, Black Bear. Grizzlies are bigger, with a hump above the shoulder, and the Rocky Mountain grizzly is the same species as the Pyrenean brown bear – so there’s still an outside chance of coming across a ‘grizzly’ in Europe. ‘Black’ bears can also appear brown, so colour is no guarantee of species.
Danger: Teeth and claw assaults/mauling
Death/injury caused: Serious lacerations, loss of blood, broken bones etc.
No. of deaths per year: Rarely over single figures world wide.
How to avoid: Make plenty of noise on the trail, keep food well away from campsite in inaccessible location. Never get between a mother and cubs. Stay calm and avoid eye contact in close encounters and if attacked curl up in a foetal position and play dead (although with black bear the advice is to fight back). Some people aim pepper spray at the bear if time and presence of mind allows.
Horror rating: 10 (if attacked).

Name: Mountain lion/cougar
Danger: Ambush and teeth and claw assault
Death/injury caused: Lacerations, loss of blood
No. of deaths per year: Single figures world wide
How to avoid: Difficult since lions are expert stalkers and you’re unlikely to spot them until they pounce. If attacked, make lots of noise, raise yourself up as big as possible and fight back.
Horror rating: 8

Name: Moose
Danger: May attack if surprised
Death/injury caused: Impaling on huge ‘rack’, internal organ damage, broken bones etc.
No. of deaths per year: Single figures world wide
How to avoid: Since moose live in wetland areas you’re unlikely to stumble across one unless hiking along a riverbank. Attacks are very rare and most likely to occur if you come between a mother and calf.
Horror rating: 2

Name: Mosquito
Danger: Bite – and bloody irritating whine.
Death/injury caused: Malaria – female mosquitoes leave plasmodium parasites in the blood after biting, which in turn cause malaria.
No. of deaths per year: Over two million world wide.
How to avoid: Wear long sleeved shirts and trousers, use insect repellent and anti-malarial drugs and mosquito nets.
Horror rating: 3

Name: Snakes
Danger: Bite
Death/injury caused: toxic shock from injection of venom, which may cause death.
No. of deaths per year: Several hundred world wide.
How to avoid: Don’t stick your hands under rocks or down holes, wear boots and long trousers, keep your eyes open, employ a snake charmer.
Horror rating: 5 – 10 depending on your view of slithery creatures.

Name: Scorpions
Danger: Sting
Death/injury: Death relatively rare but a sting can cause serious reactions including fever and nausea.
No.of deaths per year: Unknown
How to avoid: Stay away from deserts and jungles. Or if you’re in one, don’t poke around under stones and logs and shake your boots out before putting them on.
Horror rating: See snakes

Name: Vampire bats
Danger: Bite and blood sucking
Death/injury: Death very rare, but if bitten you may lose quite a lot of blood as vampire bats can drink their own weight in the stuff (pray you don’t get bitten by a fat one) and the saliva contains an anti-coagulant.
No. of deaths per year: Unknown, but very few if any.
How to avoid: Keep away from jungles and Transylvania. Use a mosquito net.
Horror rating: 1 (unless you find one at your neck, in which case 10).

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