I was hiking up a gentle sloped trail in May with my 27 and 29 year old daughters. I guess we must have gained a lot of altitude because we came to a meadow with an avalanche chute at the other side.
We were in the trees at the edge of a 200′ meadow in a cirque.
Because the snow had just melted in the chute, I knew that animals eat there for tender vegetation. I didn’t say anything and we kept walking.
Then we came to the second chute, of which I again scanned the site for animals.
We kept walking and saw the third chute but this one still had snow on it and what I thought were two dark brown rocks on the bottom of the avalanche.
I kept watching it as we moved up the valley and as we got closer, both my youngest daughter and I said “bear’!
We could clearly see now that there was two wee cubs playing on the snow, climbing up a few feet and sliding down. But just below the cubs, on the brown grass and difficult to see, was the light colored mother grizzly.
We stood still and watched through the trees and the mother grizzly was now looking in our direction, but we were down wind of her. My older daughter though, was carrying a radio phone and there was crackling on the phone. We were about 300 feet from the grizzly bears.
We whispered that we would slowly back up and figured the mother could not see us, but she knew there was something there. We also were ready to climb a tree if we needed to. (My older daughter had, 5 years previously, been treed by a male territorial grizzly while working in the woods).
With apprehension we went back down the trail without incident.
We realize we added to the stress of the mother grizzly being in proximity, reported to the park office that the grizzly bears were there and suggested they close the trail for a period of time.
Comments for Grizzly Bear Encounter at Avalanche Chute, Kootenay National ParkAverage Rating |
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
Click here to add your own comments
|
Speak Your Mind