Bear Encounter

We were hiking up Hyatt Ridge trail in the GSMNP Friday, on our way to camp and fish Raven Fork.  I was leading and I rounded a blind corner to surprise a mother bear with cubs. The adult bear scurried across the trail and I was sure I saw at least two cubs so we backed down the trail for just a few minutes and made some noise while we waited for them to clear out. As I went back around the corner I noticed that the cubs had taken to the trees. There were four adorable little cubs staring at us as they climbed up the same tree. I had gotten the camera out before coming back, just in case, but the picture only shows a few fuzzy dots.  At this point I realized that I didn't know what the proper protocol was in this case. We had taken an interesting class with a bear expert up in the park a few years ago. We learned how to react to bears : give them space, make noise, try to seem bigger to the bear, etc. But what do you do when the cubs go up a tree? How long do they stay there? If you go back too soon does the clock start back over? Should we stay on the trail or just get off of it and go around (harder in this case because of terrain)? Anyway,  we decided to hike about 100 yards back down the trail, take our packs off and rest while we waited on them to come down and get out of the area. We waited a full 30 minutes. Incidentally this seemed like about 2 hours. As we hiked back up we made all kinds of noise. We sang songs to the bears about leaving and I made up a "move out bear" call just for good measure. It went like this: "Move out bear!" in a quick authoritative tone.

I expected them to be gone, but even so I moved slowly back around the corner while we continued to clap and sing. It looked like the coast was clear. I looked to my right and saw the mother bear sitting up tall and staring directly at us from less than 15 yards! And the trail was cut into a hill, so she was on higher ground. Suddenly she seemed a lot bigger than the first time I saw her. I quickly whispered "Christy!" just to confirm that she saw it. She had and we quickly decided to exit stage left.

Thinking back I'm sure we could have just carried on our way up the trail. We were already beside her so going one way was probably as good as going another. But the thing is that bears don't generally hang around. We decided to let a ranger know about it and she agreed that 2 things were out of the ordinary. 1) Four bear cubs is apparently noteworthy and 2) it is considered assertive behavior for her to have hung around like that after getting her cubs out of the tree and off the trail. The ranger said that it could be nothing, but it is the kind of thing they keep track of in case the next time she becomes aggressive. She also said that maybe the bear was a first time mother and that sometimes they acted a little odd as new mothers of all species are wont to do.

When Christy suggested that we just forget fishing Raven Fork that day I agreed that the trout in Straight Fork were really fun to catch and a hotel really would be nice.

Not that I was scared or anything. Really.