So... It's been a while since my last post, largely because not much has changed in the past month or so. Waking up in my tent, walking 20-30 miles with my whole house on my back, cooking over a butane canister, pooping in a hole in the woods...all feels normal. We'd fallen into a daily routine and everything had begun to just feel normalized with no huge surprises or changes... until last night.
We had picked a spot to camp, set up our stuff, I'd eaten dinner, gotten cleaned up, hung my bear bag and backpack and was journaling and listening to music in my tent. Caroline had made a fire and was finishing her dinner. Things were as they always are and we were feeling good with fresh legs from a day off. Suddenly, Caroline ran over to my tent frantically shouting, I thought, "what have you done to your hair?!" Confused and annoyed at being disturbed during my down time, I looked up grumbling, but immediately knew by the look on her face that something was very wrong. "Bear! There's a huge bear with cubs.. Get out of your tent!" I quickly unzipped my tent and leaped out without any shoes... Or pants... And we both started making as much noise as we could to scare the bears away, screaming at the top of our lungs, clapping, throwing rocks, banging on pots...anything. But nothing worked. The big mama bear had walked right past Caroline while the cubs climbed up into the surrounding trees, as Caroline described it "in synchronized fashion, like ninja cubs".
I'm going to take a brief pause in the story to give a bit of background information. For those who aren't familiar with bears or how to handle a bear encounter while camping: they are fairly harmless, as long as you stand your ground and assert yourself as something to be feared, rather than running away, like prey. They are naturally afraid of humans, as are most wild animals, and therefore, making your presence known usually scares them away pretty immediately...except in two circumstances. The first is a mother bear with babies, who will often act aggressively protective over her cubs. If you come across a bear with babies, or even just the babies, back off. The second instance is when bears have become habituated to humans and/or dependent on humans for food. Yesterday, Caroline and I found ourselves confronted with both circumstances-- a mama bear and her cubs, who were all habituated to humans and completely unfazed by our presence.
Now back to the story. After about 15 minutes of screaming and even hitting the unfazed bears with rocks, we realized they were not going to leave and decided the best approach was to back off because their behavior was not normal, and therefore, unpredictable and dangerous. It started to get dark so we walked up to the nearby ridge line, about 200 feet away, to wait it out, and found another thru hiker, named Beaver, watching the sun set. Barefoot and in only my underwear, I started to explain what was going on to Beaver but he seemed unable to grasp the severity of the situation and responded with "Bears?! Cool!" and asked me if I wanted to borrow a pair of his shorts in the meantime. I quickly reminded him that the noises we could hear coming from the campsite were the sounds of a family of bears tearing through all of our belongings and that the fact that I didn't have pants and the importance of capturing the moment on video were not my primary concern. He walked over and exclaimed "Oh you're right, there are bears here! Whoa!" but failed to react to their presence in any other way. Meanwhile, Caroline and I had succeeded in scaring them away enough to reenter the campsite. It was dark at that point and we had decided that we needed to get our things together and leave the area as soon as possible. When I finally reached my tent, Caroline was already there and, before I could even process what had happened, she turned around saying, "oh no...I'm so sorry, Chlo... I'm so sorry.." I looked at her feet and there was my tent torn open and crushed into the ground. I couldn't believe my beloved tent, my sanctuary, my little home, had been so invaded like that. I have NEVER eaten in my tent, I don't even keep anything scented inside of it, but it didn't matter. These bears equated all things human, with food and they had gone through every bit of our gear. But Caroline's things were in much worse shape. Her backpack had been torn open, some of her food had been taken, her toiletries bag was completely gone, her stuff sacks were tattered and ripped and both of our nalgene water bottles had been chewed and punctured. We were horrified, but relieved to have access to our belongings again. No sooner had we begun to pack everything together though, I looked up at Caroline in the light of my headlamp and noticed a pair of eyes glinting in the dark behind her. "Caroline...", I said, "we need to leave again... Now." We grabbed everything we could and shuttled it up to the ridge line where Beaver was sitting eating pop tarts. We had agreed to camp there for the night, figuring that the bears couldn't, or at least wouldn't, climb up the rocks to the ledge. Again, we waited for them to leave and made noise until they were scared far enough away that we could go back to get the rest of our things. Throughout the entire affair, my bear bag had remained untouched hanging in a tree outside of the campsite, so we decided to leave it there and hang both Beaver and Caroline's food as well. We added to the bonfire while we were at it to keep the bears away for good this time. I sat down to tend the fire and called my mom to tell her what had happened and ask her advice since she has done a lot of backpacking in the past. All of the sudden, I heard Caroline and Beaver screaming again. I looked towards the ridge line but all I could see was the light of their headlamps, seemingly on top of the boulders next to the ridge. "Guys??!", I shouted in blind desperation, "What's going on?! Where are you??" But got no response as they climbed further into the darkness of the ridge line. "Caroline?!", I tried again, "are you okay? Where are you?" She shouted that the bears were back and that we shouldn't be separated. At this point, my headlamp was nearly out of battery and the only light illuminating my surroundings was the fire. I couldn't see Caroline. I couldn't see the bears. I couldn't even see anything beyond the 10 foot radius of the fire. All I knew is that at least one of the bears had followed Caroline and Beaver up over the rocks and that the others were likely around. "Chloe!", Caroline yelled, "we shouldn't be separated. You need to come here now!" I didn't know what else to do, so I just walked blindly through the woods towards her voice and headlamp, hoping I wouldn't reach the bear before I reached her. When I climbed over the rocks and onto the ridge, the bears were gone and Caroline and Beaver were assessing the damage of the third encounter. By that time it was nearing 11:00pm but we nonetheless agreed that we couldn't stay on the ridge and decided to push on to the best shelter 3.5 miles away. Beaver was lagging behind from the outset and, after a mile, he announced that he was just going to camp there for the night. I reminded him that the bears weren't far off but he said he felt safe and was too tired to continue that night... so Caroline and I continued on without him. Stumbling over rocks, down hill and uphill in the dark and still quite shaken, the hike took half an hour longer than it should have and we reached the shelter sometime after 1:00am. I blew up my sleeping pad, slid it in between the hikers laying in the shelter and crawled into my sleeping bag.
It's been 4 days since that night and I still can't believe it really happened. To US. Of all people, of all thru-hikers... me and Caroline. We hang bear bags EVERY night. Bear bags with not only all of our food but containing anything we own that is even slightly scented-- toothpaste, face wash, hand sanitizer... It has never even been a question of whether we'll hang bear bags, it is just part of our nightly routine. We are SO careful with food, so careful to not leave any trace of our presence that might attract animals or harm wild life. Because that is what makes wild animals dangerous. Human beings are what make animals dangerous. Caroline and I did everything right, yet WE were the ones who had to face the repercussions of other people's actions. We had to deal with the consequences of people dropping food, wrappers, or even actively FEEDING wild life. The morning after, we talked to other hikers at the shelter who had seen the same bears, several of whom had seen day hikers getting close to the bears to take pictures and giving them food. There's a saying on the trail, "a habituated bear is a dead bear". And it's true. When bears learn to be too comfortable with people, when they are no longer afraid of humans, they become disruptive and dangerous. We ended up calling the national park service to report the incident and they will likely tranquilize and move the bears, if not euthanize them altogether. It's really sad, because it's not the bears' fault, they are simply acting out a learned behavior. Its the people who are not respectful of "leave no trace" policies or do not treat bears like wild animals that are to blame.
Ultimately, the experience served as a reminder of how important it is to follow proper camping policy. We are visitors in this land. These are not my woods. This trail is a road through land that we all share-- with other people and with the wild life that lives here.
