So, my husband and I went climbing today. Beautiful fall day, and we hiked up 2 hours to the top of a local mountain to rock climb. The place where we climbed has some great granite cracks, and he wanted to do a few. So I agreed to go as an anniversary present (it's a 2 hour hike uphill one way, carrying gear, so it's a trek). There was noone in the area we went to, partly because it's all overgrown, and it was silent.
We did one climb, and he tried the second pitch and decided it wasn't to be that day. So we went back down, and were figuring out what to do next when we hear some rustling. It sounded like a person - not a deer - so he called out 'hello there'. His back was to the bushes/trees and all of a sudden I see a black furry head with a brown snout no more than 15 feet away. BLACK BEAR! I just said, it's a bear, whatdowedo whatdowedo whatdowedo, as I walked up the hill against the rock. My husband a little stressed, but not too bad, says to me, you treat it like a big dog - oh, you dont like those either - and roared and jingled the gear to scare it away. So, it went away.
We just stood there looking at each other and laughing a little bit in amazement. And started cleaning up again, and thinking again about what to do.
Then I as I'm looking at him standing looking at the climbing book, I see a black head peer around a tree from the other direction. And screamed (because I knew it was ok to make noise). My husband jumped around and picked up a small rocks and threw them towards the bear, roaring again. So the bear walked off again. And we started thinking, maybe we shouldn't stay around anymore.
And then I see some movement of black between the two spots the bear had appeared before, screamed again, and this time my husband picks up a BIG rock and throws it towards the bear, tells me to pack everything up quickly while he makes sure the bear doesn't come back yet again. We hightailed it out of there, roaring all the way.
We saw some Search and Rescue guys on the way down, and they said there were a couple juveniles wandering around that were too inquisitive for their own good and/or maybe someone had fed them. CRAZY! But the one we saw was pretty damn big, so not sure it was the same one.
Please don't ever feed wildlife.
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4 comments:
Oh. My. Goodness. You guys stared danger right in the face and lived to tell about it. Awesome!
Side note: Yet ANOTHER reason I just don't do wildlife!
You do realize if we don't feed the wildlife gyuss is going to starve, right?
Tera, not sure how truly dangerous it was since it seemed so tame, but boy it was freaky to be backed up against the rock and have the bear circling around.
Susan, wasn't he trying to lose weight anyway? :-)
Starvation is not a healthy weight loss idea. maybe we should just give him clamato juice to live off of.
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