Grizzlies, Mountain Goats and Moose, Oh my!

If you ask just about anyone what their greatest fear of hiking in Glacier is, the answer probably 99.9% of the time is bears, particularly GRIZZLY BEARS.  People wear tinkly little bells thinking this will alert a bear so they won't startle one. (By the way, Terry has done the research, and unless you have a cowbell, which is funny because someone we met on the trail did, they really do no good.  Just being loud is your best strategy for not startling a bear.) Well, I'm no exception to this common fear of bears.  I had dreams at night about bear attacks.  So in typical Terry fashion (which is what I love about the man) he scoured the internet for stories about grizzly attacks in order to lessen my fear (what a sweet guy).  Amazingly enough, the more you talk about it, sometimes the less scary that unknown becomes. 

We had heard from other backpackers that a young male had been spotted at the top of Gunsight Pass the previous day.  So we were on the lookout for him as we left the Lake Ellen Wilson camp that morning.  We had been scouring the hillside without seeing anything and had almost reached the top when Terry spotted this big boy coming up our back trail.  He was just moseying, but nonetheless it definitely gets your heart pumping seeing that big critter walking your way.  

We took this picture with our camera up to our binoculars.  He was about 200 yards away.  

So over the next 2 1/2 hours this Grizzly kept pretty much right on our trail.  He would drop down and grub around in the switchbacks (looking for cutworm moths) and then right back up on the trail. Every time we turned around we could see him.  As you can see there is not alot of room on this trail so we pretty much trotted all the way down. A grizzly bear can run at 35 mph and even at a walk is covering more ground than we are. 

As were were trotting along and watching our back trail (We got very good at doing that this trip). I did get a few good shots of Gunsight Pass and the spectacular alpine lake below. 

We were just saying how you wouldn't want to meet a bear coming UP this narrow trail and so were a bit jumpy when these guys came around the corner of a very steep, no other way to go around spot in the trail.  

She gave us this look like, "seriously people?  You had to be coming this way. . . "  But goats are the funniest critters, they are just naturally unafraid, so she just trotted right on by with her baby."  

As soon as she passed us she got a whiff of ole griz
and started climbing the sheer cliff.
They are amazing creatures!

We hadn't forgotten about Mr. Griz though, and yep, he was still behind us.  We came to a bunch of switchbacks that went through some scrubby brush, along with a prolific berry patch just below it.  He cut down through the switchback and started grubbing again in an open spot. We knew that he was probably headed for that berry patch, and we definitely wanted to get ahead of him before he got in that dense brush.  We stopped to take one last look, along with a group of backpackers heading the opposite way.  So we had one last good look at him and he at us (as you see) and we boot scooted it down to the camp.  

Once we got to camp we kept an eye out on our trail which we could see from the lake.  

And sure enough, Mr. Griz came down it later that evening.  He never came into camp but it sure made for an exciting day and night.  Tomorrow. . . the MOOSE.