Not too close and personal but....
We went in Friday morning at first light. We wound up hiking 9.4 miles straight up some steep nasty sheep type country before setting up camp at exactly 10k feet.
About 5 miles into that hike at around 9 am we came out of the timber to cross an avalanche shoot. My buddy was looking up the shoot and I could tell by the look on his face before he could say Bear. I looked up the shoot and there was a sow with 3 cubs coming down the avalanche shoot straight at us at 100 yards.
She had no idea we were there and was only getting closer so I ran out into the shoot and starting waving my arms over my head and yelling at her. She darted back towards the timber immediately, stopped just at the edge and turned and locked on us and started bounding towards us.
Spray and pistols were out and we both continued yelling and eaving our arms. She made 4 powerfully bounds, straight down hill dead at us with all 3 cubs bopping along behind her and she spun and entered the timber about 50 yards from us.
We made a wide swing side hilling to put distance between us and pressed on up the mountain.
We camped on our targeted area at 10k feet and did not find any fresh elk sign, nor could we glass up any elk. Being that we hiked over 10 miles almost straight up to get in there. Hopping over to another area was not a viable option so we hiked out mid morning the next day.
On the way out with had new grizzly tracks on the trail right where the encounter happened the day before. We then came across a different griz track on top of my boot print that I had left the morning before.
Lots of miles for no elk and a whole lot of bears.
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We went in Friday morning at first light. We wound up hiking 9.4 miles straight up some steep nasty sheep type country before setting up camp at exactly 10k feet.
About 5 miles into that hike at around 9 am we came out of the timber to cross an avalanche shoot. My buddy was looking up the shoot and I could tell by the look on his face before he could say Bear. I looked up the shoot and there was a sow with 3 cubs coming down the avalanche shoot straight at us at 100 yards.
She had no idea we were there and was only getting closer so I ran out into the shoot and starting waving my arms over my head and yelling at her. She darted back towards the timber immediately, stopped just at the edge and turned and locked on us and started bounding towards us.
Spray and pistols were out and we both continued yelling and eaving our arms. She made 4 powerfully bounds, straight down hill dead at us with all 3 cubs bopping along behind her and she spun and entered the timber about 50 yards from us.
We made a wide swing side hilling to put distance between us and pressed on up the mountain.
We camped on our targeted area at 10k feet and did not find any fresh elk sign, nor could we glass up any elk. Being that we hiked over 10 miles almost straight up to get in there. Hopping over to another area was not a viable option so we hiked out mid morning the next day.
On the way out with had new grizzly tracks on the trail right where the encounter happened the day before. We then came across a different griz track on top of my boot print that I had left the morning before.
Lots of miles for no elk and a whole lot of bears.
Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk