Black bears

Black Bears are much smaller than either brown or grizzly bears, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t scary. This one was cruising our neighborhood in Oregon and tipped over the heavy Webber Grill on our porch. Our daughter, Tasha, was sleeping in the bedroom next to the grill. “Curtis!” she screamed. Later, our neighbor captured the bear’s photo on a surveillance camera.

I’ve been re-blogging older posts while my laptop is at the doctors with memory problems. Today it’s time for another Sierra Trek Tale. Next week, I’ll get back to the first Sierra Trek but today we are jumping ahead five years to the first trek I led into the back country of Yosemite where bears rule.

Bears like me, or at least they haven’t eaten me. They’ve had numerous opportunities over the years. It goes with the territory of backpacking throughout North America for over four decades. My scariest encounters, as it turns out, were also my first.

By the fifth year of the Sierra Trek, I had worked my way southward from Lake Tahoe into Yosemite National Park. Since we were utilizing a new route from Yosemite to Kennedy Meadows, I had to preview it. (Plus it was another excuse to head out into the wilderness and be paid for it.)

My friends Ken Lake and Tom Lovering joined me on the first three days from the Yosemite Valley floor to Tuolumne Meadows. Day one found us climbing several thousand feet out of the Valley and camping above the Little Yosemite Valley. The bears dropped by for a visit on our first night in the Park.

Half Dome, Yosemite. Little Yosemite Valley is on the other side.

After carefully hanging our food bags from a cable provided by the park service and burying the left over fake freeze-dried raspberry cobbler (it was made from apples), we trundled ourselves off to our sleeping bags. The problem was we buried the food a little too close to Lake. I think Tom may have been up to his usual mischief.

The next morning, a very excited Ken asked if we had seen the bears in our camp the previous night. Neither of us had and we attributed his sighting to an overactive imagination. Believe me, if a bear had been digging up food next to my head, my two companions would have known about it, immediately.

Day two was tough. What I hadn’t counted on was the amount of snow still left on the ground. We spent most of out time slipping, sliding and slogging through it. By three in the afternoon, Tom was ready to set up camp right in the middle of a snowfield. Ken and I threatened to leave him with the bears and he committed to another hour. Fortunately, that night was bear free. They would have found little resistance from the three of us.

Eventually, we made it into Tuolumne Meadows where I was faced with another challenge: hiking over 70 miles of snow-covered trails by myself while Ken and Tom returned to Sacramento and work. The journey was fraught with opportunities for breaking a leg, or losing the trail, or being washed away when crossing streams raging with water from melting snow. None of the above was a desirable outcome for someone hiking alone.

Tuolumne Meadows in the summer.

My other option was to return to Sacramento with Ken and Tom, which was not acceptable. I had a week off to wander in the woods and I was going to wander in the woods for a week. I compromised by heading back over the mountains toward Yosemite Valley. My fractured logic concluded that it was better to break a leg and get lost where I had been than where I was going. I also promised myself to be really careful. This included keeping my food from bears.

Hiking out of Tuolumne Meadows took me back around Cathedral Peaks shown here.

The first day was non eventful and the second idyllic. I was exploring new country, doing what I most love to do. As evening approached, I found a delightful campsite on the Cathedral Fork of Echo Creek. Amenities included a babbling brook to put me to sleep, a flat space for my sleeping bag and a great food-hanging tree with the perfectly placed limb. A hot dinner topped off by tea spiced up with a shot of 151-proof rum and I was ready for sleep.

I carefully hung my food bags at the recommended 12 feet off the ground and 9 feet away from the tree trunk and then snuggled down in my sleeping bag. As was my habit at the time, I slept out in the open, only using my tent when rain threatened.

It was somewhere around 4 am and very dark when I awoke with a pressure on my chest. I couldn’t see very far but I didn’t have to. Approximately five inches away from my face was a long black snout sniffing at me. It was filled with grinning teeth and topped off by a pair of beady eyes that were staring at me with a hungry look.

I let out a blood-curdling scream and vacated the premises.

As I flew in one direction, the equally surprised young bear that had been standing on me flew in the other. I don’t even remember getting out of the bag. The next thing I knew I was standing up, yelling and shining my flashlight into the woods where not one, but two pairs of orange eyes were staring back at me. I lost it. Never have so many rocks been hurled with so much vigor in such a short period of time. The bears wisely decided to head off over the mountain.

But the damage was already done. My camp was a disaster area. My carefully hung food was scattered all over the ground with literally every meal torn open and sampled. All I had left was a chunk of cheese and it had one large bear bite out of it. I hid the cheese under a heavy rock.

As a further insult, one of the bears had chomped down on my plastic rum bottle and all of the rum was gone. I couldn’t even drink. With that option eliminated, I policed the area, crawled back in my bag and went back to sleep. When I awoke in the morning it was obvious that the bears had come back into camp to clean up anything they had missed. Once again the previous night’s trash decorated my campsite. At least the bears let me sleep this time. And they had missed my cheese.

So I ate it for breakfast, cleaned the area again, packed up my gear and hiked 18 miles into the Yosemite Valley to resupply. But my week wasn’t over; neither were my bear experiences. And the summer had only begun. (I’ll get back to these stories in the future after I am finished with my series on the first Sierra Trek. You won’t want to miss the time a bear grabbed me by the head.)

NEXT BLOG: A return to my photo series on Burning Man.

I took this photo of an Alaska Black Bear last week at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. When I was leading backpack trips in Alaska in the 80s, a black bear bit through a sleeping bag into a forrest service ranger's leg.

I took this photo of an Alaska Black Bear two weeks ago at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

At the end of my last blog, I had backpacked 18 miles into Yosemite Valley to resupply the food bears had taken from me.

My intention was to stay in the Valley that night but it was a zoo, absolutely crawling with tourists. So one very tired Curt shouldered his pack and hiked five miles back over the 3000-foot cliffs into Little Yosemite Valley. I nodded off that night listening to backpackers yelling as bears methodically worked their campsites, wondering when my turn would come. It came all too soon.

I woke up to a bear emptying my backpack about five feet away from where I was sleeping. This brings me to another piece of Yosemite bear lore: always leave the pockets of your pack open. If you don’t, the bear will open them for you. It tends to be rather hard on backpacks.

Fortunately, my food was safely hanging from a cable and I had left my pack wide open. I watched with clinical interest as the bear shoved his head into the pack, pulled out an item, dropped it on the ground and then stuck his head back in the pack. By then I had enough and suggested rather loudly that the bear go elsewhere. After one more foray, he did. The only damage I suffered was bear slobber, all over everything. My old Basset Hound, Socrates, the world champion of slobberers, would have been jealous.

The next night I was leaving my camp for an evening walk when I met a bear coming to visit. I bent over and picked up a rock and he took off like a dog. And thus my summer went. By the time I had led two back-to-back hundred-mile trips into Yosemite, I had my fill of bears and they had had their fill of Trekker food. Fortunately, no more of it was mine. I considered myself an expert food hanger and bear chaser.

It was almost my demise.

At the end of the second Trek, my friend Jean, her sister Mary and her husband Tim joined me at Tuolumne Meadows to hike the John Muir Trail. We spent the night at the Tuolumne campground. I had eaten backpacking meals for two weeks so it was time for grilled steaks, a little bourbon and several cans of beer before hitting the trail again.

As the night progressed, I was feeling no pain and had lots of liquid bravery. So it wasn’t surprising when a bear came to visit our neighbors from Iowa, I was prepared to do battle. They had left their cooler out on the picnic table as an open invitation and the bear was leisurely opening it. The Iowans were hiding out in their camper, making nary a peep.

“HEY BEAR,” I yelled as I strode across the road, “GET OUT OF HERE!”

Well, Mr. Bear had found himself a cache of fresh food and wasn’t about to leave. He turned around, stood up on his hind legs, raised his front legs over his head and said “GRRRROWL!” He was one big fellow. Stone cold sobriety was instantaneous.

“OK bear, it’s all yours,” I mumbled as I scurried back across the road to my own camp and safety. “Eat all of the Iowan food you want. Heck, eat the Iowans.”

By this time though, 20 flashlights were shining down on the bear. Campers are packed into Tuolumne Meadows like tenement housing in a barrio and all of the neighbors were wondering if they were next. Thus disturbed, Mr. Bear went grumbling off over the hill, more than a little pissed to have his fine feast disturbed. You could almost make out in his growling, “I’ll be back.”

Of course the Iowans left their cooler out on the table. No way were they budging from their camper. I pictured them driving nonstop back to Des Moines the next day.

Finally things settled down. After another bourbon or two, we crawled into our sleeping bags. Tim and Mary disappeared in the security of their truck and Jean and I crashed on the ground.

Not surprising, there came a time when Jean had to visit the restroom. Beer will do that. Equally unsurprising the bourbon helped me sleep right through her getting up. But I did hear her come back. Except it wasn’t Jean I heard through my alcohol-induced grogginess; it was the bear coming back for revenge.

“GET OUT OF HERE!” I screamed with all of the passion I had used when I had awakened with the bear standing on me. Jean not knowing what to do grabbed me by the head and said, “Curt, it’s all right, it’s only me!” This was undoubtedly the right thing for her to do, except now the bear had me by the head. As you might imagine, my yells increased in volume geometrically.

Picture 20 flashlights shining down on this happy little domestic scene. If Mr. Bear had any thoughts of revisiting our area that night, he gave us wide berth afterwards.

NEXT BLOG: Back to Kodiak and our float plane trip over the island.

Wandering through Time and Place

Exploring the world with Curtis and Peggy Mekemson

It’s 4 AM and a Bear Is Standing on Top of Me… A Sierra Trek Tale

And Then the Bear Had Me by the Head… Scary Bear Stories Part II