During the first week of the summer season in Yellowstone National Park, the maintenance crew chief told a group of newbies gathered in a run-down cabin what to expect working for the National Park Service. He played a couple tapes in a VCR (this was 2001). The first involved steps to take to prevent catching the hantavirus, a sometimes fatal disease often contracted from rodents.
Then he played a video about bears, specifically what to do if you run into one. There were some fundamental tips, like don’t run and act big and carry bear spray. This advice would come in handy, I figured, because I was on the garbage crew and assumed bears would follow our stench around the Yellowstone Lake region. I paid attention. As a 21-year-old, I had never seen a bear.
As it happened, bears don’t chase garbage trucks. I did see a grizzly within days of hauling trash. At a safe distance, a mom and two cubs were enjoying the park in May before the hordes of tourists arrived. Most of us who have spent any time in bear country have a bear story. And here’s mine:
On a day off during that first summer in the park, another summer employee and I headed out for a daytrip in Hayden Valley. My hiking companion was from New Jersey (he claimed to surf there) and had landed an internship in Yellowstone studying plants. Nonetheless, he was less prepared than me as we set off along a trail hugging a tree line.
We chatted and laughed and the sun beat down. Hiking on a clear afternoon is about as good as it gets. After covering a few miles, we began out-and-backing to the trailhead. Not long after, I nearly ran into him (or her, I’m not sure). The bear certainly saw me first. He was just a few feet off the trail and was apparently transfixed by the daydreaming hiker slowly walking toward him. When I noticed him, I screamed and forgot all of the pro tips the Park Service had taught me. I didn’t act big. I forgot my bear spray. And I sprinted from the woods down a nearby valley.
My companion also screamed and ran. We were lucky. The black bear was young, small and as scared as we were. Following our screams, he had clumsily scrambled over a tree and dashed off into the woods.
Since then, I am more prepared in the backcountry and have heard my fair share of bear stories. A friend of mine often recounts a run-in with a mother grizzly with cubs nearby who confronted him near the top of Mount Siyeh in Glacier National Park. When he details the bear’s smell and sound she made as she pounded the trail, it makes me shiver.
None of this means a hiker should be scared in bear country. Instead, it’s smart to be prepared. When you do, from safe distance, there is nothing really like it. The Montana woods wouldn’t be the same without the chance to see the animals with whom we share the territory. Without bears, Montana is that much less wild and that much more like everywhere else.
Bears, especially grizzlies, have been in the news a lot lately as wildlife officials review whether to delist the population in the Yellowstone area. Some environmental groups have opposed the move, but the federal government argues that grizzlies have recovered and lifting threatened-species protections is long overdue.
Over the last 40 years, the grizzly population has grown from 136 to more than 700 in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In our backyard, in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes Glacier, the number has grown from a few hundred to nearly 1,000. Whether those numbers are sustainable, both regions are wilder than they’ve been in decades.