You Cool? (Part 1) Bears on the Teton Crest Trail.
Two sets of wide-set eyes peered at me through the darkness…
Evening set in as I walked back to camp from my cat hole. At the edge of the brush where my hammock was strung, a set of eyes peered out at me from the dark. The owner of those eyes was close to the ground and dashed away as soon as I approached to investigate. Travis and I figured it was a marmot. The rangers in Teton Village had warned us that marmots and porcupines tended to come around at night to chew on the sweaty, sodium-laden shoulder straps of backpackers, so we had hung our bags. No big deal.
About 20 minutes later, as I sleepily arranged my hammock, my headlamp happened to shine through a hole in the brush. Whoa. Four different, larger and wide-set eyes reflected my headlamp’s beam back at me. These new eyes were much bigger and higher from the ground. Clearly those of larger animals. They made my defenses stand at attention. We were about 10 miles deep into the Tetons of Wyoming and well into prime bear habitat. This was my first time in grizzly country, and my lack of experience with “ursus arctos horribilis” made me uneasy from the moment I started researching the trip.
Tangent: Did you know that the difference between Brown Bears, Grizzlies, and Kodiaks is purely geographic? They are all of the genus “ursus arctos,” referring to North American, European and Asian Brown Bears. “Ursus arctos horribilis” is the North American subspecies, whose common names are determined by location and/or diet: “Brown Bears” are coastal (usually Alaskan) and eat salmon; “Grizzlies” generally do not have access to marine food sources, are smaller, and live inland; “Kodiaks” are simply Brown Bears that live on Kodiak island. “Grizzly” refers to the grizzled and silver-tipped hair, not to be confused with the scarier homonym “grisly,” though that’s where the “horribilis” part comes from 1.
Research and Cautionary Tales
I spend a lot of my research time listening to animal encounter stories and reading accident reports. It’s not fun to learn about all the ways humans endure unfortunate circumstances or meet terrible ends, but it’s a critical part of education. One particular story, in which two grizzlies predatorily attempted to take a sleeping camper from their tent, leapt to my mind. It’s not common, but it happens, especially if a bear is investigating poorly managed food smells in camp and decides to see what’s in that flappy tent*. I have the option to not listen to these cautionary tales, but awareness is always preferable to ignorance.
Anyway. So I’m getting stared at in the dark, and I’m suddenly imagining two grizzlies waiting to make their move. Great first night! Indecision was setting in. I didn’t want to approach the four eyeballs I had imagined belonged to two bears—which you should never do—and wanted to figure out a way to manage the situation. I reached for my bear spray.
Thankfully, Travis, being more cool-headed in that moment (and with bear spray in hand), said he was going to the other side of the bluff to check it out. Moments later, he called “oh my god…….(pause that lasts forever)….it’s deer!” I rounded the bend to combine my light source with his, revealing three absolutely beautiful, multi-pointed bucks bedding down 50 feet from our camp.
After watching in awe of them and their calmness, we reasoned it was a good sign that the local prey species had decided to bunk up with us.
At our voyeurism, they seemed to have the same air of caution and confusion. Travis rightfully joked that they looked at us, as if to say, “Hi. uh, so…you cool? OK. good. Cause we’re cool. So, you’re cool?”
We slept well that night and awoke to empty deer beds. We had breakfast and walked on. I had been searching my mind and the landscape for something to write about. I wasn’t coming up with anything. I wasn’t going to write a trip report and decided to let the topic come to me over the 30ish miles in front of us.
Rain, More Marmots, and Lightning. Then More Rain.
Lots of rodents kept us company that second day and not much else - aside from hours of rain. After about 7 miles of soggy walking, we watched a distressed marmot chirp into the distance, scrambling from rock to rock and looking around. It was kind of obviously looking for something. Suddenly, hearing another marmot, it dashed across a rocky scree field and began chittering and jumping all over the two other marmots it had (apparently) been separated from. It was kind of sweet. Hours earlier, a different marmot had peered over the horizon of a rock as Travis made a portrait of it.
The little guy Travis was interacting with was uniquely curious and social, where all the other marmots had as soon as we aparoached. It clearly had a personality that was unique among its dozens (and dozens) of marmot kin.
####Bears Our third and final night was nothing short of a bear block-party. One that third evening, a sleuth of three black bears (a mom and two cubs) passed close enough to Travis’s hammock to say they were “in” our camp. The next morning, another mama and her cubs were shooed DIRECTLY into our camp by shouting hikers. The sow sent her cubs up a tree and, while blinking lazily at me, turned her back to her cubs to saunter over to the creek and grab a mouthful of leaves, proceeding to chew nonchalantly while looking over her shoulder. Her cubs came down, passed right by me, and off they went. Clearly, this wasn’t mom’s first human rodeo.
Both of these two sleuths of bear were simply heading up-canyon and seemed far less alarmed to see us than we were to see them. We were just another group of shouty couch-surfers, sleeping over unannounced.
Reflections on Group Travel
To wrap it all up during breakfast that morning, two more deer also took the highway right through our camp, watching us disinterestedly as we ate the last of our food. They looked at us, hugged the border of our space, and disappeared into the brush. On the last leg of our long walk, we came across a seventh black bear swimming across a stream. It probably had a family close by in the thick brush, though I can’t say for sure.
We came across plenty of other mammals too - mostly the pack-carrying, dehydrated-food-eating, wet, and tired kind of mammals from across the U.S. Our fellow backpackers were also traveling in groups and families, naturally seeking to share the experience and provide comfort, security, and companionship.
Most we greeted in passing, but with two, we shared a moment. They were a couple from the Midwest who were celebrating their anniversary with a thru-hike of the Teton Crest Trail. We exchanged small talk and exhausted stares as the rain found its way through our jackets, and as we hoped the lightning above us would choose anywhere else to strike.
All the creatures we came across: the trio and duo of deer; the sleuths of bears; the marmots; and the families and groups of backpackers - as well as Travis and I - we all took comfort traveling in groups. Keeping to our own kind as needed, but all just passing through on our ways to somewhere else. And, by the end of each day, we all just wanted to get some sleep.
Your Dumb Choices Are More Dangerous Than Smart Animals
Travis and I supported each other through various challenges: quick choices made on where to shelter from that electrical storm; discovering those first deer were not, in fact, hungry grizzlies; me (hopefully) offering some companionship on the trip Travis had planned for his birthday; Travis getting a bit sick from a change in trail diet; and me (stupidly) smashing my shin on a slippery rock crossing - where he then filmed me doing some basic first aid on myself.
There are many, many things to be cautious of in the backcountry. But I’ve learned that people often wring their hands for the wrong reasons. It’s not usually the animals or the “other people.” It’s the stupid slip-and-fall injuries, or the nutrition-related problems that will get you. In my, admittedly anecdotal, experience anyway.
Animal Behavior
And so the story of this trip revealed itself to me. The more I observed the animals and the more I let their body language speak to me, the more I realized their shyness, their curiosity, and their individuality. There’s a very deep and old precedent for social relationships in the mammalian family and, while conflict is always, ALWAYS possible with animals in the backcountry, they’re not generally interested in it anymore than we are. We’re all just navigating a shared space, trying to get somewhere or experience something. While we are each potentially dangerous to the other, aggressive encounters are not inevitable, or even likely. Humans are hardly a target in the backcountry.
Research easily shows that violent animal encounters are rare and, when they do happen, are often due to poor choices made by the human. The animals we encountered on our walk through the Tetons - even the ones we COULD have encountered - were not notably dangerous. In fact, the first and second most dangerous animals on earth might surprise you.
Maybe more surprising is that, nationally in the U.S., deer are literally more deadly than bears. Just not on the trail.
If this article reads like it was written through rose-colored glasses, it was. This walk via the Teton Crest Trail was stupendously beautiful and taught me a lot about animal behavior - things I had previously been learning at a distance.
Animal behavior is nuanced, just like our own, and more subtle than we’ve previously understood. Bears in general, and brown bears/grizzlies especially, are potentially dangerous creatures in certain circumstances. However, dire outcomes aren’t guaranteed, or even likely. A new wave of bear biologists, building on and learning from over a century of data, have been educating backcountry travellers of these new understandings. You’ve probably heard “If it’s brown, lay down; if it’s black fight back.” That mnemonic is not longer considered good advice, is no longer used among ursinologists or, at very least, is being revised to “If it’s brown, lay down…sometimes?”
Read Part 2 of this story here.
References and Resources
- Ursinology (BEARS) Part 1 & 2 with Chris Morgan, Dr. Thea Bechshoft, Dr. Lana Ciarniello, Drew Hamilton, Wes Larson, Tsalani Lassiter & Danielle Rivet
https://www.alieward.com/ologies/ursinology