Bear attack in SEKI

[hikerduane]

Trekker, I like your idea, shoot the tourist, touron, moron whatever.

I don't know if I mentioned anywhere where I made comments about my trip, but at Rae Lakes, a couple small golden mantled ground squirrels were quite friendly. If I stayed still, they would come right up to my open Ursack and poke there head in it, with me right next to it in my chair. I swatted them twice, waiting to see how far they would go and even had one on my arm going after my jerky before I said NO! They put in an appearance as soon as I opened my package of cheese. Funny, within seconds of me getting into my cheese, here they came homing in on me. I could see them from 50' away and then they came a runnin. Then a Scout rigged a trap to catch them under a pot baited with food. He would catch them and release, good lesson there.

[caddis]

I

I wonder if the bear they destroyed was the same bear I saw and if so why wasn't she relocated back then. It might have protected the dozing hiker and saved the bear if they had.

Maybe if you would have nailed it with a rock it would have developed a fear/pain association with humans. You could have saved the life of the bear and protected the human.





tough love

[arlopop61]

Yeah, caddis, that's the proper method. If only...

[maverick]

By the way when you do have an encounter how many of you take the time to stop by the ranger station to let them know?
I see arlopop61 wrote that he stopped by the ranger station, what about anyone else.
Any encounter, even if your not involved should be reported to the rangers so they can have a case report on file and hopefully save the bears life in the long run.
By the posts here it seems there was a history of bear problems which maybe this particular bear was involved in.
Of coarse Paradise Valley is notorious for bear problems especially back in the late 90's when warnings were posted at the Road Ends ranger station about not leaving you pack on the ground unattended for any amount of time because bears would carry them off in a flash.
Its to bad the NP couldn't find the bear according to there news release and try to scare it off with fire crackers or rubber bullets.
It still sounded like from my conversation with the spokeswoman that they could have taken a more aggressive stance in dealing with the bear, but I think the lack of man power, due to budget cuts, was one of the major contributing factors that led to the death of this bear!

[caddis]

Yeah, caddis, that's the proper method. If only...

it beats doing nothing. Better yet, it beats another regulation concerning proper food storage or a silly lecture from a bureaucrat on bear safety when I pick up a permit or maybe a regulation on closing sections of the wilderness infected with rogue bears

[SSSdave]

By the way when you do have an encounter how many of you take the
time to stop by the ranger station to let them know?...!

This year I reported to SEKI rangers seeing a bear up in the White Chief drainage in Mineral King. That wasn't my reason for stopping by at the station though and was simply incidental information I provided during conversastion. I saw a bear up in that area on a previous trip so thought it rather novel. The ranger was rather surprised too given the 9k elevation. Otherwise although I've seen a lot of bears in the backcountry, I've never bothered to stop at a ranger station after a trip with bear encounters because there hasn't been anything out of the ordinary. Except for a bit of food on the last day of my first ever backpack decades ago, no bear has come close to getting anything from me except maybe that bear that used to chew off branches in Vidette Meadow. We had to scare that persistent bear off with rocks and then move our food a half mile to the bear boxes because we didn't wan't to waste any more good sleep time every time it snuck back to chew more wood. ...David

[maverick]

Was that back in the 90's Dave. I remember staying at East Lake and talking to two backpackers who where awaken in the middle of the night by a large crash to find the 6" diameter branch they used to hang there food was chewed all the way through the night before.
This took place at the southern end of East Lake.

[arlopop61]

I guess I just can't get on the "see a bear, hit it with a rock" wildlife management bandwagon. Especially when the bear is just sitting in the sun scratching itself. Sorry.

However, I'm not opposed to the "see someone feeding a bear, hit them with a rock" hiker management method. So, go figure.

[hikerduane]

More regulations, just what we want to see. Sunday morning, when I left camp in the Caribou Wilderness, the tourons who camped close to me had left some toliet paper behind a tree, I grumbled to myself as I walked by it. They had dragged/carried a wheeled ice chest with bottled beer in it and brought along two unruly dogs. At least they didn't carry on bad, just the fire 10' from the lake, in the fire pit I had partially torn apart and the toliet paper, less than 50' maybe from the lake.

[SSSdave]

Was that back in the 90's Dave. I remember staying at East Lake and talking to two backpackers who where awaken in the middle of the
night by a large crash to find the 6" diameter branch they used to hang there food was chewed all the way through the night before.
This took place at the southern end of East Lake.

August 1993. That mother bear became rather famous. I couldn't believe the chunks of wood her mouth could quickly dispatch. A six inch diameter limb probably would take her less than an hour.