Fear and an Anticlimactic Bear Encounter
I've run for countless hours in the wilderness, seeing rattlesnakes, foxes, coyotes and a few ominous tracks, but I have never had to sleep there.
We rolled into our makeshift campsite on my very first backpacking trip. The hike was extraordinary; We'd walked a short eight and a half miles from our car through Lassen National Park to our first makeshift campsite at Lower Twin Lake. After lounging around for a few hours and taking a quick swim, we began to setup our sleeping equipment. I've been camping many times before, but this wasn't my ordinary campsite. There was no fire pit, no nearby RV's, and absolutely no people with the exception of the five of us. My four friends set up their two, two-man tents in the small clearing about 30 feet from the start of the woods. Looking for the smoothest spot, I set up my newly purchased one-man tent a little ways from them, about 15 feet from the woods, which ended up being the first precursur to a long and stressful night ahead. As I pulled items out of my tent bag, I considered the rainfly. I've never used the tent without it (I'd only used it a few times on the Oregon coast), but there would certainly be no rain in the California high country, so I left it in the bag. This was the second indication of the stressful night. Finally, as we were setting our bear canisters in the woods, we probably placed them a little bit closer to ourselves than what is typically a normal distance, about 40 feet away from my tent.
When we were finally done with the setup and a few short card games as the darkness continued to intensify, we finally separated into our tents. Laying in my tent I felt utterly exposed. Without the rainfly, there's only about a foot and a half of vertical green fabric before the transparent mesh begins. I could see the stars above me, and if I leaned up just a bit, I could see the woods just beside me.
It wasn't more than a half hour later before the noises started. Twigs snapped, animals thudded around, and the sloppy noise of an animal drinking from the lake was audible thirty feet away. I started to hear noise coming from about where we placed the bear canisters. Whether or not it was actually the case, at the time I was certain there was a bear messing around a few feet outside my tent. Had I raised my head and peered outside, I would've most likely seen that it was just deer, but for some reason I feared the possibility of making eye contact with a bear, and therefore startling it. Furthermore, I didn't want to make my fear any more intense than it actually was by confirming my suspicions that there was, in fact, a bear outside.
Black bear attacks (the only kind of bear we have), are extremely uncommon, and it's almost inconceivable that a bear would go after a foodless tent. Knowing this, and knowing that my camp-mates likely knew this as well, I tried to convince myself to quit stressing out and go to sleep. Even if there was a bear, it made no difference whether I was holding my breath in fear or lying in the same exact position sleeping. This self-talk was ineffective. The large thuds and snapping branches continued loudly throughout the night. I continued to lay there, wide eyed, looking at the sky, until dawn finally broke to my relief, and I woke-up alive.
I was pretty sure I had over-reacted. Probably nobody else had heard the noises, and if I mentioned the extent to which I was horrified I would just be ridiculed. It turned out this was not the case. While I lay there the entire night certain that a bear would hop on top of me any moment, and I'd have to scream to Devin to help me with the bear spray, Devin laid in his tent the entire night, hearing noises near my tent, and clutching his bear spray ready to leap up and bail me out at any moment. He said he only slept two hours. Without him telling me this, I probably would've kept this entire story to myself for fear of damaging my fragile manliness, but knowing that we were all bothered by the noises permits me to share-away.
When we went to look for bear tracks in the morning, the only tracks we could find were from deer. I'm still not entirely unsure that there weren't at least a few moments in the night when a bear was lurking, but for the most part the noises turned out to be unusually clumsy deer, and a lot of them (this is apparently what happens when you camp right next to their water source).
Having survived the first night, I worried less and less about large animals as the days wore on, but finally, on our last day, only about 3 miles from our car, a through hiker walked by warning us of a mama bear and cub about a mile up the trail. Supposedly, black bears are relatively harmless with the exception of one important condition—when they are with cubs. Still, I wasn't too worried. We were five strong, chatting and making plenty of noise, and the bear-spray was in the hands of Rory, a tall, muscular navy man who we all assumed knew what he was doing. Having walked another 20 minutes, I assumed the bear threat was over when our caboose, Lauren, said "Bear." We stopped and looked to our right. Sure enough, about 50 feet away in the trees was a cinnamon colored bear (A black bear, despite being brown—confusing stuff, I know). It was so petite that Rory initially said, "Okay so that's the cub." We craned our necks trying to locate the large, threatening black bear, before an adorable chihuahua sized bear scurried after the other bear, which turned out to be the mom. As we stood there, easily within earshot and noticeable by the bears, I assumed the mama bear would at least glance at us and size us up a little. That didn't happen. In fact, it seemed as though the bears didn't care one bit that a group of five humans was standing 50 feet away, staring and talking about them. Even if the mama bear had charged us, which is an extremely unlikely possibility, I'm fairly certain the five of us would've been a pretty good match for that bear, bear spray or not.
We walked onward toward the car. Our bear-with-cub encounter turned out to be laughably anticlimactic, and for the time being I felt totally and completely unthreatened by black bears. If we had encountered these bears prior to my first night in the woods, I might've slept like a baby knowing that the bears in the forest probably wanted nothing to do with me. Instead all I got from the experience was nine fewer hours of sleep.
We rolled into our makeshift campsite on my very first backpacking trip. The hike was extraordinary; We'd walked a short eight and a half miles from our car through Lassen National Park to our first makeshift campsite at Lower Twin Lake. After lounging around for a few hours and taking a quick swim, we began to setup our sleeping equipment. I've been camping many times before, but this wasn't my ordinary campsite. There was no fire pit, no nearby RV's, and absolutely no people with the exception of the five of us. My four friends set up their two, two-man tents in the small clearing about 30 feet from the start of the woods. Looking for the smoothest spot, I set up my newly purchased one-man tent a little ways from them, about 15 feet from the woods, which ended up being the first precursur to a long and stressful night ahead. As I pulled items out of my tent bag, I considered the rainfly. I've never used the tent without it (I'd only used it a few times on the Oregon coast), but there would certainly be no rain in the California high country, so I left it in the bag. This was the second indication of the stressful night. Finally, as we were setting our bear canisters in the woods, we probably placed them a little bit closer to ourselves than what is typically a normal distance, about 40 feet away from my tent.
When we were finally done with the setup and a few short card games as the darkness continued to intensify, we finally separated into our tents. Laying in my tent I felt utterly exposed. Without the rainfly, there's only about a foot and a half of vertical green fabric before the transparent mesh begins. I could see the stars above me, and if I leaned up just a bit, I could see the woods just beside me.
It wasn't more than a half hour later before the noises started. Twigs snapped, animals thudded around, and the sloppy noise of an animal drinking from the lake was audible thirty feet away. I started to hear noise coming from about where we placed the bear canisters. Whether or not it was actually the case, at the time I was certain there was a bear messing around a few feet outside my tent. Had I raised my head and peered outside, I would've most likely seen that it was just deer, but for some reason I feared the possibility of making eye contact with a bear, and therefore startling it. Furthermore, I didn't want to make my fear any more intense than it actually was by confirming my suspicions that there was, in fact, a bear outside.
Black bear attacks (the only kind of bear we have), are extremely uncommon, and it's almost inconceivable that a bear would go after a foodless tent. Knowing this, and knowing that my camp-mates likely knew this as well, I tried to convince myself to quit stressing out and go to sleep. Even if there was a bear, it made no difference whether I was holding my breath in fear or lying in the same exact position sleeping. This self-talk was ineffective. The large thuds and snapping branches continued loudly throughout the night. I continued to lay there, wide eyed, looking at the sky, until dawn finally broke to my relief, and I woke-up alive.
I was pretty sure I had over-reacted. Probably nobody else had heard the noises, and if I mentioned the extent to which I was horrified I would just be ridiculed. It turned out this was not the case. While I lay there the entire night certain that a bear would hop on top of me any moment, and I'd have to scream to Devin to help me with the bear spray, Devin laid in his tent the entire night, hearing noises near my tent, and clutching his bear spray ready to leap up and bail me out at any moment. He said he only slept two hours. Without him telling me this, I probably would've kept this entire story to myself for fear of damaging my fragile manliness, but knowing that we were all bothered by the noises permits me to share-away.
When we went to look for bear tracks in the morning, the only tracks we could find were from deer. I'm still not entirely unsure that there weren't at least a few moments in the night when a bear was lurking, but for the most part the noises turned out to be unusually clumsy deer, and a lot of them (this is apparently what happens when you camp right next to their water source).
Having survived the first night, I worried less and less about large animals as the days wore on, but finally, on our last day, only about 3 miles from our car, a through hiker walked by warning us of a mama bear and cub about a mile up the trail. Supposedly, black bears are relatively harmless with the exception of one important condition—when they are with cubs. Still, I wasn't too worried. We were five strong, chatting and making plenty of noise, and the bear-spray was in the hands of Rory, a tall, muscular navy man who we all assumed knew what he was doing. Having walked another 20 minutes, I assumed the bear threat was over when our caboose, Lauren, said "Bear." We stopped and looked to our right. Sure enough, about 50 feet away in the trees was a cinnamon colored bear (A black bear, despite being brown—confusing stuff, I know). It was so petite that Rory initially said, "Okay so that's the cub." We craned our necks trying to locate the large, threatening black bear, before an adorable chihuahua sized bear scurried after the other bear, which turned out to be the mom. As we stood there, easily within earshot and noticeable by the bears, I assumed the mama bear would at least glance at us and size us up a little. That didn't happen. In fact, it seemed as though the bears didn't care one bit that a group of five humans was standing 50 feet away, staring and talking about them. Even if the mama bear had charged us, which is an extremely unlikely possibility, I'm fairly certain the five of us would've been a pretty good match for that bear, bear spray or not.
We walked onward toward the car. Our bear-with-cub encounter turned out to be laughably anticlimactic, and for the time being I felt totally and completely unthreatened by black bears. If we had encountered these bears prior to my first night in the woods, I might've slept like a baby knowing that the bears in the forest probably wanted nothing to do with me. Instead all I got from the experience was nine fewer hours of sleep.
(Unfortunately, this cool bear was not the one we saw)
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