Warning: Do not read if you are my mother or your name is B. May cause severe and instantaneous stress.
Tuesday started off as a pretty normal day here in Sitka. My sister was finally finished with her work as a counselor, as the high school session had ended and the camp had pretty much emptied out. We had been planning a hike for a couple of days - not so much
planning as in taking our time and really thinking things through, but planning in the sense that we were playing things by ear because of the weather and timing.
We woke up early on Tuesday, packed some snacks, packed some extra clothes, and set off walking. The trailhead was about a mile from the camp, and we knew the general layout of the trail from looking at a map the night before. Gavan Hill, with a ridge connection to Harbor Mountain, is a well-groomed trail
, a fairly easy hike, aside from the fact that climbing Gavan Hill means conquering
thousands of stairs. The forst service website says that it takes anywhere from four to eight hours to hike this, and our friends who completed the more difficult first half did so with two preteens in three hours.
We had a pretty nice day, as far as Sitka weather goes; no rain, just lots and lots of fog. We made great time on the first part of the hike, despite our legs screaming from the stairs. (I'm not kidding, there are actually thousands of stairs!) It started to get foggier as we made our way up the hill. A little more than half way up, we came across some people coming down - a single man, and two older ladies - both parties told us that they hadn't crossed the ridge to the mountain because of some impasses caused by snow. "It's not impossible, just don't want to do it when I'm alone and there's this much fog."
We promised ourselves that we would take it as it came and if it looked bad we'd just turn around once we'd gotten there.
About three and a half miles from the trailhead (out of about four to the shelter at the top and the official start of the mountain ridge), we reached snow. It was a little bit scary because of the fog, but at this point it looks worse in the picture than it was in person. We were still in pretty high spirits and decided to try crossing, slowly and carefully.
We made it across the first impasse pretty easily after figuring out that we just needed to take our time since visibility was about 20 feet.
Impasse number two was bad.
We made it halfway across what I assume would be a field in nicer weather, but was currently covered in easily eight feet of accumulated snow. We lost the trail completely in the direction we were going (don't worry, we knew where we came from and could see that direction clearly), and headed westward on the hill, where it looked like we could at least get out of the snow and onto some slightly higher ground. We got up to the landing and it became clear that that was not where the trail continued. We decided to stop there and eat our snacks anyway, since we were out of the wind and fog on that side of the mountain. As I walked around the area, I started to see some animal tracks, mostly hooves. Mountain goats are seen up here pretty frequently, so I didn't freak out. Still, at that point, some anxiety was growing inside me. "Okay, so Kirsten said that this trail is definitely easier than Verstovia (the climb I did three weeks prior), so we can't be much farther. Let's get moving because it makes me nervous to be sitting still. We'll try going around the front side once more and if we don't find the pick up to the trail we'll turn around." We went back down the back side of the hill we'd climbed and saw a rock sculpture in the fog ahead. After walking towards it an seeing yet another one in the distance, we realized that someone from the forest service had built these to mark the trail in this exact instance, when snow covered the path. Maybe 15 minutes later, we found the forest service shelter.
Ecstatic, we drank some water, stretched, and kept moving.
Probably .5 miles from the shelter, we reached one more impasse and scary descent before finding ourselves in a lovely open field contained on one side by the hill we had descended and a small bank of trees on the other. We remarked at the sudden lack of snow, how pretty the small purple and yellow flowers were and how green the grass was in this lower-lying area. We stopped to take some pictures, making jokes, singing, and laughing loudly. Crossing the field and walking up the small embankment, we stopped to examine a tree that looked more like a huge shrub, overgrown to form a nook, much like a tree that used to reside in our backyard. I stepped ahead of my sister and turned to take a picture of her. Through the screen on her iphone, I watched her face change suddenly from a big smile to a stare, eyes wide with horror. "Ohshit" was all she said. I turned on my heel and didn't stop as I wheeled in a complete circle and thrust my weight in the direction we'd come from.
(My heart pounds as I'm recounting this for the Nth time, as it's a small town and everyone has wanted to hear the story.)
As I turned in a circle, I saw the following scene:
Open field, bear cub diagonally to our right about 50 feet away, running parallel to the embankment.
Grizzly sow, teeth bared, size of a fiat, diagonally to our left about 50 feet away, running
directly toward us.
In the split second it took me to complete the turn, my mind said "STOP. DO. NOT. RUN. TURN AROUND AND YELL, MAKE YOURSELF LOOK BIG, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT RUN." The next moment my body was disobeying me and flailing. I experienced a horribly comedic fall, slipping on something and scrambling to get up, running as fast as I could, clutching my sister by the back of the shirt and pulling her along. We ran across the field we'd just crossed as I told my body I was not going to turn around. My head betrayed me and swiveled to see that the bear was following us. Running up the hill, my sister cried out as she slipped off a rock and rolled her ankle, hyperventilating and begging to stop. I calmly told her that we were not stopping, since we turned again to see that the sow and her
two cubs had paused at the edge of the clearing, but I had no idea what they might do. We ran/jogged/slogged up the hill, across the impasses, and all the way back to the shelter, spewing expletives as we went. I kept looking back, half expecting the mother to be upon us, although in my head I
knew that 1) if she had any intention of harming us she could have easily taken us down in the moments immediately after she saw us, 2) she would not leave her cubs or try to take them across that slippery impasse, and 3) she had already accomplished what she wanted; she'd scared the living daylights out of us and we'd left and - I looked down at my knee where I'd fallen - I'd slipped in bear poop. People have since joked that the sow stopped chasing us as soon as she realized what I'd done - I FELL in her scat: I clearly posed no threat.
After spending a few minutes at the shelter and 75% sure that we were not being followed, I called Ed, a friend and faculty member at the camp, and a Sitka native. The quandary was that we were
much closer to the trail head on the other side of the mountain where there was a parking lot and the potential for getting picked up by a staffer (about 2 miles) than we were from the hill side trailhead we'd hiked up (4 miles of stairs and rougher hiking). Ed said that chances were 9-to-1 that the bears were ambling off into the woods and would not be in that field if we headed back in that direction. I wasn't willing to find out and was now on high alert (last thing I needed was to come across another bear) so we hiked ALL THE WAY back down the four miles of rock and thousands of stairs, back the mile to the camp, singing loudly the entire way. We stumbled back to our room, bewildered, dehydrated, and exhausted, and because Ed had told everyone at camp as soon as we got off the phone, had to recount the story to dozens of people.
Paul took us out for a drink after dinner to unwind. Everyone keeps telling me that what we experienced is really unusual since we were being so loud, and the only thing anyone can speculate is that the second cub we saw after the fact was somewhere very close to us in the tree line, and mama was NOT happy about it. Paul felt horrible, since he was the one that, during my interview in Cleveland and in the first days after my arrival, assuaged my long-harbored fear of bears, assuring me that although the bears are plentiful, they don't want anything to do with humans and if I remained loud and calm, I wouldn't have any encounters. I don't blame him at all, but the irony is hard to ignore.
The other thing people tell us was that it was likely a "bluff" charge, that she would have gotten up in our faces and stopped, but there was no possible way that I could have stood there. I tried. My body wasn't having it. The entire hike up to that point, I'd been thinking about the fact that we didn't have bear spray. I don't know that it would have made a difference had we had it on us. Neither of us has ever used it, and I'm told that it's like using a cross between regular mace and a fire extinguisher - there's a safety, a pin you have to pull out, etc. - and that a lot of people end up accidentally shooting themselves instead of the approaching wildlife. That would have been me.
Reflecting on the situation, it's still terrifying. I will not be doing any more hiking in my last six days in Sitka, I have too much work to do anyway. I'm nervous to go into the park nearby the camp, for fear of running into a big furry neighbor. I think I handled the situation well - I'm amazed at how calm I was in the moments after I saw the bear hurdling toward us, and also with how distinctly I experienced some sort of PTSD in the couple of days that followed. I've definitely learned some lessons - bear spray, yes; larger hiking group, yes (although people do that hike by themselves all the time, Paul included); standing my ground, yes.
::Sigh of relief::
It's over with, done with, and will not happen again. It's a crazy story and I never ever thought I would experience something like that. I've told the story maybe 30 times now and my heart flutters a little bit still.
I guess I can say I
really experienced Alaska.
Not to fear, I'm sitting comfortably in the Highliner downtown, drinking good coffee, being incredibly productive (until I started typing this and spent an hour on it!) and savoring the drizzle outside. Maritime weather for sure. TEDx starts in approximately an hour, so I've got to finish up what I'm working on and scuttle back to campus for lunch before it starts!
Here's to avoiding bears in the future!
P.S. ISN'T GEOGRAPHY AWESOME?!
 |
| Image courtesy of Google Earth |
