Bear Encounters - WCT Training Hike #2: Kelly’s Campground

As part of our training for the 8-day, 50-mile hike of Canada’s West Coast Trail (WCT) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Trail ), we had decided to take a hike up into the local Southern California mountains at the end of June 1999. Our group consisted of my wife Tamara, her 12-year-old son Ryan, Steve, Chris and me. We also took along our Golden Retriever, Charly. Even though the maximum altitude of Victoria Island’s WCT is 385 feet, our destination was Kelly’s Campground, located southeast of Mt. Baldy, a 10,004 foot peak about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

In addition to our camping gear needed for the weekend, our backpacks included a bottle of wine in each of the packs belonging to those of legal drinking age. We should have strapped a bottle to Charly as a reserve for that evening’s campsite festivities.

After consuming our dinners we poured more wine and Chris brought out his camping surprise treat. No, not S’mores, but popcorn!! We popped the third of four wine bottles and poured more wine. It was about at this time that one of the scout masters from down below visited our camp. We thought he was going to chastise us for drinking wine, but he probably wished he could have partaken of some and not had to worry about his troop of minors. Instead he came to advise us that bears were seen in the area the night before and he said we needed to be sure to get every food item out of our tent and along with our trash should be hung out of bears’ reach. We took in his advice as we took in more wine, and thanked him for the warning. He retreated to his camp as we re-treated ourselves to another sip of wine.

We took all our food containers, garbage bag, and anything that could be consumed, and hung it about 20 feet above our camp site on a line strung between two trees. Tamara, Ryan, Charly, and I retired to our tent, tried to arrange ourselves around Charly the tent-hog, and finally fell into a state of slumber with visions of pinecones dancing in our heads. All was quiet and peaceful until …

… The Beer Bear Invasion

At about 12:30am we were awakened by Steve bellowing, "There's a bear in the tree outside my tent! If he falls out of the tree he'll fall on my tent!" Now, you have to realize Steve himself was a big teddy bear of about 6 foot 4 inches and 230 pounds.

We all went out to inspect the scene. Sure enough, 20 feet up the trunk of the tree was your average 300 pound brown bear sitting comfortably on a limb and slowly ripping into our garbage bag. Obviously we had not tied it out far enough from the tree and the bear had just reached out and helped himself to the contents. As we stood and pondered what to do, Tamara grabbed some of our camping pots and pans and started banging them together in hopes of scaring off the bear. The rest of us joined in and also started yelling at the bear. It only caused him to look down at us with a look of annoyance as he pulled out the first of the wine bottles. CLINK! The bottle hit the pine needles and rocks below.

We called Charly to come out of the tent to see if she could start barking and scare the bear down. Being the disciplined and smart Golden Retriever she is, she opted to stay in the safety of the “condo.” CLINK! The second wine bottle hit the dirt.
The humans in our party started yelling louder at the bear to get its attention. He continued to rummage through the contents of the garbage. CLUNK! Musta been that heavy cabernet.

At this point I figured the best way to stop the bear was to get the rope holding the rest of our food and belongings out of his reach, so I started untying the rope from the trunk of the tree. As I was doing so, CLINK, the final bottle landed at the bottom of the tree. I had one end of the rope untied from the tree and firmly in my hand. At that point the bear gave up on the garbage bag and reached out and snagged Steve’s toiletry bag at his end of the rope. He was drawn to the sweet aroma of the toothpaste and had been able to extract it from the bag, use one of his claws to rip open the metal tube, and start licking the toothpaste while holding the toiletry bag tied to the rope in his other paw. While he was a bit distracted but still holding the toiletry bag, I yanked on my end of the rope. That got his attention. Not sure that was such a good thing. He pulled back. I pulled harder while thinking, “You’re not getting Steve’s stuff!”

We went back and forth in a game of tug-of-war for a few seconds until I pulled hard enough to free the bag from his grip. I don’t know who was more surprised about what just happened, me or the bear. We looked at each other like, “How the hell did that happen?”

Now the bear had no reason to be in the tree and seemed to be looking around for an escape route. We re-commenced to pounding pots and pans together and some of us started chucking rocks at the bear. He finally started to descend from the tree, his claws scraping against the bark and making us aware of the personal weapon he had the potential of using against us. As he got closer to the ground we all stepped back, except for Charly, who was still keeping a vigilant watch on the inside of the tent and making sure our blowup mattress stood its ground.

The bear finally hit the ground, looked for the path of least resistance and ambled away from us and the campground up the hill. He stopped about 25 yards away from us and turned around to look at us. Again we yelled, chased after him, and threw rocks. He finally got the message and disappeared into the darkness of the trees. Figuring this was the last we would see of the bear, we retied our food and stuffs in the same tree, but a bit further out of reach. We felt comfortable with the job we had done and headed back into our respective tents.

Just as I had fallen back into a peaceful sleep, we were again awakened by a ruckus in our campsite. We stepped out again only to see the bear ascending the tree. This time we were able to scare him away without him climbing all the way up the tree and without another game of tug-of-war. This was good as I was in no mood for any more bear camp games.

We decided to find a better spot to tie the food away from our tents. It was further up the hill and harder to reach. Again, we headed back to the tents to get some sleep.

But this pesky, more determined than the average bear was not to be discouraged. This time he bypassed the tree experience and instead opted to rummage through the pots and pans and raise a ruckus with what had been used to scare him away on his previous visits. It was as though he was trying to use our own method to scare us back from where WE had come. But it didn’t work. Once more we exited our tents. Chris even came out in such a hurry that he still had his sleeping blindfold on and he was pissed off! “I’ve had enough!” he yelled and started hurling the biggest rocks and epitaphs he could muster and again chased the bear up the hill and into the darkness. That must have done the trick because the bear had not attempted to disturb our food that time and thankfully that was the last we ever saw of the bear. But it was not the last sign of the bear. We retired to our tents for the fourth time.

The sun came up and I awoke and lay in my tent just listening to the sounds of nature outside my tent. Fortunately, a sound I did not hear was anything to do with bears.

I did finally get out of my tent and the others were starting breakfast and gathering up our scattered belongings the bear had strewn about. Chris kept looking around and asked if anyone had seen his beer mug he had used last night for hot chocolate. It was no where to be seen. We surmised the bear had been attracted to the sweetness of the chocolate remnants in the mug during his third visit and had taken off with it back to his lair. So there's this bear around Kelly’s Campground up near Mt. Baldy that is probably sitting in his cave, hoisting Chris's Beer mug, singing beer drinking songs, drinking brews with his bruin buddies, and thinking of his next bear invasion.

© 2005 Bruce Gulde
© 2005 8 Yellow Snow

Maui not so Wowee

Just a short little thought for now. We really had a good time during our week on Maui and I will go into more detail in a later post, but this is just something for nowie.

I have been travelling to Hawaii since about 1982. Tamara and I just returned from a week in Maui. On the return flight to Los Angeles Airport, I mentioned to Tamara the difference in flying to Hawaii my first time as opposed to our most recent adventure.

On my first flight in the ‘80s I remember getting onto the plane and hearing Hawaiian music with ukuleles, slide guitars, and singing that created visions in my head of hula dancers. The stewardesses (yes, we still called them stewardesses at that time) wore Hawaiian attire and warm smiles above the fragrant, floral leis around their necks. We had been greeted with “Aloha” and heard in-flight messages with a final punctuation of “Mahalo!”

During this most recent trip in the 21st century, there was no Hawaiian music during the entire flight, the United Airlines flight attendants donned the standard corporate suit, and not once during our 5 ½ hour flight to Maui did I hear a single “Aloha” or “Mahalo.” On a side note, during one beverage service, the first flight attendant asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I requested coffee. Before she could serve it to me, the beverage cart was moved and continued down the aisle. The second flight attendant at the beverage cart stopped just to the row behind me. I still wanted coffee and attempted to vocally get her attention. When she obviously did not hear me and did not respond, I touched the back of her arm to get her attention. When she turned around to look at me, I saw a look from her as though I had just stuck her with a needle from a syringe containing HIV!

Once we arrived in Maui, again I did not hear an “Aloha” or “Mahalo” unless I spoke it. In fact, when I did say the words, I received looks as though I had just handed them a warm turd (my honor to J. D. Salinger’s character in “Catcher In The Rye”).

Ah, well, obviously Hawai’i has now officially become Americanized. Sad.

One last thing: Howaya doin’?

Breakin' the Maui Curse

Tamara and I will be visiting Maui at the end of January 2010. This will be her second visit to Maui and my fifth. Some wonder why I would want to return for a fifth time, so I have posted a write-up from our previous visit around the turn of the century that lays out the reason for the return.

By the way, we have rented a Jeep for this return adventure. ;-)

Lovin’ and Livin’ To The Music of Gail Swanson
By Bruce Gulde

My wife, Tamara, and I had just completed a day of sightseeing on Maui, Hawaii in June of 2001. This was my fourth visit to Maui, but it was Tamara’s first time on the island. We decided to steer our rental Jeep into Lahaina for a nice cold beer and a huge hunk of meat, so we figured what better place to start our evening than a burger place I had visited in the past – Cheeseburger In Paradise.

It was around 6:00pm and as we walked through the door of the open-aired restaurant we could see that it had its usual tourist-and-locals-packed-wall-to-wall atmosphere. I guided Tamara up the stairs to the second floor where I knew there was a great view of the harbor of this former whaling village and, of course, a bar serving microbrew beer. We took a couple of stools at the end of the bar. As we looked outside and took in the beauty of the island and the ocean, we raised our glasses to a toast for a wonderful time together.

Soon, Tamara needed to make a trip to the restroom, and as she left I started to reflect on my previous trips to Maui. I realized that this was my fourth trip to Maui and each time I had traveled here it had been with a different woman – two previous wives, a girlfriend from England, and now Tamara. It seemed like there was some sort of curse that the Maui gods had put upon me because each time I brought someone with me to Maui we would end up eventually breaking up. As I took another sip of beer, I suddenly realized that I had never brought any of the previous women back for a second time! I definitely didn’t want the same fate to be in store for the current marriage of Tamara and me.

Ding! Ding! Ding! The alarms in my head rang and a light suddenly came on – what I needed to do to break the curse was to ensure that Tamara and I returned to Maui – and the sooner the better!

When Tamara returned I informed her of my sudden insight and that we must plan to return to Maui at our earliest convenience to break the curse. She was all in agreement to that and we toasted again to our vow to return.

As we were sitting and chatting with others who were enjoying the surroundings, the evening’s musician appeared at a small stage at the opposite end of the room. In between were tables where patrons were eating burgers and consuming exotic-looking drinks.

As the singer, Gail Swanson, began her set, Tamara and I became a couple in the corner of the burger joint with open windows and the sounds of street traffic below wafting into the room and mingling with the other sights, sounds, and fragrances in the air.

After Gail Swanson’s first set, we knew we enjoyed her music enough to buy copies of her CDs that she had for sale next to her on the stage. We bought two of her CDs and she came by to speak to us for a bit as she went to rest up for her next set.
We decided to stay for another of Gail’s sets, get a bite to eat, and head back to our hotel on the other part of the island. Her second set was just as satisfying as the first, and we left Cheeseburger In Paradise with good food in our bellies and good songs in our hearts.

We started up the Jeep and headed out to our hotel in Wialea, driving on the highway which edges next to the Pacific Ocean. The palm trees that could be seen in the darkness along the side of the road and the whitecaps on breakers in the distant surf reflecting moonlight acted as sirens and lured me into pulling the Jeep off the road and onto a nearby beach.

Tamara knew what I had in mind, and we popped one of Gail Swanson’s freshly bought CDs into the Jeep’s CD player. With the sounds of great music, breaking surf, palm fronds whispering above us, and the feel of the Hawaiian trade winds, Tamara and I made love in paradise.

With a warm afterglow, we then continued our journey back to our hotel. I had another spur of the moment idea and told Tamara that I had always wanted to drive while I was naked. Well, being that it was a typical tropical night of balmy weather, the road back to the hotel was without streetlights for most of the way, and the drive wasn’t all that far, I figured this was a golden opportunity to live out another one of my crazy desires. So I drove back to the hotel feeling free and as “naked as a Jaybird,” as my mother used to say.

Tamara and I joked and giggled on our way back to the hotel. As we neared our hotel, I realized it may not be a good idea to drive up to valet parking without a stitch of clothing. Besides, I didn’t want to scare away any of the other hotel guests! There were 4 hotels in a row where we were staying, and ours was on the far end of the string. So I came up with a plan -- I would pull into the hotel that was next to ours and at least put on some shorts before we got to our final destination.

Still giggling, we drove into the designated hotel where their ever-diligent valet came out to greet our Jeep as we were rolling up. Not wanting to stop and have him see my nekkidness, I drove right by him and we waved to him with big ol’ grins on our faces. I stopped the Jeep about 50 yards beyond where the valet had been standing, but I noticed in my rearview mirror that he was approaching our vehicle. I told Tamara he was walking our way, but she knew me well enough to know that him walking towards us would not stop me from my mission.

I opened the door of the Jeep and stepped out with my back to the approaching valet. I grabbed my shorts and bent over to put them on, thus providing the valet with a Full Moon as I proceeded to put on my shorts and then zip them up. I zipped back into the still-running Jeep with Gail Swanson’s CD playing, closed the door, and again looked in the rearview mirror as I put the Jeep into gear and stole away into the night. There I saw the valet walking away and shaking his head, while probably thinking, “Just another crazy tourist!”

Since we returned to our home on the mainland in Long Beach, California, where we continue to listen to and enjoy the music of Gail Swanson on her CDs. Each time we listen to her we flashback to the great times we had while on Maui and specifically that one evening. Tamara and I will be returning shortly to Maui, visit that burger joint with no windows, being a couple sitting in the corner, listening to another set or three of Gail Swanson, and also enjoying any other island adventures that may await us there. We gotta break that curse, too, don’tcha know?

© 2003