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