ilanarama: a mountain (mountain)
Ilana ([personal profile] ilanarama) wrote2008-07-09 11:59 am

back from backpacking

Did not get eaten by bears. Pictures to come (although not a huge number, as it rained excessively).

[identity profile] alembicresearch.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Wee ... I went on a hike in the Sierra Nevada over the weekend,
and saw a big old bear!
Also got to see a mountain quail with a bunch of little chicks,
and see some watermelon snow.
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[identity profile] ilanarama.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh! We saw bear tracks, and some other hikers we talked with saw a bear, but we didn't. In fact, I have never seen a bear while hiking in Colorado. (I've seen bears while hiking in other states, and I've seen bears in Colorado while I've been in my house or yard.)

We saw deer and elk, including a group of four cow elk frolicking on the far side of the valley we were camped in - really fun to watch, like teenage girls. Moose scat and tracks, but again, other hikers saw the moose, not us. And we heard coyotes howling.
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[identity profile] sdwolfpup.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Welcome back! Glad you didn't get eaten. :)
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[identity profile] ilanarama.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 07:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Not by bears, anyway - the mosquitoes did their best, though!

[identity profile] bowdlerized.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Were they wearing their bells? :D

We thought of you recently while hiking at an altitude of 10,000 - 11,000 (I think) feet, which was REALLY FREAKIN' TIRING.
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[identity profile] ilanarama.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee, maybe that's why one of the pack horses we saw had a bell dangling from its harness!

And yeah, altitude = not a heck of a lot of oxygen. I live at 6500 feet so I am somewhat acclimated, but I still get a lot slower above about 11,500.

Where were you hiking? Did you have fun? Was it practice for coming out to visit? :-)

[identity profile] bowdlerized.livejournal.com 2008-07-09 07:40 pm (UTC)(link)
We were in Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico. Supposedly it was in the cloud forest where there are jaguars and tapirs, but it...wasn't. It was somewhat fun, but I had a hard time enjoying myself too much because every time I walked a couple steps uphill I got completely out of breath, and also there weren't many types of plants and animals to see. Good mountain views, though. It was totally practice for coming to visit you. :D
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[identity profile] ilanarama.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
I think the chance of seeing a bear here is about the same as seeing a jaguar there :-)

[identity profile] anavolena.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
Up in the Okanagan National Forest we saw rocks recently turned over by bears, but no bears.

Which is good, because I'm told there's actually Grizzly around up here. We normally are worried about Black bear.
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[identity profile] ilanarama.livejournal.com 2008-07-10 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
We saw grizzlies when we hiked in Denali NP back in '93. (You have to carry a bear-resistant food container the park issues you, and watch a film about hiking in grizzly country.) We only ran into bears once (other than seeing them from the shuttle-bus windows) and we basically just rerouted our path to avoid them by A LOT. When they caught wind of us (we were making noise, as we were told; singing invented songs about bears) they also altered course to avoid us, and everyone, bear and human, was happy.

I've never hiked in a place where there are problem bears who KNOW humans are food carriers. Britt had some bad encounters in Yosemite where the bears ransacked their camp and they had to hike out XX miles with only a single granola bar between six people, or some such horror.

The last confirmed grizzly sighting in the San Juan mountains here was back in the 70s, I think.