Close Encounters with Grizzly Bears

[Gallstones]

Glacier National Park: Close encounters of a grizzly kind on Highline Trail 07.30.14

WEST GLACIER – Aware of an incident just two days earlier where a Texas man shot and likely wounded a bear that he said charged him in Glacier National Park, Kalispell photographer Philip Granrud carefully chose the picture he posted on social media this week.

It shows a separate grizzly-human encounter he – and dozens of other people – witnessed near Logan Pass Monday evening.

The picture is plenty dramatic.

In a frame that otherwise shows mostly sheer cliffs, you can make out a grizzly walking on the park’s Highline Trail at the trail’s most precarious spot, where rock walls shoot dizzyingly above on one side, and fall almost straight down on the other for about a quarter-mile stretch.

To the right of the bear, at about the only place on that section where a person could leave the trail without plummeting to his or her death, is a man in a white shirt, hiding behind a boulder.

“It was taken 15 seconds after they spooked each other,” ...

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

“It was taken 15 seconds after they spooked each other,” ...

That would be the 'asymetrical spookiness' where the bloke shits in his pants and jumps off a cliff and the bear just carries on about it's business, I suspect.

[klr]

Glacier National Park: Close encounters of a grizzly kind on Highline Trail 07.30.14

WEST GLACIER – Aware of an incident just two days earlier where a Texas man shot and likely wounded a bear that he said charged him in Glacier National Park, Kalispell photographer Philip Granrud carefully chose the picture he posted on social media this week.

...

I want to hear the bear's side of the story.

Anyway, that photo of the bear reminds me of that Italian dam face that Ibexes frequent:

[piscator]

In the OP, it looks like the guy is digging around for his camera, and the bear's being reasonable and practical about the whole fucked up situation. You can bet the picture taker and anyone else was who could see it was yelling at both the bear and the hiker way before this point.
Grizzlies are usually driven by hunger. Up here, an Interior or Arctic grizzly is usually a different animal than the mellower coastal Brownie with access to salmon and a superabundance of berries.

[macdoc]

My goofy GF let this griz get waaaaaay too close two weeks ago in Alaska along the road.



She's shooting out the open window and I see the bear disappear from my view and she's snapping away - then I see the bear's head pop up in the apparently open window....

She swears she was closing it ....I told her the camera will not focus with that lens under 6'....her last shot was out of focus.....and we'd been munching on Miss Vickies.

Now she claims he was just curious but that bear could close way too fast from under 6' if it wanted to.

She said the look on my face was priceless....

[mistermack]

I think in reality, the bear was in more danger than the man. Assuming he had some proper bear spray.
If he'd sprayed the bear, it would probably have gone over the edge.