Day 272: Most of my bear sightings have been in the backcountry, and at least two of them were of the "up close and personal" nature, i.e., the bear was within 50' of me (in one case, only about 20'). I'm not complacent about bears, but my customary response to them is that I speak in a normal tone of voice, saying, "Bear...hey, bear! I need to use this trail. Would you mind moving over so I can come by?" Sometimes it takes several repetitions and maybe even a few steps forward before Bear notices me, but only once have I encountered aggressive behaviour, and that was from a motherless cub who was probably more curious about me than anything else. Cubby and I came to an agreement after a tense ten minutes, neither of us wanting to escalate the situation. Backcountry bear experiences aside, bears are attractive to any photographer, and thus it was that Team Biota started a bear jam on the Valley Road. We'd first glimpsed it (her, I believe) from the upper portion of the road, a tiny black dot moving among small trees deep in Paradise Valley. After she crossed the creek, we lost her in the brush, and then we hopped back in the car and drove down the road further to a viewpoint directly opposite. Sure enough, there she was, and this time within zoom range. We were somewhat sidetracked by the presence of marmots on the rocks immediately below us, more marmots than I have ever seen in one location. There must have been at least twenty, adults and young alike, sparring, kissing, loafing on any rock which afforded a flat surface. Below us, the bear moved into open meadow, offering a good photo op. While the four of us trained our cameras on Ms. Ursus, cars were pulling over behind us, filling the small pullout. A tour bus went past without stopping. Pretty soon, the parking area was full, the roadside lined with people, cameras ranging from cell phone to high-end, all taking pictures of the bear. She was a good 600' or more from us horizontally, another 150' vertically...a tiny black dot in most viewfinders. I thought of the visitor who told me he'd seen a polar bear at Lake Louise. He had a picture to prove it, too. He pulled out his iPhone and zoomed in on the white blur in the image. "That's a goat," I said. "No, it was too big. It was a polar bear," he insisted. I suggested that when he got home, he should email the photo to our wildlife biologist and gave him her address, you know, just for documentation's sake. To make a long story short, there were a lot of photos taken during the Tuesday bear jam, but most will simply show a black lump. I was zoomed to 74x for this one.
