Here are some of my bear pics from my recent Glacier National Park trip.
We were lucky enough to see many bears in our week at Glacier. It took us until our last day to see our first grizzly, although we did see 5 that day, so I guess that makes up for it.
The first bear we saw was a nice black bear. We were with a large group of people watching moose and deer in a lake when one of the onlookers turned to walk back up the trail and we all heard him yell "WOW BEAR!" It turns out a black bear had come up behind everyone and was less than 3 feet away from the guy when he turned around. Anyways, it took about 20 seconds of everyone yelling and clapping at the bear before he finally started to run away. I got his retreat on video.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA2uvFcvq-w[/youtube]
Eventually, when the moose and deer had left the lake, we began our hike back to camp. The same bear had decided to stop and feed within 15 yards of the trail less than 200 yards from where we had last seen him. I took a bunch of pictures, but due to the thick brush he was in I only got a few worthwhile pictures.
The next morning, Joanie and I decided to head back in to the lake with the moose for more pictures, but before we could even get there, we came across another traffic jam due to a nearby bear. Again, I only got a few decent pictures that depict the bear's size, but not much more. I did get one picture of the bear crossing a creek with a cow and calf moose visible behind him. They eventually spooked each other. At the time we thought this was the same bear as the night before, but now looking at the pictures it seems to be a different color.
We did have a few more run ins with black bears on trails or on the road, but no good pictures. We did take a day trip up to Waterton National Park in Alberta and spotted a really nice black bear right off the road in the middle of an 80 degree day. He must have been frying.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfo7NYlDUP0[/youtube]
On our last full day in the park we had our most productive bear and moose day. We saw a total of 10 bears and 10 moose in that day alone. I will post pictures of the moose in my moose thread, but only a couple bear pictures from this day. We saw a sow grizzly with three cubs way up on the hill in the early morning. Later in the day we apparently missed the 4 grizzly's crossing under a bridge on the trail by less than 10 minutes (we saw the pictures from other hikers). All four of those grizzly's were dark brown, but one cub had a very blonde stripe on its back.
We were also the first hiker's up the trail in the morning. As we were hiking along, Joanie and I started to notice a lot of fresh bear digs alongside the trail. Soon I spotted a bear running through the brush ahead of us. When we first spotted him he was less than 25 yards from us.
The bear ran down the trail so we waited for some hikers that were behind us that we had talked to earlier. We told them we had seen a bear and we should be careful. We rounded the next corner just in time to catch a glimpse of the bear disappearing down the trail around the next corner. We gave him a few minutes and assumed he must have bailed off on one side or another of the trail. So we continued hiking, eventually we came to a suspension bridge over the trail and after crossing it I noticed there were wet spots on the trail. While about another 1/3 of a mile down the trail we spotted the bear again, still trotting right down the trail.
We are pretty sure he was a grizzly, although we are not positive. There had been a lot of grizzly sightings along the trail and he appears to have a hump in one of the pictures. We never got any better views than are presented in these pictures though so we can't be sure.
