My husband and I have been hiking together for almost 12 years. We’ve hiked the Smokies, the Rockies and even the Alps. We’ve trudged thru forests and many places deemed “bear country.” We’ve seen bear poop, tracks, and tufts of bear fur left behind on scratching trees. Yet, we’ve never seen an actual bear in the wild. Until now!
In September 2021 we visited Mt Rainier National Park. During our short visit we decided to hike the Pinnacle Peak trail. This was a moderate 2.5 R/T trail up to the jagged peak in the park’s Tatoosh Range. It’s a great hike if you’re looking for a short trail with big payoffs. There’s stunning views of Mt Rainier and beautiful autumn colors along the trail.
It was mid-morning when we began and the only hiker we encountered was a Ranger maintaining the trail. We had hiked up to the “saddle,” which is what they call the area on a ridge between Pinnacle Peak and Plummer Peak. Then continued along the unmaintained trail to the summit of Pinnacle. This part got really steep really fast. More of a rock scramble/ climb than a hike at that point. The weather was starting to turn with a dense fog rolling up the valley to engulf us. Shortly after that, it started sleeting. Yuck.
At that point, I gave up on reaching the summit on that steep slick rock. I decided to park my butt on a rock while my husband finished the climb and took a few pics from the summit. One of us made it!
Afterwards, we tried to forge on to the next peak called The Castle. But with the dense fog and sleet, we quickly lost track of the unmaintained trail, and decided to head back. We trudged along in the sleet with our hoods up and heads down.
We were nearly back to the saddle, when we both stopped dead in our tracks, staring at the fork in the trail ahead. “Holy sh**, bear!”
And there he was! A big ol’ black bear. We finally saw one! It was thrilling! There it was just lumbering along the trail in the sleet. He casually looked in our direction, then continued around the corner and out of sight. That’s right. Around the corner. And out of sight. The very same corner we needed to round to get back to the trailhead and our car. Crapppppp.
Sine we were inexperienced with bear encounters, we weren’t really sure what to do. We needed to go down that trail. Was the bear going to be waiting around the corner to pounce on us? Do we arm ourselves? We had no weapons.
We waited a bit. Then decided to pick up rocks and carry them with as we crept down the trail to the corner. I mean, rocks were better than nothing right? We rounded the corner and… no bear. Where was it?? There was nothing but trail that dropped off on one side, and went straight up on the other. Where could he have gone?
We passed a small cave on our way in, did he go there? Do bears actually live in caves? Was he waiting there to jump out and murder us??
We crept along clutching our rocks for at least a quarter mile. Scanning all around us for any signs of movement. But saw nothing. We weren’t worried that he would actually jump out at us. But the chance of that wasn’t 0% either. We wanted to see where he went so we could stop worrying about it.
Finally we spotted him off the trail ahead, down the steep mountainside. He didn’t give a crap about us. Probably never even noticed us. He was busy doing bear stuff, like thrashing some bushes for berries. We dropped our rocks, watched him for a little bit, then continued on our way. Relieved and so excited we actually finally saw a bear!
On the way back down the sleet finally stopped and the fog cleared. We stopped to take in the views of Mt Rainier. While snapping some pics something large and brown wandered into the frame. We jumped! Another bear? Oh.. It was just a deer.
Our first bear encounter was definitely memorable. But it also made us realize with all the hiking we do, we really ought to know what to do in a bear encounter. So we consulted the National Park Service. Check out their guidance here. Turns out we did the right thing in giving the bear some space to move along down the trail. And we weren’t THAT far off with carrying rocks. 😉
