They probably heard me coming long before they laid their curious eyes on me. It wasn’t intentional. The sound of the metal tips of my trekking poles scraping against the calcite rock was impossible to muffle. My fiancé hates the click-clacking, but I was hiking alone that morning. My dog wasn’t even invited. Climbing nearly 1,300 feet to the top of New Year Peak, a 6.3-mile loop in the Judith Mountains was a lot to ask of an elderly St. Bernard mix. Plus, I wanted to get a PR. This was my hometown trail in Central Montana. I had my eyes on being crowned queen of the mountain.
Over the last 20 years, I’d shaved around a minute off my best time every summer. I’d also never encountered anything more dangerous than a stray storm cloud. Today, however, felt different. Word in the local Facebook hiking group was that a grizzly bear had recently been seen up here. The Judiths are an island mountain range, far from the Western Rockies and Greater Yellowstone where the ursus horribilis likes to roam. Even black bear sightings are rare.
Still, I tossed two cans of bear spray in my car. One was a hand-me-down from my cousin’s husband who was visiting from Virginia and couldn’t fly back with it. “You should have had two cans on you,” I’d lectured him when he told me he’d seen a bear while hiking in Glacier National Park earlier that week.
In 2024, I wrote a story about the increase in grizzly-bear-human encounters in Yellowstone for Outside’s sister publication YellowstonePark.com. Everyone I’d interviewed from Kerry Gunther, a world-renowned bear management biologist, to Todd Orr, a Montana hunter who survived two grizzly bear attacks in 2016, agreed. Carrying two cans on your person was a must. “One can is for the first bear you run into,” they explained. “The second is for your hike out.” But that day, I didn’t practice what they preached. When speed is your goal, every ounce counts. While I attached one can to my hip, I left the other to collect dust in my glove compartment.
Four miles and 20-some switchbacks later, I was poised to finish well ahead of my target time. The trekking poles that had been propelling me would soon become invaluable on the descent. I rounded a corner, trading a bare ridge for dense brush, when a small flash of dark fur darted across the trail about 15 feet ahead. It scampered up a Douglas-fir to the left.
“Strange,” I thought. I’d never seen a marmot up here. And I didn’t know they climbed trees.
When its twin appeared on my right, I quickly realized they weren’t marmots. I’d stumbled across a black bear cub sandwich, and with one on either side of me, I was the meat.
“Never get in between a mama bear and her cubs” had been drilled into me ever since I learned my ABCs. In fact, I think most kids in Montana are taught this before “stop, drop, and roll.” While black bears are far less aggressive than brown bears, according to the North American Bear Center, 70 percent of human fatalities caused by grizzly bears are the result of a sow protecting her cubs.
Instinctively, I whipped out my iPhone and opened the fitness app like my life depended on it. Then I took a precious second to look down and pause my workout on my Apple Watch, too.
“There goes my PR,” I lamented. Disappointed, I decided I could at least get some content. I tiptoed closer, phone on video mode. My rational brain knew Mom must be nearby. But my irrational brain had one thing on its mind: Instagram. The cubs performed for the camera, locking eyes with me as I willed them to come closer while cursing myself for not getting the iPhone with the better zoom. The cubs didn’t hear my silent pleas. However, Mom did.
In an instant, the dense brush to my left came alive as 300 pounds of black fur and blur barreled toward me. I dropped my phone and grabbed my bear spray. Despite drowning in adrenaline, I had the wherewithal to flip the orange safety cap at the top and pull the trigger.
“Make sure you’re not spraying into the wind, and spray at a downward angle,” experts had told me for my grizzly encounter article. I’d even attended a bear spray demonstration at Bozeman’s Montana Grizzly Encounter. I knew what to do. But did I do it? Nope. I wielded that capsaicin like a can of silly spray and somehow managed to light my mouth and eyes on fire.
Fortunately, the commotion was enough to startle the bear. It also scared some sense into me. We both backed away from each other, her toward her cubs, and me back to the ridge with cell phone service.
I called my cousin. She notified my uncle, who lived a few miles down the road. “He’s gonna fetch you on his dirt bike,” she told me. “Don’t move.”
I could no longer see the bears in front of me. But I knew they were out there. And what about that grizzly bear sighting? Suddenly, I wasn’t so skeptical of the rumor. This is where a second can of bear spray would have provided serious peace of mind. Each can only lasts seven to nine seconds. I’d wasted most of mine.
While waiting for my rescue, I reflected on my mistakes: hiking alone in bear country at dawn, carrying only one can of spray, prioritizing getting a PR instead of getting out alive, filming when I should have been fleeing, and dousing myself with bear deterrent.
I didn’t get the QOM title that morning. My cub footage never went viral. And I had to listen to my uncle’s terrible bear puns. “Too bad you didn’t have salt on you, too,” he joked. “Those bears could have enjoyed a well-seasoned meal.”
I’ll do a lot of things differently the next time I summit New Year Peak, or tackle any trail in bear country. In the meantime, I’m considering signing up for a digital detox retreat. If I’m going to be mauled by a bear in the future, it won’t be because of an app.
The post I Knew What to Do When I Encountered a Bear. I Still Did Everything Wrong. appeared first on Outside Online.
