More Bear!

Monday, Bette and I hiked the Garnet Hill loop trail out of Tower Junction. Weather wasn't that great, with quite a few snow showers, though we did get some sun breaks. The trail starts out going through the rolling sage brush of Pleasant Valley towards the Yellowstone River. You encounter the Hellroaring Trail (what a name), and a suspension bridge across the river. More on the Hellroaring in our next post.

There were signs of spring with these flowers about to bloom.

Ran across a few elk skeletons. The one below was probably from this winter. Some of the bones appeared to be partially buried. We wondered if a mountain lion had killed the elk since a lion will cover up its kill. The kill was also at the base of the steep cliffs on the northwest side of Garnet Hill, which looked like good lion country.

The last part of the trail entered Yancey's Hole, the site of an old hotel during the early days of the park. It's where people now take wagon rides from Roosevelt Lodge to a cowboy barbecue. On the way in we saw bear tracks along the muddy trail. A little bit later as we walked down the wagon/stage road we saw a large dark brown animal in the snow covered flats. It was not behaving like a bison. Through the binoculars we could see it was a grizzly bear!

Adrenaline really kicked in though the bear was a good safe distance away across the hole. He was pretty clear through our binoculars, as we watched the bear play in the snow. He rolled around on his back, laid on his back with his hind legs in the air with rear paws held by front paws (happy baby pose), sat up to look around and laid flat out on his back with front and back legs outstretched like a human looking up at the sky (corpse pose). After playing he started moving off in a direction away from us which was a relief so we started again walking down the road. The photo below was taken probably at the closest we got to the bear. At that point he was ambling around the base of the draw sniffing the ground, and taking a break every now and then to sit down and look around.

The bear was upwind of us, so it wasn't clear that he ever was aware we were there. At times he sat down and looked in our direction, but never got up on his hind legs to look around. We were in clear view the whole time (just sage brush). I tried to sketch some of his antics. It was quite the thrill!