Adventioneering

Every time I go into the back country I obsess about meeting a bear face-to-face, it’s kind of been my thing. On the Colorado hiking trip I was the one who gathered up everyone’s food, trekking it out to a tree away from camp and generally being overly-obsessive on the subject of bear encounters, seeing as you know up until now I’d never encountered one outside of a zoo.

We headed out from Kansas City, meeting up with our buddy Bryan somewhere in Southern Colorado, and then making our way the final miles to our ultimate destination: Sand Dunes National Park. The entire trip up to this point Alex had to hear me go on and on about bears. I am pretty sure at some point he just tuned me out somewhere in eastern Kansas and I became Charlie Brown’s teacher – ‘Waa Waaaa Wa Waaa’ – I know I would’ve, I was being pretty obnoxious about it. One can only take so much.

When we arrived, we decided to stake out camp up a BLM road a few miles outside of the actual park. We arrived in the night and made our way up past a few sorted campsites peppered along the rocky road. Bryan took his 2wd Silverado all the way and when day broke we all were unsure how he’d done such a thing, but he’d managed to.

We set-up camp with a sitting area, campfire and pitched our tents. Alex and I pitched ours near the campfire and our truck; Bryan trekked out a few yards in the opposite direction to pitch his. After some shuffling we piled in the Rover and headed down to the dunes to do some hiking and clicky-clicky. The height of the dunes was unexpected, but we managed to slog our way up, utterly pooped at the top. Our ascent was peppered with rain and sporadic thunderstorms. That night I had planned to make spaghetti with tomato sauce, something I thought would be easy to prepare, tasty and filled with good stuff for our bodies. As I popped the top on the tomatoes I let the aroma fill my nose… then thought to myself, you know I wonder what other critters think that smells good and how far away can they smell it. I kind of shrugged it off, made dinner and we feasted.

We sat around after dinner enjoying the solitude, the company and the fire then cleaned everything up, snuffed out the fire and retired to our tents around midnight. I fell asleep immediately, but it took Alex a little longer to nod off. After about a half an hour he heard something, a rustling, some grunting, it caught his attention and he stayed awake. He’d figured a bear had indeed wandered into camp, was there to scavenge, check things out, would satisfy its curiosity and move along. At this point he didn’t wake me up since nothing was really happening anyway. The critter found the truck, was tyring to figure out a way in without success when it began to rain.

The rain seemed to run him or her off for a while but Alex remained alert. After a few hours the rain tapered off and our little friend returned as he was pretty sure there were some tasty bits of food he just hadn’t found on his last go round. Alex listened to him continue his search when the bear had realized he hadn’t yet investigated our tent! He somehow managed to unzip our rain fly and poke his nose into the vestibule, a feat we still haven’t figured out how he accomplished. After realizing that our shoes and various clothes bundles held little satisfaction for his stomach he turned to the tent fly and tried to poke his nose in.

As Alex listened to all of this nosing about, he had located his flashlight and was waiting it out. When the bear started to poke his nose into the tent however he figured it was time to rouse me from my slumber. He woke me up gently whispering, “Bear… quiet… no joke”. I didn’t scream, didn’t make a peep, just nodded. I could sense his adrenaline and mine kicked in immediately, I could smell the animal and even a spritzer of Chanel wouldn’t have helped this guy. I heard the sniffing and low grunting. Alex whispered to me to find the knife and truck keys. Moving slowly and as quietly as possible inside the tent I located them. Alex hatched a plan: He was going to shine the Surefire flashlight as close as he could to the tent opening where the bears snout was, hopefully scaring the bear away. If the bear reacted unfavorably, I was to cut the tent with the knife and run to the truck as fast as I could, he would follow.

Alex moved the flashlight up against the opening as the bears snout pushed in on the nylon again. The flashlight popped on, a flood of bright white light in the darkness, “YOU DON’T WANT TO COME IN HERE” Alex shouted. The bear was startled and scared it retreated out of the vestibule. I found my Mag light, turned it on and we both continued ‘YOU DON’T WANT TO COME IN HERE, WE’RE SCARY PEOPLE!’… “YEAH, NO WAY YOU DON’T WANT TO MESS WITH US!” we shouted and moved our flashlights around. Alex had his laptop in the tent by chance so we found it, opened it up, put on iTunes and cranked it up as loudly as it would go. All the while, chanting our phrases in hopes the bear would realize his dreams of tasty snacks we might’ve had inside the tent were not to be his. The bear wasn’t up on the flashlight tent rave scene, so he bolted.

Our bodies, still pumped with adrenaline, unable to see out of the tent, sat up until dawn when we could check out the scene. As we crawled out of the tent the evidence was there, paw prints in the dirt outside the tent and everywhere he’d been. The vestibule zipper open, flapping gently in the breeze, shoes in the vestibule nosed out of the place they were left when we had gotten in the tent. As we got out, we could see where the bear had walked, where he’d nosed the various items we’d left out by the campfire. Relieved he’d gone, we climbed back in to the tent to get a smidge of rest. Based on the evidence Alex guessed it was a medium sized, probably a younger, Black bear.

“RAWR, I’m a bear!” we heard around 9 a.m.; Bryan had woken up and made his way over to our side of the camp. “Dude, that’s not funny” Alex said groggily. Bryan had apparently had a good rest with no night visitors at his tent as we told the tale of the last few hours since the campfire. Spooked a bit, I didn’t want to stay at the camp in the event our friend would return, so the boys graciously packed it up and I decided we’d camp in the park this time.

As we took our caravan down the road into the camp at Dunes it was like entering Jurassic Park. There were signs littered everywhere about bears, the trash areas had enormous steel gates rising to the sky to keep the bears out. After our previous night, this reception was not what I had bet on, ah the irony. We found a campsite, paid our dues and assembled camp once again amongst the RV’s and Pop-Ups.

Our new campsite featured a plump little chipmunk with quite the personality. He took a liking to Bryan and climbed up on him a few times, turning up his cuteness meter to gain favor so Bryan would give him a morsel of food to snack on. We drove down a forest road the next day, trekked out to the Dunes for some more hiking and did it later at night so the boys could get night sky photos. Unprepared for the desert cold, Bryan was gracious enough to hike out to the car and drive back to camp to score our bags so we could wrap up in warmth. After his return I began jibbering-jabbering about the possibility of giant sandworms sitting there in the dark, snuggled down in my sleeping bag. I’ll never live that one down, that’s certain.

After this eventful Memorial Day trip, we packed up our stuff, exchanged hugs and farewells and headed back to our respective parts of the country. Our trip didn’t cure my bearitis, but brought it down a notch with a little experience under our belt and a great story to tell from our adventure.