DeMartini's "Jackson Hole Adventure": The Animals I Come Across in Jackson Hole

A few weeks ago, I was out hiking with the hiking group and had my first ever encounter with a bear. I was prepared to be scared out of my wits, but the encounter proved to a very cool experience. We had begun our hike early (7:00am) and we were only an hour into our hike leaving the Lupine Meadow Trailhead. My friend Eric was leading the hike and was walking with his head down. As we came around a slight bend, I saw a mama black bear and told Eric to "look up, it is a bear." This caught every one's attention and the hike came to a halt.

Mama bear as I saw her while walking on the trail. Note large trunk of tree on the left.

In Jackson Hole you are constantly told to "Be Bear Aware." You know to stay away from a mama bear when she is with her cubs. You know that a bear will attack if it thinks you are a threat to the bear cubs. With this in mind, we backed down the trail and kept an eye on the mama bear because she was with her cub. After watching the bear for a few minutes, the bear and her cub moved a few feet up the side of the mountain and focused on eating the berries. It did not seem to bother the bears at all that we were on the trail. At this point we carefully moved forward on the trail, never taking our eyes off of mama bear. Being "Bear Aware" also means that you know to never cross between a mama bear and her cub. Since the mama bear and her cub had moved a few feet up the hill, we decided it was safe to move forward on the trail. Eric was the first to move past the bear. After Eric was safely past the bear, I also moved forward on the trail past the bear. I never took my eyes off the mama bear. After joining Eric, he quietly told me to look to my right. I slowly turned to the right and saw the second cub watching me from the tree.

Someone was watching us!

We could not believe it. The second cub was hanging on the tree just a few feet away from us. Mama bear continued to eat berries and ignore us. The second cub quickly came down the tree, crossed over the trail and joined mama bear and his sibling! Now all three bears were together and happily eating berries. The rest of our group joined me and Eric and we all snapped pictures as the bears moved around......never taking our eyes off of mama bear!