Happy Birthday to Chris

Today is my husbands birthday. Chris will be ecstatic to find that I have posted this on the blog for everyone to see! ( Can you hear my sarcasm?) We made home made ice cream to celebrate. Now, don't let him tell you that I made him hand crank his own ice cream. He just posed for the picture. 
I had a few questions in regards to bears. One question was what are the signs for bear activity. We usually find scat the next morning. The bears tend to come thru camp at night. Tuesday, we actually had a bear spotted during the day. I have not had any scary bear encounters, not to say it is not impossible. I know how to act when I see one and I have a lot of respect for them being wild animals. We try to educate people about why it is not good for bears to be around camp. We do not want the bears to associate humans with their food source. The best bear is a wild bear. That is a bear that you will never see because they are afraid of us. If a bear comes into camp during the day we have a protocol to follow. We want to scare the bear so it does not want to come back in camp while humans are around. If this does not work, we call the park service. They send a bear specialist up the mountain. The bear is trapped and darted. This dart puts the bear to sleep for a few hours. In the mean time, the biologist 
will weigh the bear, tattoo it, pull a tooth, and tag it. The bear is then woken up and scared away. The idea is that the bear now has this scary experience and will remember this and not want to come around humans. If the same bear continues to cause problems, the park service will relocate the bear. We try very hard to keep the bears wild on this mountain. That is why is so, so, so important that you do your part by picking up your trash and keeping your food put away. If you stay at the shelter, make sure you hang you food and do not cook in the shelter. We can all do our part to keep the bears wild.

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