Charged by a Black Bear

I drove two hours up the Saint Joe River to this locked gate:

The key I had picked up at the Forest Service in Saint Maries would not come out of the lock. It froze.

Well, I dummy locked the gate, set the lock and key in my cup holder and tried not to think about it. 

Eleven miles up the above road, I found this:

So, next morning, I walked the remaining four miles to the survey.

The Pacific and Mountain time zone boundary runs horizontally through the middle of Idaho. So now, instead of starting the survey around six, I'm starting around five. No problem, I'll just go to bed at seven. 

The road to the survey was a maze of bear poop; I stopped counting after forty piles.

Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise when, after my second point, I heard noises in the bushes above me. I yelled "Get out of here!" but, instead of seeing something run up the hill away from me, a black bear bigger than an Angus Bull came charging down the slope.

I shouted, "F*** off! You're a bad bear!"

Uncocked my bear spray and walked resolutely away up the logging road.  Looking over my shoulder, I didn't see anything. No idea where it went. Then my legs turned to jelly and I started to shake.

I thought, I don't care about this data. I don't care about these birds. I don't care about this job. I'm going back to the truck now. 

But I had two points done already, I had driven three hours the day before, gotten up at three-thirty, and walked over an hour to get here.

If I could just get four more points, all the effort wouldn't be wasted.  

Although there are sixteen points in each survey, in north Idaho getting twelve points done is average because the terrain is rough. Six points gives statistical viability. The magic number is six. 

I calmed down and looked at my aerial photo and topo map.  

There were four points along the northern ridge. I figured the bear probably either went south along the logging road or east up the hill to get away from me. Maybe I could head up to the ridge and get those four points. 

On the ridge, there was an open area above a slash line.

I got a point done and then headed east toward the next one.

If you could see around the corner in the above photo, you would see two black bears the size of elephants turning over boulders.  

I scrambled back the way I had come, at least five hundred meters of slash and downed logs back to the road, trembling the whole way and feeling stupid. Either they didn't see me or didn't care, because, looking over my shoulder, they weren't coming.

I realized I was within twenty meters of another point. Ten long minutes later, I had my fourth point done. When I got back down to the road, although very afraid, I was only two points away from magic number six. Surely, that bear would be gone from the first point I got scared off, which was right by the road. Not sure if yelling wouldn't draw them to me, I sang softly.

Five minutes into the six minute count, I heard huffing in the bushes. I yelled, "I'm standing right here! Get away from me!"

A smallish black bear poked it's head out of a bush and then pulled it back in like an egret. Instead of running off, it huffed and thrashed around in the bush. The count timer went off, and I yelled, "Fine! I'm leaving!" 

Sick to my stomach, I only had one more point to get. Back up on the road, I studied the map.

The only point west of what seemed like a wall of black bears, was 300 meters south of the road, straight downhill through giant pick up sticks.

I was so scared, I had trouble breathing. I turned the volume of my phone and played Paula Poundstone's audiobook, There's Nothing in this Book that I Meant to Say, studying every bush as I climbed.

The last point was in a terrifying dark gully with a tiny stream banked with ancient Western Cedar. Paula then talked me back up to the road and back to my car, where I collapsed.

Since nobody else was around to do it, I told myself how proud I was of myself, and what a great job I had done.

My Garmin ran out of charge after 11 miles at the red dot. My car is the green dot. The survey area is all those red squiggles on the right. 

On the drive out, this happened: 

One hell of a day.