"Seen any bears?"
"Not only seen them, been chased by one," says one of the trio.
They are skiing with pepper spray in hand, safeties disengaged, spray ready to fire. "Have you seen fresh tracks?".
As they scan the shrub trees around us uneasily, Matt Mosteller, a local Montanan, explains. They had been skiing the slopes above Swiftcurrent Pass, only a 10-minute trudge from where we stand, when Mosteller paused by the snow/rock borderline of a slope to snap photos of his cohorts cranking turns. Without knowing it, he had stopped near a sow and while photographing, its cub had wandered onto the snow and saddled up to him. As Mosteller pulled his eye from the viewfinder, he was looking at a full-frame view of a grizzly attack.
He didn't snap the photo. "I threw the camera at the bear, turned, and poled like Hell."
For 100 yards, the race was nip and tuck--Mosteller occasionally felt claws scratch the tails of his skis. "When I looked back and could see plaque on her teeth, all I could think about was 'Why didn't I wax these boards?'"
Despite the slow bases, Mosteller the skier accomplished what normal mortals cannot--he outran a bear.
Kasha Rigby, one of the first ladies of telemark skiing, has listened to the account and pops a macabre question, "What would have happened had you been in touring mode?"
"Toast," he says bluntly.
Heather Paul, another reigning figure in the world of women's telemark skiing, is clearly unnerved by the law of tooth and claw unfolding here and is also now surveying the stunted trees around us with a wary eye, "Do you think it's safe for us to head higher?"
A light sparks in Mosteller's brain--here is bait to get the bears off his back. "The sow was only protecting its cub...probably long gone now."
His wandering eyes belie his words, and he hurriedly slides past us in a personal quest to make himself long gone. Before leaving, he imparts comforting last words, "Keep your pepper spray handy. If you need it, you won't get much warning."
The trio disappears on their unskinned skis while we, snacks on the skewers of skinned skis, move to higher ground in this notorious sector of Glacier National Park. Notorious because the nearby Granite Park Chalet, the site where we have pitched tents, is also the site where bears have feasted on humans several times over the past 30 years.
While the odds of bear attacks are low (about three serious maulings occur in the park each year), Mosteller's near-death experience only 30 minutes ago nullifies the comfort of statistics--at least for Heather Paul, the three time national champion of telemark racing. She waxes philosophic for a moment, "Skiing always has you wrestling with fears. First you deal with steeper and steeper terrain at resorts, then you move to the backcountry and it's avalanches you worry about, then you go to Alaska and it's crevasses. Whenever you think you've got it together, there's something new...like bears."
Kasha Rigby is more analytical about danger. Her ability to tuck fear away and let her head rather than her heart control situations explains why, during her years as a competitor in the U.S. Extreme Championships, she continually placed among the top three finishers--this despite the fact that she donned telemark gear rather than the downhill equipment of her competitors. "Let's go look at the tracks," she says coolly. We ski to the pass in a huddle, none of us enthused about taking point position, none of us wanting to straggle.
When we find the tracks, we follow them uphill and read the story fossilized in the snow--the point where photographs had been taken, where the cub had nestled up for a passport photo, and where the sow had bolted onto the snow. Most impressive of all are the sweeping GS tracks of the prey overlaid by the prints of a quadrupedal Freddy Krueger.
For the past week, we've skied in the grizzly capital of the country under the assumption that in the alpine zone, where the snow is deep and the skiing is good, we need not be overly concerned about ursus horribilis. Why would he venture up high if food, rather than fun, was the objective?
Later, when I present these thoughts to John Winnie, a wildlife photographer living in Kalispell, he corrects me. "Right now (early May) there's not much food and bears follow their noses to high-calorie, low-effort meals." Winnie talks about the steep cliffs in the alpine zone; about avalanches, rock slides, and missteps carrying sheep and goats to their demise; and about bears seeking out the resulting carrion at the base of these great walls. Once in the area, a savory McSkier might make a welcomed addition to the menu.
It's not my only misconception coming under attack. Another is about the nature of the skiing here in the Northwest corner of Montana. As part of the Rocky Mountains, I'm envisioning a Colorado-like continental climate with low snowpack, bitter wintertime cold, and temperature-gradient snow that makes most of the slopes suicidal most of the ski season. Instead, I discover a heavy snow zone receiving some 350 inches of snow per year. It's a transitional climate--sometimes maritime, sometimes continental--but it's not unusual to actually ski (not just drool over) the thousands of tempting lines in this million-acre park.
I also imagined the terrain to be Coloradoesque--more sprawling than slanted. Instead, I find slopes that rise abruptly nearly a vertical mile from valley floors. Sinister walls of layered rock are laced with the strings of steep snow couloirs. Cliff-capped peaks are broken by the ribbons of avalanche chutes. And steep pyramidal peaks house snow-plastered faces with heart-in-the-throat drops--drops like the 50-degree plunge off the 5000-vertical-foot east face of Mt. Stimson or the 50-plus-degree drop off the 4000-vertical-foot east face of Mt. Merritt. A steep skier could keep very busy in these mountains that Kasha and Heather are dubbing 'the American Dolomites.'
It's a name I find superior to the park's misconceived moniker--Glacier. Glacier Not is more accurate. To be sure, the area was, in its Pleistocene heyday, home to mammoth rivers of ice. The spine of the park is a north-south cordillera forming the Continental Divide. Glaciers of old chiselled U-valleys pointing east toward the Atlantic. Other glaciers pointing west, formed conduits for meltwater headed to the Pacific. But the ice that sculpted the castle-like peaks, the thorny ridges, and the culvert-like valleys has receded into the ice cubes of pocket glaciers occupying north-facing cirques. Today, there is four times more blue ice on Mt. Rainier than in this entire park.
More than anything, however, my time at Glacier dispels myths I have swallowed about ursus horribilis, and it questions my confidence in those entrusted with our tax dollars to manage this wilderness where man and bear mingle.
The sun dims and stars spackle the violet sky as we lie in our sleeping bags and I read aloud from Night of the Grizzly, a book describing the disturbing events that occurred on the night of August 12, 1967. Prior to 1967, there had been no bear-related deaths in the park's 57-year history. But one bizarre night and two unlucky women would forever change how visitors viewed grizzlies.
Initially, I read excerpts helping us appreciate the natural endowments of this animal. The great bears may appear to lumber, but in a mile run they'd destroy the best distance runner by nearly a half mile. That means a bear lurking in the darkness some 200 yards away could, in 15 seconds, be feasting on our flesh. Then there's the matter of the bear's power. "The teeth are canine...and the jaws are powered by two massive muscles...enabling him to crunch through almost anything softer than steel. The muscles of his forelegs are similarly oversized and there are numerous cases on record of grizzlies fracturing the skulls of bull elk and full-grown horses in a single swipe."
In daylight, the fear of these beasts is muted by human cockiness, but primordial phobias invade our consciousness after dark. There's a visceral terror of being the steak and then the skat of a greater power. It's a fear you can't appreciate surrounded by solid walls. But in the taco shell of a tent in a place where death-by-mauling has happened before, bearanoia roots itself in the base of the brain stem. Even those who excel at negotiating fall-and-you-die ski terrain have trouble suppressing the horror of being gored, gutted, and gobbled.
And what happened here before adds to the horror. I continue our bedtime reading. "Then the defenseless girl shouted, 'He's got my arm...My arm is gone.' Oh, my God, I'm dead.'" When rescuers were dispatched to find this victim, I read, "The girl was on her back and mutilated beyond recognition...her stomach and abdomen were gone, and the hair missing from her head. The ranger covered his face with his hands and backed down the hill."
Heather's eyes are full moons. "Thanks for the sweet dreams," she says, "Every snap of a twig is going to be a grizzly."
"Exactly," I tell her. "You get to know what it's like living farther down the food chain. There aren't many places left where you can experience this."
I read the second incident that happened on that August night in 1967. "Roy could hear bones crunching and the girl screaming, 'It hurts!...Someone help us'...the girl's outcries were receding down the hill, and he thought that the bear must be carrying her off."
Later, we learn, "Her body was ripped and torn, and she was covered with blood...Between the hand and the elbow of her right arm there appeared to be nothing but bone, and a foam of blood was oozing from holes in both left and right thorax regions."
I've frightened myself as much as my companions and when we retire we each position our personal can of red-pepper spray by our pillows. Late at night when I rise to drain the bladder, I'm gripped by a fear far stronger than the one felt earlier when I skied a 45-degree slope covered with slide-prone snow that could have buried me in a miniature bergschrund. I want to do my offloading well away from the tents but each step intensifies my anxiety. Holding the bear spray in one hand, I perform the rest of the job with the free hand, and make a mess of my foot.
We're climbing over The Garden Wall, the very area where Mosteller's bear was last seen yesterday, to ski several steep shots down the Swiftcurrent Glacier and one long shot off the west face of Mount Grinnell. Heather doesn't like the approach route but I assure her yesterday's bear is in the next county by now. Following one of the protocols of travel through bear country (making noise), we establish a dangerous precedent--we encourage the girls to chatter away.
At first, the talk is personal and Kasha and Heather are laughing over the misconception shared by some that they have 'made it' as ski talents. During photo shoots, the men who take the biggest air or the ballsiest lines monopolize the celluloid. They talk about the expense of paying their way to particular photo shoots and how little of their hard work ends up in ink or images. They talk about needing side businesses (lawn and garden care for Kasha, running Bean Head Hats for Heather) to help make ends meet. "About all we're wanted for is bear bait," Heather says, turning to me.
"It's a misconception that bears are more likely to attack women than men," I say, deflecting her jab. I explain how six of the ten people killed by bears in this park have been men and how more men than women have been mauled. "In fact, in each of the incidents we read about last night, men were mauled first."
"So what happened to the killer bears we read about last night?"
I've finished the book. "Tracked and shot," I tell them. "But an interesting subplot was the smokescreen thrown up by the Park Service."
While the bears did the killing, author Jack Olsen implies that the truly culpable party was the Park Service. The bear claiming the first life had been marauding camps and molesting people all summer and authorities ignored it, despite policy decreeing that bears with so little fear of humans were to be destroyed.
The fatality near our camp at Glacier Park occurred when the chalet was open for summer business. The concessionaires were tossing the daily slop bucket behind the chalet, which brought the bears. Word got out that this was "the" place to see bears and visitors arrived en masse for the show. Park personnel knew this, knew the hazard it created, knew that park policy forbade such practices, and turned a blind eye to the spectacle.
In the aftermath of the deaths, the park was announcing nearly daily theories to camouflage their mismanagement. A few of their red herrings: a barrage of thunderstorms had whipped up the fervor of the bears, atmospheric pressure vacillations had crazed the creatures, the victim's cosmetics incited the attacks. Some of their theories (e.g., menstrual odors provoked the attack) are still with us today--and they still lack any science to back them up.
It's the type of CYA behavior I want to believe no longer exists with those entrusted to manage this wilderness. Roger Semler, the Wilderness Manager of Glacier, has instilled in me a sense of confidence that times have changed, that the park's Bear Management Guidelines are the best available, and that the decision tree outlined in those guidelines allows park authorities to quickly administer the appropriate action in dealing with possible problems--from closing a trail to shooting a bear.
George Ostrom, a Kalispell-based journalist, author, and the unofficial watchdog of the park, is not so confident. To date, about three park visitors per year get mauled and ten of those maulings have resulted in deaths. While many of these incidents were caused by visitors (surprising a bear or provoking a sow with cubs), Ostrom believes a greater number have been caused by bears that have lost their fear of people. "Bears don't turn into killers out of the blue--they gradually become bolder and more aggressive."
As was the case in 1967, Ostrom believes 'problem' bears the Park Service knows about but hasn't dealt with are still mauling and killing people.
"So who do you trust?" Kasha asks.
"Ourselves." I mention the protocol known to be true: "We take care of our food properly (cooking away from tents, hanging all food and cookware); we make lots of noise when we move (to avoid surprise attacks), we travel as a group (statistics indicate solo travellers are more at risk), we take wide berth around any carrion found, we get the hell away from sows with cubs, and we keep these on our person at all times," I say, patting my holstered bear spray.
From the top of Mt. Grinnell we receive postcard views of the park, including a look toward the sheer landscape around Iceberg Lake where we previously spent several days skiing. Mt. Grinnell is typical of the park's peaks: A drop over the north face would mangle you worse than an angry sow with cubs, the east slopes we survey are ski-em-well-or-don't-ski-em slopes you should tackle only when conditions and confidence are both working in your favor, and the west slopes we do ski are steep enough to juice, but not drain, the adrenal glands.
Returning to camp, we cross the bottom of the Swiftcurrent Glacier and intersect fresh bear tracks--an adult and a cub. Our mood jumps to full alert. "What did you say about this pair being in the next county?" Heather asks, more perturbed now than on the icy steeps above where a lost edge would have turned her into a protoplasmic pinball.
"You felt better while you believed it, didn't you?" I tell her. "Now get up front, and do your job."
We work back to the tent through the shrub trees of The Garden Wall, with Ms. Bearbait yelling, "Yo Bear," every 30 seconds."
Just above Granite Park Chalet we pass a couple hiking toward the pass. They give us the standard greeting, "Seen any bear?""Real fresh tracks up higher," we tell them.
The woman's eyes widen, "Is it safe to head up?"
"Imagine they high-tailed it when they heard all our yelling."
We slide past and before disappearing on the wings of unskinned skis give them comforting last words, "Got the pepper spray handy? If you need it, you won't have much warning."
Postscript : The day after we left Glacier Park, a lone hiker was killed and partially consumed by grizzlies near Two-Medicine Lake. Heather sent me the newspaper clipping and a note: "I had reason to be worried, see how lucky we were?"
Details, Details, Details
For more information about skiing in Glacier National Park, call 406-888-7800. Most backcountry travellers carry red-pepper spray, which has shown good results in deterring aggressive bears. To order spray ($40), contact Counter Assault, 800-695-3394.
