Here's an overview of some backpacking trips I have planned for Yellowstone and Glacier. Click on the title of any trip to see a description, an imbedded Google Earth view of the route, and a distance/elevation profile. After I finish a hike I'll add a trip report and photos, and a note will be added on this page next to the updated ones. The list has no particular order, because I won't know which areas I'm able to get a permit for at a given time until I'm there. There are also several short one night hikes I have in mind that I'm not making maps for, and photos and descriptions from those will be at the bottom of this page. The embedded google earth maps are pretty neat: to get an idea of the terrain and views from different vantage points try panning around by holding the left mouse button, and zooming in and out and spinning around by holding the right mouse button.
* The following videos show two Grizzly Bears feeding on a cow carcass at the north end of the park. There are free range cattle and horses in the area and I have no way to know if the cow was roadkill and dragged back from the road by the bears, or if they killed it, or some other scenario. My friends Jeff and Amy were the first people to spot this scene on the day that I was shooting the Grizzly family in the snow, and late that night they woke me up at my campsite to tell me about what they saw so I could go there in the morning and see for myself. I'm very grateful for that because it was an unbelievable site to see and I never would have known about it if they hadn't found it and told me. The sow was absolutely huge, easily the biggest bear I've seen, and her two year old cub was much fatter than the bears I usually see that feed primarily on berries. The day before I arrived the carcass was in front of the trees but when I got there the bears had dragged it back into the cover of the forest, so I was trying to peek through little openings with the long lens to see the action. My camera has a crop mode for the video which uses the center of the sensor, basically acting as a super tele converter which brings the action in from very far away, but with a reduction in resolution, so I used that to get a really tight shot to show how gruesome and ruthless the feeding action was. There were two other bears competing for access to the carcass, and at the time I thought I was viewing both pairs alternating between feeding sessions, but after editing the video I think it's all the same two bears, though the other two were definitely around. The sow was constantly pacing and patrolling and standing up to assess the situation while the cub obliviously kept feeding. She was very uneasy about the other bears in the area so she kept dragging the carcass back further where they wouldn't attract attention. In addition to the bears there were also a couple coyotes that came in to feed when the bears took breaks, and plenty of magpies and ravens. Apparently the day before this the cub was chasing away and swatting at anything that came close, but when I got there he was more at ease. Anyway, it was a first for me and I'll definitely never forget it, and hopefully the closeups of the cow being shredded apart aren't too appalling to view! Thanks again to Jeff and Amy!
- Large Grizzly Bear Sow and Two Year Old Cub Feeding On a Carcass (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Grizzly Bear Sow and Two Year Old Cub Feeding On a Carcass (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Grizzly Bear Sow and Two Year Old Cub Feeding On a Carcass and Standing Up (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Grizzly Bear Sow Standing Up (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Grizzly Bear Sow and Two Year Old Cub Feeding On a Carcass and Standing Up (video), Glacier NP -
* A few friends were coming off of this trail as I was heading up and they told me where they'd seen these bears, so I had a good idea where to be looking, but really they were impossible to miss. I came around a corner and they were in a service berry patch easily visible from the trail. It was snowing really hard which made for probably the toughest shooting conditions I've experienced because the viewfinder kept fogging up, drops were getting on the front lens element, the snow in the air made is necessary to manually focus, the action was happening fast, and the snow and mud mixed on the trail made it really slippery. So after they were finished in the berry patch they went behind some pine trees and weren't visible for about half an hour and in that time span another hiker came up the trail and waited for a chance to see them. I saw them heading toward the trail away from us, but as soon as they hit the trail they turned and came right toward me! I kept backing up, taking a photo occassionally, but the whole time this other hiker (very large guy) was a couple feet behind me and following my moves, so when I had to get moving as the sow came close he was always in the way on the narrow trail! Really I think I'm lucky to have gotten any useable photos at all, and after that I had to pump hot air through the lens to evaporate all the water that got in, and the image stabilizer stopped working for two days. I'm going to come up with a custom rain cover so I'm more prepared from now on for a situation like that. The cubs were really small and cute, but a bear expert friend isn't too optimistic about their chances for survival this winter because they may not have put on enough weight. The sow was really small too, probably less than 200 pounds, most likely because of a combination of young age and nursing and looking after three cubs.
- Grizzly Bear Sow Shaking Off Heavy Snow, Glacier NP -
- Wet Grizzly Bear Cub in Heavy Snowfall, Glacier NP -
- Three Grizzly Bear Cubs in Heavy Snow, Glacier NP -
- Wet Grizzly Bear Sow in Heavy Snowfall, Glacier NP -
* Here's a little video I made of a black bear sow, more for practice than anything. It was too dark for good photos, and this is the same bear in the photos below crossing the creek with her cubs, so I already had good shots of her. Manually focusing while handholding the heavy camera/long lens combo and keeping the bear in the frame isn't easy, let alone with an actively moving subject and also staying aware and ready to retreat if she began coming too close. The berries were all picked over in that spot, and she didn't find anything under the rocks she overturned, so she gathered her cubs from the trees to the right and moved on.
- Black Bear Sow Browsing Around For Food (video), Glacier NP -
* This photo is really sad and dissapointing to me. As you can see this is the same pair of bears I photographed earlier, but now the sow has a gps collar on, and I think it was completely unnessecary and put the bears through a lot of stress for little benefit. The park service set a bear trap (big metal tube with a carcass in a back compartment, with a heavy door that slams shut upon entrance) on a service road along Lake Sherburne specifically to catch and collar this bear, who regularly used the lake shore as a traveling route to get between berry patches. Usually collaring is done on bears that hang out around campgrounds or on busy trails so if there's an incident with humans the bear can be easily found and hazed with cracker shells or bean bags shot from a shotgun, or in the past even trained dogs that chase away and scare bears, and as a last resort the bear could be relocated or killed. But it's my belief that this bear was captured, tranquilized and collared just because it was an easy catch for the park service bear team, and they have to be producing some kind of data for their jobs to be relevant. The stress it puts on the cub to wait helplessly while the whole procedure is done must be significant, and also it looks to me like the collar is on way too tight, which would be easy to do because when the bear is drugged the neck muscles are relaxed. Look back at the photo of the sow standing up and notice how broad her neck is, and in this photo you can see how restricting the collar is, and the whole time I was watching them this time her mouth was open and she was panting. That's just my opinion of the situation, other people would probably see it differently and not be bothered by it, but I just think they should leave the bears alone and let them do their thing as long as they aren't having issues with interaction with people.
* I was watching a cow moose in the water when this bull came to the shore through the woods behind me. He stood at the shore for a really long time watching the cow before deciding to try to approach her. It didn't work out as planned so he moved on. I saw the same bull today in a different area near where this was filmed and he was with a cow in the woods, so his luck seems to have improved.
- Large Black Bull Moose, Glacier NP -
- Large Black Bull Moose Standing on a Lake Shore Contemplating Approaching a Cow Moose (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Black Bull Moose Entering a Lake and Attempting to Approach a Cow Moose (video), Glacier NP -
- Large Black Bull Moose Exiting a Lake, Shaking Off, and Rubbing His Rack on Bushes (video), Glacier NP -
- Bear Tracks Along the Shore of Two Medicine Lake, with Unusual Lenticular Cloud Formations at Sunset, Glacier NP -
- Unusual Lenticular Cloud Formations Above the Shore of Two Medicine Lake at Sunset, Glacier NP -
- Unusual Lenticular Cloud Formations Above the Cracked Shoreline of Two Medicine Lake at Sunset, Glacier NP -
- Unusual Lenticular Cloud Formations Over Two Medicine Lake at Sunset, Glacier NP -
- Gray Jay Eating Berries, Glacier NP -
- Painted Teepee Peak, Mt. Sinopah, and Mt. Helen Reflected in Upper Two Medicine Lake at Sunrise, Glacier NP -
- Painted Teepee Peak, Mt. Sinopah, and Mt. Helen Reflected in Upper Two Medicine Lake at Sunrise, Glacier NP -
- Painted Teepee Peak, Mt. Sinopah, and Mt. Helen Reflected in Upper Two Medicine Lake at Sunrise, Glacier NP -
* The following Grizzly Bear photos are by far the best bear photos I have taken, in terms of quality as well as the character, behavior, and beautiful appearance of the bears. I was really lucky to get such a good look at them! The blonde cub was showing off his dexterity a bit when he found a plastic object on the ground and stood up to hold it in his claws and admire his find. These two bears were grazing around in a meadow with thick bushes so you'd only get an occasional glimpse, and then they came into an open area briefly when these photos were taken, before disappearing into thick trees. I did get another very close look at them later also, when they were along the lake shore heading down the valley to a different section with thick berries. I just got ahead of their path and sat on the bank of the lake shore as they walked along the edge of the water right in front of me, and since it was too dark for photos, and HD video can be shot down to 1/30th of a second, it was a good chance to try a video.
