George Ferguson Column: Bearmageddon: Griz season came early for me

You know the feeling you get when you’re totally prepared for something. Something you’ve been looking forward to for so long, and you’ve done everything to be ready, and all that’s left is the excitement of it actually happening.

It’s a great feeling.

I get that feeling toward the beginning of August every year, as another season of Montana Grizzly football rolls around. I also had that feeling as I approached my second hiking trip of the summer earlier this month, a three-day trip to one of my favorite places on earth, Glacier National Park.

On the itinerary were two major hikes — Siyeh Pass and Grinnell Glacier. Both are considered strenuous, and both have a high difficulty rating. Yet, going into both hikes, I felt I couldn’t have been more prepared.

For one, my wife and I have been hiking in Glacier’s back country for a couple of years now, so we certainly don’t feel we are novices or completely inexperienced anymore.

Second, for the last seven months, I have been preparing my body for hiking. Yes, for other reasons, too, but I have spent the last seven months working out six days a week, specifically working on losing weight, cardio training and building up the strength and endurance it takes to make the scenic and beautiful high-altitude treks in Glacier, to see things you can only see by getting out on the trails and actually hiking.

Yes, seven months of working out which, trust me, was not easy for someone who loves pizza, Mountain Dew and television as much as I do.

But the work I put in and the sacrifices I’ve made had me feeling very confident and very prepared for Amy’s and my latest hiking adventure.

Last, as everyone loves to talk about when it comes to Glacier’s back country, I felt very prepared when it comes to bear safety. I’ve read books on it, I’ve learned how to use bear spray, I know the precautions you need to take when out on the trails in bear country and, most importantly, I’ve been out on the trails in Glacier for a couple years now, and I know what it takes to be bear aware.

So, again, heading to Glacier for our last trip of the summer, I couldn’t have felt more prepared. It was a really good feeling. Just like it’s a great feeling knowing Griz football season is coming, and I am very prepared for that, too.

But just when you think you’re so well-prepared for something, every once in a while you get a big slap in the face, a big wake-up call, and on Aug. 6, I got one.

You see, while Griz season doesn’t officially start on the football field until Sept. 3, it came a month early for my wife and me, and many others who were trekking to Grinnell Glacier that day. That’s because, in a four-hour span, from the Many Glacier Boat Dock, until we were just a little shy of a mile from reaching the Grinnell Glacier, we saw 10 grizzly bears. Yes, I said 10.

Now, most of them were from a very safe, but awesome, distance. Included in that was a sow and two 2-year-old cubs playing happily in Lake Josephine, as we were on the boat heading toward the trail to the glacier. That was an awesome experience, to see those bears in that setting. It was spectacular.

But, that’s not even the best part — or perhaps the worst part, depending on how you look at it.

That’s because bears No. 9 and No. 10 would put us in a situation where we went from bear watching to being in a real-life bear encounter.

The encounter happened, as I said earlier, a little less than a mile below our destination. And while I’ll spare you all the blow-by-blow, the long story short is that it went from a sighting to an encounter rather quickly. Within in minutes, the sow and her cub went from being about 300 yards above me to about 50 yards away and on the trail directly in front me. Even though she didn’t run, and she wasn’t being aggressive in any way, it seemed like it all happened in a matter of seconds.

And in that few minutes, I will admit, my preparedness, at least my mental preparedness went right out the window.

Fortunately, there were a lot more people involved than just Amy and me, including a ranger who was leading a large group up the trail just behind us. But, it didn’t take any of the emotions I was feeling in those nerve-racking minutes where the sow forced us to back track, leave the trail and climb a pretty steep meadow to give her the space she deserved.

In those few minutes when all that unfolded, and as she quickly but patiently gained on us as we were going back down-trail, my emotions were such that I quickly realized, there was never any way to truly prepare for them. Emotions I was feeling included being scared, obviously; being unsure of what exactly we should do, obviously; but also being excited. It was an intense experience in every way possible — the good and the not so good.

Of course, in the end, everything turned out just fine. We humans did what we were supposed to do in a bear encounter — back up, don’t run, give the bear space, be ready to react with bear spray if necessary and be as calm as possible. We didn’t allow her to perceive us as a threat. And mama bear did exactly what you would hope she would do. She was patient, she wasn’t stressed, she wasn’t agitated, even with a cub in a tow. She clearly did not perceive us as a threat. Instead, the entire thing was about her knowing the trail was part of the route she needed to take to get to wherever she and her cub were intending to go.

In the end, and in retrospect, it was a pretty benign and, at the same time, exhilarating experience. I am nearly 42 years old, have lived in Montana all my life, been to GNP hundreds of times, hiked trails and seen hundreds of bears, and yet, that was my very first grizzly encounter. Looking back on it a few weeks later, it puts a smile on my face, it excites me. I feel like I got to experience a grizzly in her habitat, doing what bears do, and nothing bad, nothing negative came of it.

But, also in retrospect I’ll admit, while exhilarating to think about and talk about now, it was damn scary in the moment. I admit, I haven’t felt my knees knocking like that in a long, long time.

I realize, also, there was no way I could have ever been prepared for that encounter. I was naïve. The books, the experts, the bear safety instructions, the working out, in that moment none of it really mattered. Don’t get me wrong, I knew what to do, I knew to give her space, to back track without running, to have the bear spray ready just in case. I was indeed prepared, physically. But emotionally, that’s an entirely different matter all together, and I was not prepared for how I was feeling in the moments when that beautiful bear was following us down the trail.

In retrospect, I thought I was prepared for grizzly season — and I realized quickly I wasn’t. Not the emotional side of it anyway.

I’m also not sorry it happened, either, for many of the reasons I listed above. And one of the reasons I’m not sorry the most is that I’m going to keep hiking. It’s become a passion of mine. It’s become an addiction of sorts. And now that I have been involved in a grizzly encounter, I think I will handle it even better the next time. And, while I don’t really want there to even be a next time, I’m sure there will be.

As the experts say, hike long enough in grizzly country and you’re bound to actually run into one. So I expect I’ll have another bear encounter one day. And after the first one, on a day I’m now referring to as bearmageddon, the question is: Will I really be prepared for it?

I think I will. When the next griz season comes around, I won’t be naïve anymore. Instead, I think I’ll be prepared, for real this time, but, I won’t really know until it happens again. And with my summer hiking in the books for 2016, I guess I have about 11 months to wait and see. And while 11 months is a long time, I still have the Griz football team to look forward to.

I know I’m prepared for that and I don’t even need the bear spray.