Bear Scare

In the morning the frost covered everything and it was hard getting out of our warm sleeping bags. I got up and started the stove to make oatmeal, coffee and my wife’s “face water.” After a few minutes I rousted Kris and we got breakfast out of the way. It was bluebird out so we decided it would be best if we hiked back up to the high point above Heart Lake and take in the views that we missed the day before. We needed to pump water out of the stream to fill our bottles before we headed out. We would leave the packs on the platform for the duration of our hike and then come back for them and head down to the parking lot, another 8 miles.

We headed over the to stream and pumped our water. Kris walked off first with the bottles in her hands and I was putting the filter back together. I started walking back towards camp and I thought I heard something rustle the bushes behind me. I glanced back but saw nothing and walked a few more steps. I heard the rustling again and turned back again. Thirty feet away from me, right where we had been pumping water, a black bear came charging out of the bushes heading directly down the trail right for me. Everything went into slow mode. All I could think was to make a lot of noise and make myself look big. Before the bear had taken a full stride toward me I waved my arms and yelled “O Bear!, Hey Bear!” as loud as I could. He immediately turned right back across the stream and ran up the hill away from us and the campsite. My heart was pounding and I was more than a little excitable. Kris was spooked pretty good too considering she didn’t know what was going on until she saw the bear running up the hill away from the campsite. We both packed up quickly after that looking over our shoulders at every sound. I’m sure the bear just happened to be walking down the hill and into the path when were there, but I’m happy that it didn’t get any closer.

We headed back up the ridge and got above Heart Lake in under an hour. The views were amazing so we snapped off a couple of pics of the glacier over on Olympus. We stayed on the ridge for half an hour before finally pulling ourselves away and headed back to our site. Once there we put on our packs and started trudging out to the parking lot. We were down to the lot by 2pm and headed to the Sol Duc Hot Springs.

The hot springs, like most we’ve come across, are just a pool fed by hot springs. This sort of place tends to attract a certain mix of very old people, very out of shape people and the French. We had one look at the place and decided we would just pay for showers instead. Once inside the shower house Kris popped her head into the women’s area and came out smirking. When I inquired about the smirk she informed me that the showers were indeed group showers with no stalls. Great, I didn’t like group showers in high school and I don’t like them now. Fortunately I was one of the only patrons in the shower and I was most definitely the best physical specimen so I had nothing to worry about. Once out of the shower I visited the store adjacent to the springs and picked up a six pack of beer and all was good in the world.

We drove out of the Sol Duc area and headed west to meet our friends Taryn and Matty in La Push, which is on the western coast. Before hitting the next campsite we drove down to the beach and watched the surf and the sunset. It was the first time we’ve seen surf (San Juan Island is protected by other bodies of land so it doesn’t get any surf) since we left home in April. It was a sight for sore eyes!

I'll add pics to all these post ASAP so check back soon. Service here sucks and so does the blogger program!