Trip Report Display
Linking people with nature by footpath along Lake Superior's North Shore.
Despite weather reports predicting a weekend of thunderstorms and rain my wife Sherry and I took the shuttle from Oberg Mt. to the wayside at Cascade River State Park. Our first day on the trail was uneventful but beautiful. The sky remained clear from the outset of our journey until we made camp at Lake Agnes. Upon setting out the next morning we had the pleasure of encountering several deer on our way to the Lutsen Ski area. Around noon we began desending from the ridges beyond Lutsen into the valley below Moose Mountain. Shortly after we began our descent Sherry stopped me on the trail and wispered "bear." Sure enough ahead of us on the trail was a black bear. The bear had been scraping a tree. As we debated our course of action the bear dropped to all fours and began to lumber away. We waited a few minutes and then quietly and cautiously we continued our hike. We made the Rollins Creek crossing without seeing the bear again but as we aproached the toe of Moose Mt. we rounded a bend to find a rather large brown bear in our path. This time it was I who saw the bear first and as I wispered "there's another bear" to Sherry, I startled the bear. It tried to run only to find the slope too steep to ascend. The bear then held its ground and watched us as we made our way past in the most unthreatening but purposeful manner possible. We were tired from having already hiked eight miles that day and 12 the day before but thanks to the motivation of the Rollins Creek bears we ascended Moose Mt. with relative ease. Later while resting at the Rollins Creek camp site another set of backpackers came into the camp behind us on the trail. I ask them if they had seen any bears. They stated that in fifteen years the only bear they had seen on the trail was crossing a road they were driving on in their car. I feel we must have been very fourtunate to see two these wonderful creatures in their own environment in the same day and less then 45 min apart. |
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