Sunday night, day before i left Homer i was reading a book in my tent. It was about 22:00 hours. Then I heard a very low voiced sniffing around, like a dog, but a few octaves lower. A BEAR!! I stayed quite...realy quite, scared as hell, being an ignorant European guy, i didn't know what to expect.
Luckily i didn't had food or candybar wrappers etc. in the tent. yesterday i heard that one of the guys i met in Dawson (Mac) got his tent ruined by a bear while he was in it....
Apparantly the bear walked away instead of attacking him and he got away with it.
For the last few days I hung my garbage in a tree 3 meters from my tent and about 2m high. I thought it was okay, no bear droppings in sight, lots of other guests...
What worried me the most is that i didn't hear it coming through the bushes or disappearing. I took the bearspray out. And promised to myself NEVER EVER leave eating stuff around my campsite.
Amazing how little accidents happen though, i have seen quite a lot of people leaving their food or garbage near the tent. Although you see warning everywhere with the combination of the words "BEAR" and "DON'T KEEP FOOD AROUND YOUR TENT".
I know, I should know better by now with all the warnings. But still, at 50m distance there were people making noise, you don’t expect a bear that close.
Allan told me the next day that it was probably a young grissly. After two years they are abandoned by their moms and that is a critical period for young bears and they tend go to urban areas for food, usually harmless to people unless you scare or frighten them. And that i’m probably on the bears route. The have some sort of fixed route they go where they know there is food. Like campsites....
Lesson learned. I hope you forgive me for haven't any pictures.
The last few days i finally saw a few bears on my way from Valdez to Juneau. Young ones mainly. They don't look dangerous, even cute.....
