Hot night in October Mountain Shelter, but with mysteriously few mosquitoes. Morning cool and breezy, great hiking weather, and we made great time & ran smack into a huge northbound black bear!
Ursus americanus. Actually we ran smack into a spot about 20 feet short of the bear, and then we stopped, whispered "Bear!", and soon after remembered you're supposed to make noise. We were having a quick whisper-conference about the best kind of noise to make when the bear (a little embarrassed to be seen using the trail, it seemed) slunk off gracefully downhill to the left. Eventually we decided to sing a few songs. "Goin back to where I come from" was a natural, since we are. I also did "Wreck of the Old 97", good because it cautions about the dangers of going downhill too fast (hard on aging knees and locomotives alike.) Anyway, that bear never showed himself again. What a nice looking bear. No pictures, but they rarely do justice anyway.
Bear notwithstanding, we made great time and went right past the turnoff to Upper Goose Pond Cabin, despite the extremely enthusiastic recommendations of the gleaming pancake-eyed northbounders. Unfortunately our time-making wasn't quite good enough to get us anywhere else in particular, so we had to make unofficial camp on a flatish sort of hill. Here's a glamorous fungal bloom nearby:
No Foot-Foot Song?
ReplyDelete