mkecane died the way he lived…punching bears in the face…
In about 1985 a bear was tranquilized less than one mile from where
I lived, right smack in the middle of Greensboro NC, a city of ~200,000.
(Unhappily for the residents of the property where the bear came to rest
he was in their back yard marijuana patch)
Another bear showed here up last year, and the modern Wildlife Management
idiot fucks decided to let him run loose until he worked his way back out of town.
Sadly he wandered onto the airport runway and had to be killed.
There is no tension between my stories and yours with the statements
of fact that:
“all adult bears are dangerous”, and
“You better watch your damn step with those critters”.
Even though they may run from a housecat:
Cat Chases Bear Up Tree
If a bear wants to kill someone then he will kill them unless they are armed
with at least peeper spray, which you should have on you if you spend much
time in bear territory.
But then you’ve got to hit him square in the eyes.
If you are treed by a bear, how do you know if it is a black bear or a grizzly? A black bear will climb the tree after you, and the grizzly will push the tree over.
In all seriousness, the above posts are accurate: keep a clean camp, make some noise, and if a bear does appear, treat it with respect and go the other way. Never run from it. As others have stated with extensive backpacking experience, in my trips thru the Sierra in CA, seen a bear only a handful of times, and as soon as they know you are there, they hightail it the other way.
Enjoy your trip! The chances of seeing a bear are fleetingly remote, and most people consider it a cool encounter if it does happen. If they were really bloodthirsty marauders, that would not be the case. The biggest annoyance will probably be the mosquitoes.
A great piece of advice I got from the National Park Service brochure when I was car camping in bear country in the late 80s was “Bears can’t read”. Bears have learned to associate boxes and box shapes like coolers with food. Even if you put all your food away, but you leave a box of kleenex on your dashboard, a bear will see it when passing through your campsite. The bear will open your car for the box of what must be crackers on the dash, and be VERY disappointed. Then the bear will be both hungry and peeved.
The advice was to put everything box shaped in the trunk, or on the back seat of the car but all under a blanket. Mama Zappa and I did that. I was amazed at how disorganized the pile of our stuff looked unser a blanket - not a sharp corner in site.
Bear bells do work - most animals will avoid noisy things. Mama Zappa and I were hiking in Glacier National Park in the late 80s, wearing bear bells. We no bears or even footprints, but we did see what we thought might be bear scat on the hiking trail, and reported it to a Ranger back at the lodge. She was happy for the information and said they’ll shut down the trail for a few days until the bear moves on. She said she grew up in Montana, wears bells whenever hiking and never sees bears. Some of her fellow rangers do not wear bells, and they see bears all the time. They are, however, trained professions who knwo how to deal with bears.
Relax and enjoy your trip. Just hide your pic-a-nic baskets.
No damn good. That’ll just mean they say grace before they eat you.
All I can say is: trouble’s a-bruin.
I grew up in rural British Columbia and have many bear stories. I am with those saying to just assume the worst of them, assume they want to eat you. Granted most of them, especially black bears, don’t have any interest, but bears are smart animals and like humans they have individual personalities. You don’t want to run into an ursine jerk.
Also, it has been reported in BC by a few hikers/campers that use of bear spray actually seemed to just incite the bear to further rage. Yay! Me personally, I don’t go into the woods without a gun I know how to use. To do so wouldn’t be pleasant, I’d just spend the entire time on high alert, leaping into the air with terror at every sound.
Lastly, bears can DEFINITELY get into cars.
They can, but for the most part, they don’t.
Yes, true. Unless you have stored delicious food in there. A bear got into a friend’s VW camper in the wilds of northern British Columbia, managed to close the door on itself, totaled the car in a panic, then some tough guy at camp shot him. 
The grizzlies along the Arctic Slope pipeline road learned that they could hook their claws under the windshield molding on company trucks and pop the windshield out to get at the lunch boxes left on the seats.
Hey, are you a former bush worker, too? I treeplanted for one season, in the manner of many broke teenagers in BC, but my sister has been at it for 8 years now and foremans her own crew. She also works off season in the bush (mostly pine beetle stuff). Sometimes i think she’s going a bit feral.
As for bears, one thing CAN be counted on - they are freakin PIGS. They routinely just wandered into the chow tent and made off with entire trays of food - they learned that stealing food out on the block (where a couple of armed people were always around) usually got them shot, but the chow tent was undefended. They were brazen mofos. They’d even take the time to taste what was in each tray (eyeballing us the whole time like oh yeah? try to stop me) and then make sure to steal the one(s) they liked best.
No one in this thread has mentioned the advice I have heard lots of times before - if you find a bear following or confronting you, and you have ANY edible items on your person, throw them as far away from you as you can. Odds are that’s what the bear wants.
I worked at Yosemite for two summers while in college. This was before the bear-proof dumpsters and the bear relocation programs. I’ve seen dozens of bears, although it could have been the same bear on numerous occasions. You kind of just get used to it. I never felt threatened, at least after the first sighting. They never showed any kind of aggressive behavior.
Many people have suffered a grizzly fate at the hands of religious fanatics, it’s true.
I talked with Rangers at the check in booth first thing and they said I will never see a bear at the Union Bay campsite. They said the the only problems they ever have are at the trailheads where people have food in their cars and leave the windows rolled down!! They’ve also had a few duffle bag heists from the back of pickup trucks. They said to make sure my windows are rolled up and I won’t have a problem. I did notice bear poles near all the remote camping sites. From the input here I gather it may be different with bears at other parks, so that might not be enough elsewhere.
Obviously I survived. No bear encounters in the park, but I did see a cub in the middle of the highway on my way there. I stopped for a minute after he ran back into the forest to see if I could spot the mother, but no luck. Man was that a deserted stretch of highway.
The only other time I spent much time thinking about it was when I turned back on my last trail. A couple started the trail just a minute or so behind me so I ran into them soon after I turned around. They told me to be careful because they saw a bear running towards them near the trailhead. They just clapped, the bear saw them, and it ran the other other way. It really did test my resolve about whether or not I really wanted to see a bear in the wild. I kept telling myself that I did to keep it off my mind, but I’m not sure how true that was. It’s easy to think I do, until some tells me I might run into one, then I freak out.
I thought I had them bested with my 33% Deet lotion, until I took my pants off one night and noticed around 100 welts all over my quads. Those suckers bit through my pants. Besides that the most annoying thing was just the swarm constantly circling me(on some parts of trails). I felt like a super massive star constantly sucking in all the lesser objects into orbit around me.
And I used the word “sucker” in the derogatory sense, not the literal one, which, obviously, they are.
And after you walk away:
“You think we should have mentioned that’s because of how sneaky the bears are around there?”
You’re unbearable.
For more bear-themed humor, I highly recommend a couple of Phil Frank books: