Last year my daughter went for a run on a logging road in the vicinity of big crow,
She came to a 90 degree turn in the road and as she turned into it a large black bear came around from the opposit side. I'm not sure who was the more perplexed, both forgot to be scared, Both stopped in their tracks, and both backed up a couple of steps, the bear was the first to high tail it back from where it came, Joyce turned to go back too, found her voice and from sheer shock decided to sing, loudly. This is so unlike her that wehave had many laughs about it.

I have to admit that the thought does cross my mind from time to time about a bear coming into my site while I sleep.  I sleep in a hammock and I have this vision of waking up to a bear between my tarp and my hammock, sniffing at my butt or something... I'll be honest, that would scare the hell out of me...

I do remember Wildchild!  See that's the kind of thing that I would not want to have happen lol! 

Ash wrote:

I was carrying a pack on back and front, plus holding paddles with both hands, so with the larger rocks on the portage I was paying attention to the ground in front of me, not my surroundings... So about three quarters'ish of the way across I look up hearing a rustle, then approx 20 feet in front of me I see a bear that had just got onto the trail... We both froze for a moment, seemed like a lot longer of course lol! Then he simply ran off into the bush.

EXACT same thing happened to me last September, except it was a moose instead of a bear, and I was travelling solo. And even though it was moose mating season, I remember thinking "thank god that wasn't a bear" lol

I had my first bear encounter/experience earlier this month after spending a number of years in the backcountry and never actually seeing one.  I was backpacking from Rain Lake Access Pt and was at my first site of the trip at Islet Lake.  I had set up my site including hanging my rope for the food bag later.  A bear came crashing through the bush onto the trail just ahead of my site.  I yelled at it, blew my whistle and it took off.  I felt a mixture of excitement that I saw my first bear, and some fear because I am a solo female hiker and that bear was a lot bigger than me.  Later in the trip I was coming up the embankment of Brown Creek to the trail and there were two wolves on the trail about 20 feet in front of me.  They saw me and took off up the trail.  I gave them a few minutes head start and began hiking again.  As I kept walking I could see the tail end of them.  I started singing songs and making noise so they knew I was still around.  When I arrived at the sites at Brown Lake I could hear the wolves howling in the bush.  I rarely see anything in the backcountry beside chipmunks, squirrels etc so this trip was extremely memorable for me.

I've had a bunch of bear encounters, 2 in APP and 3 (possibly 4) in Killarney. I have posted some of this before, but here goes...

My first encounter in APP was during a spring solo hike on the Western Uplands trail. I was practically at my day's destination of East End Lake when something rustled near the lake. I stopped and two cubs climbed a dead tree, all the while looking at me and making noise. This certainly got my heart pounding. I was hemming them in from where I stood, and moving forward would get me even closer. I decided to backtrack and took a route to the south and camped at West Opperpaw Lake instead. I never saw the mother, but I'm pretty sure she saw me!

The second time was a morning at Faya Lake on the Highland trail. I only heard a splash, but my friend's eyes said it all as he described seeing a bear get out of the lake and head inland. I found out later that there had been more (and closer) bear sightings at this site.

As for Killarney, that place seems to be crawling with them. Lots of bear scat on the Lacloche trail, and I ran into a bear both times climbing Silver Peak. One time I hiked right past it and it was my wife who called out 'bear!' It was perched higher up on the rocks by the trail, casually watching us as we passed. The next year I ran into a bear again in almost the same spot, except closer yet. It was right on the trail and it sauntered off without a care. I've got a feeling it was the same bear both times, and when I spoke to a couple of parks workers near the summit they knew of it and didn't seem concerned. We also saw a younger bear hightail it off the trail early on in the same hike. Finally, we ended up car camping one night in Killarney to delay a hike as it was pouring most of the day. We were warned by fellow campers that a young bear was snooping around in the area and I awoke at night to hear some loud sniffing around our tent. I'm not 100% certain it was a bear, but I really didn't feel like finding out!

 

The only potentially ugly encounters were with bears I never saw.  On my very first trip, maybe 1980, three scouts in an aluminum Grumman came around a bend on one of Algonquin's s-cure rivers.  Lots of alder(?) so you couldn't see the land, but just feet from our canoe and behind the alder we heard a huge growl, I guess a bluff charge.  We lit into those paddles like you can't believe.  Two days ago we had a great encounter that could have gone ugly, but you'll have to wait for the trip report! 

Now.  I took my wife on a June trip in 2000.  Night one, Shirley Lake.  We're dozing off in the tent, and I could hear something outside the tent.  A chipmunk sounds like bigfoot in the stillness of night, so I could never be sure, but I could hear some breathing and sniffing around just outside the tent.  I thought maybe raccoon but probably bear because there was some depth to the sound.  I didn't say anything so as to not alarm Lisa, but she says "do you hear that?"  "Yes I do." (See how well I handled that?)  I devised a brilliant plan, but did not tell Lisa.  I would whap the side of the tent really hard and scare off whatever it was.  I was on my back, so I laid my right hand across my chest, to make sure that when I came across to whap the side of the tent, I would be doing it as hard as I could.  Really gonna scare this bear off.  I couldn't see anything, so I really had to reach to make sure I'd catch as much tent as possible.  I executed my move......and instead of feeling the tent, all the back of my hand felt was nose, mouth, and teeth: Lisa's.  She yelled "OWW!!!!!!!!!".   It was obviously her fault, she should have been sleeping on my left side instead of my right.  Duh.  Still, I took the high road, and immediately yelled "SORRY!  SORRY!  SORRY!  SORRY!  SORRY!"  

We never heard another sound for the rest of the night.  She was a little upset at the time, but I protected her, so she should have been grateful, and bonus, she still has all her teeth.

Had a run-in a few years back portaging out of a lake, came around a bend and the bear was already standing with it's ears up, looking at me.  There was a few moments where we just stared at each other, then I bent down, picked up a branch and started banging it against the side of the canoe I was carrying.  That was enough and it bolted, problem is, had it bolted towards me, I might have had enough time to lift maybe one arm in front of me before it would have reached me, it moved that fast... 
This past June, bushwhacking to a lake, we had one following us and hanging around, just before each encounter, we'd run into fresh bear sign, freshly stripped bark from trees, pine needle carpets flipped over etc... in the end we made enough noise that it wandered away but repeatedly running into it did not give me the warm and fuzzies....

And because dontgroandaddy opened the door:  Years ago during a couples party weekend at Sec, one of the lads stumbled over to the neighboring campsite (so many of us we had to split up the group) late at night.  He rooted around, making grunting noises until someone in a tent heard it and started screaming IT'S A BEARRR!  Chaos ensued and he ran back to our campsite laughing so hard he couldn't breath.  Early the next morning there was some karma when a couple of guys from the neighboring campsite snuck into ours, stole the lads canoe and left it anchored out in the middle of the lake.  He had to swim out to get it but because of the hangover, never noticed the rock anchor behind him and spent an hour slowly struggling to paddle it back to shore, we waited till he made it back and then pointed it out to him....