More Bears

Just a few more bear photos to illustrate my earlier post. In the top photo a bear checks us out after we have invaded his personal space bubble. We were trying to drive him off of the archaeological site so that we could map it. He did not move and we backed off. Note the bear enhanced erosion. The second photo shows the same bear and our camp in the distance. Third photo is of Mark posing in bear beds at the front of an archaeological site. Those beds are deep and have destroyed a significant portion of the archaeological site. Finally, the bottom photo is of Aubrey and Rose digging a test pit while the bears sleep in the distance. Patrick

After re-reading this post a few hours later, I feel a clarification of how we tried to drive the bears off of the site is in order. Basically we did it in a very low key way. No cracker shells or even yelling. We walked up above and upwind of the bears so that they could see us (This is when I took the picture of the bear with the camp behind him). We then walked as a group towards the bears on the site. And then when they did not immediately leave we backed off and left the sites to the bears. I had a feeling that after we had pushed the issue a bit the bears would leave on their own - and they did. We sort of drove the bears off 'bear style' - we made our wishes known and they left the site in their own sweet time with their honor intact. Patrick