Bears Can Climb Trees Too

Mrs. Nordquist on the trail

 Swan Lake Hike from the Colter Bay visitor center, 3 miles, 3 hours, difficulty - easy.

Our team met Ranger Ellen on Monday 7/8 for a 3 mile hike through forest and wetland communities to learn about the plants and animals living in Grand Teton National Park. Ranger Ellen is a 3rd grade teacher volunteering as an interpretive ranger this summer for the National Park Service. Last summer she was selected to participate in the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program where school teachers help the Park Service develop curriculum and then take their summer work experiences in the parks back to their students in the classroom.

Mrs. Sissom at the far right

Our teacher-ranger used effective instructional techniques to encourage involvement in our rather large group of 26 hikers. Paying particular attention to the children in our group she passed out laminated cards of plants and animals and habitats that we would see on the hike and rewarded us as we found our assignment with Jr. Ranger stickers. It was fun. I found the beaver lodge on my laminated card in Swan Lake and received my "Survivor" sticker which I will proudly display in my classroom next year.

Swan Lake

Swan Lake is an example of a changing community. The lake is filling in with silt. It will soon, geologically speaking, be a meadow. But for now the geese and swans and ducks and osprey and swans seem happy enough with the habitat. But there were a lot of lily pads.

Mrs. Sissom and Mr. Hancock looking for wildlife

Bever dam

Yes, we expected to see trumpeter swans at Swan Lake. And we did. But not from close enough to get a good picture. Besides if 26 hikers were to get close enough to those swans multiplied by the 10,000 + visitors, by my calculations, which get as far as Swan Lake, the grasses around the lake would be trampled and the behavior of the swans might be changed, so the Park Service seeks to concentrate the impact of the human visitors. We stayed on trails and viewed the swans from a respectful distance with our binoculars and zoom lenses. As a result, visitor get to enjoy the beauty of nature without ruining it in the process.

We have heard a lot of contradictory advice about what to do to avoid encounters with bears and react appropriately in the event of an encounter. I bought a bear bell and Ranger Chuck scoffed and people made jokes about finding bells in bear scat. Ranger Ellen had evidence to show us about why climbing a tree to escape a bear would not be a good idea. There are bear claw marks reaching 4 feet above her head on this tree. The bear was not that tall. It had climbed that tree. Okay - so much for the advice to climb a tree if we felt threatened by a bear. 

We hiked with rangers because they helped us interpret the experience and because they carried bear spray, but we finally got brave enough hike on our own. We were happy that we never saw a bear while on the trail, but our fear of a bear encounter did not keep our team from experiencing the beauty a truly wild place.

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous."
Aristotle