Originally Posted by
noglider
No pictures, and not a bike ride, but a couple of weeks ago, my wife and friends and I took a hike in Becket State Forest in Massachusetts. We had never seen bear skat before, and we saw about six piles of it on a one hour hike.
The Canada portion of the Tour Divide has a dirt road section in BC known as the 'Grizzly Hiway' since it goes through an area of BC that has one of the higher bear populations in the North American continent. I lost count of how much scat was present on the road- clearly in Canada the bear leaves scat wherever it likes
(contrary to popular anecdote grizzly scat does not contain partially digested bells...). When descending the Galton Pass, I encountered four black bears at different spots (I was descending just before dusk so they were probably more active at that point). The last of the 4 was pretty big and standing up seems he might have been between 6 and 7 feet. But as I encountered them I just yelled at them like I was really pissed off; that combined with my speed (the descent off Galton pass is a loss of 4500' over ten miles) and the noise my bike was making they all turned and bolted up the hill. Not sure what I would have done if they had stood their ground but it might have involved stopping rather quickly...