A Perfect Tracking Day

This is my last full day out West; by this time tomorrow I’ll be headed home. So, I took the day off to do one more hike. I decided to hike to a mountaintop of the Big Holes, but the guidebook was misleading as to where the trailhead was (some five miles back in the National Forest) so I initially got on the wrong trail. I realized it quickly, but I decided to follow it a while because it was perfect tracking weather. 

The heavy rains of yesterday wiped out old tracks, but also made fresh tracks both likely and crisp. On flat ground they were especially obvious. At first I thought the below was a sheep dog following a free-grazing flock, as I had heard that sheep were grazed back there. 

One thing I didn’t see all day was any other human tracks, but someone might leave a dog to watch the flock. After all, there are predators in those mountains. 

I was tracking that herd of sheep out in the national forest when I came across his sleep wallow, and this print a few feet away where he'd stopped to drink from the creek I was following. 

Right above the shadow of my walking stick was a grizzly print. It was facing down into the creek, so the paw portion is unclear and compressed a big wall of mud in front of it. Two of the claws’ impressions into that wall are sharp and clear, though. 

On another day I’d have stalked it, as I once did in the Yellowstone. This time I decided not to do it. I was hiking alone, unarmed except for a Buck knife and a walking stick, with no means of communication and no one knowing where I was (I’d told someone where I was going, but I was down the wrong trail). I decided that the path of wisdom was to enjoy his spoor, and the joy of being close to a free, wild grizz without risking his life and mine. His as well; if he’d eaten me they’d have likely hunted him down. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a grizzly bear’s death. 

Still and all, a good hike.