Bear "incident" on the AT

Scubahhh said:

I'm curious about bear "incidents" in the Whites. I've seen loads of bears on and around trails, but never any kind of "incident." In public campgrounds I've seen them wandering around and heard about some issues with their getting food left lying around. I imagine campground beard set about ax habituated as they get, but it doesn't seem like they actually succeed much.

Backpacking unusually hang my food a little distance from where imsleep, and I've never been aware of bears getting after it; and though I'm a light sleeper I've never heard anything poking around. I heparin anecdotes about them being pretty brash around Guyot, Liberty Springs, and some other very popular sites, but no first hand experience.

Can anybody there offer anything better than conjecture about bear/human interaction in the Whites?

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Ive proboly ran into more bears then most, I'm a soloist ( or was, now I have a dog). In most cases shouting at the bear has done the trick, once halfway up the Falling Waters trail, I ran into a stubborn bear that would not clear the trail, no matter how long and loud I yelled at him. I found a stout stick and threw it at him, making a direct hit, he then left the trail. Once I ran into two cubs, I retreated and aborted my hike to go elsewhere, that situation is to me the most dangerous you can encounter in the Whites.

Scubahhh said:

Can anybody there offer anything better than conjecture about bear/human interaction in the Whites?

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Brutus was the most well documented and dangerous bear in the Whites. Numerous incidents of him stealing food from hikers, approaching them, and eating their food when they dropped their packs. He was eventually put down after getting so bold.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/whitemountain/news-events/?cid=STELPRDB5183288

13 Falls was pretty notorious for bears getting hung food - they now have a bear box there, right?

Some history on "Brutus" (which actually was a group of bears).

Prior to Lincoln Woods Parking lot and the tail end of backpacking boom in late seventies, the Pemi area was used heavily. There had been "tent cities" all along the north branch of the Pemi mostly at the former logging camps. The fairly recent wilderness designation was being implemented and camping was banned at many of the traditional spots which drove traffic to three still legal areas, Desolation Shelter, the Thoreau falls area, and Franconia Brook. Franconia Brook was "party central" with large crowds of definitely not LNT campers. Thus the bears were habituated to easy pickings. There were large posters of a snarling bear at all trailheads warning of bear issues. Some USFS folks at the time observed that the signs were as much a management tool to keep people away as an actual warning. "Brutus" tended to raid the three locations roughly every third night, common theory at the time was that if a site was raided the night before it was unlikely it would be raided for two nights. This went on for a couple of seasons. A friend and I met a USFS employee at one point during this time n the Pemi and she indicated that "Brutus" wasn't attacking people and until that happened they didn't plan to deal with "Brutus". "Brutus" was bluff charging folks and running into shelters and stealing packs so others tended to disagree on how dangerous "Brutus" was. The year that the new Lincoln Woods parking lot opened, "Brutus" started raiding the parking lot. This new parking lot was a very big deal for the USFS and was a show case. "Brutus" and family soon ceased to be an issue in the area as once they started raiding the general public they appear to have been judged as dangerous. I expect they were trapped and trucked.

The strange part of recent bear issues is that in general the backcountry areas are managed as LNT and campers are somewhat cleaner, yet the bears have become a significant issue at the majority of sites along the AT and other popular areas in the whites. This may be related to a record bear population in combination with possibly a few bad years for wild food sources. Heck ran into one person who insists that Ben Killam is to blame for rehabbing cubs which makes them inherently more prone to habituate to humans ( I don't agree with that theory, but it seems to be out there).

David Metsky said:

Brutus was the most well documented and dangerous bear in the Whites. Numerous incidents of him stealing food from hikers, approaching them, and eating their food when they dropped their packs. He was eventually put down after getting so bold.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/whitemountain/news-events/?cid=STELPRDB5183288

13 Falls was pretty notorious for bears getting hung food - they now have a bear box there, right?

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Correct, the bear box is on the left near the side path to the cooking area. At least it was last Memorial Day.

When was Brutus active? I was backpacking at the Franconia Brook Tentsite with my young children (2 and 4 years old if I recall correctly) in about 2009 and we had a bear bag stolen in the night. I found bits and pieces of the bag and it's contents strewn about in the woods. Years ago, we had food poached by mice and by flying squirrels, but this was the only time I had a bear get ahold of it.

The food bag was about 10--12 feet off the ground, strung over a limb about 4-5 inches in diameter and at least 10 feet from the main truck of the tree, The rope was broken a foot or so below the branch and it appeared to have been hit sufficiently hard that the rope over the branch was embedded in the bark such that all that was left in the morning was 12" of frayed rope dangling from the branch. The only thing I could figure was that a small bear (a cub?) was able to get out on that branch and swat at the rope.

My guess on Brutus and family would have been around 1976 to 78 ?

peakbagger said:

My guess on Brutus and family would have been around 1976 to 78 ?

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That's funny. I've heard Brutus and family come up on forums and in conversations, and there is always a recency about the conversation that led me to believe it was post 2000. That's almost 40 years on now!

As for our "Brutus" (as the rangers at Lincoln Woods described him), this incident happened in the mid-90's.

I too have observed that Brutus stories tend to be generic descriptions of bear incidents in the Pemi. I think Desolation shelter has been gone for 18 year years and it had significant ongoing bear issues for many years prior.