A lifetime ago when I was flying the Athabasca Fire-watch Tower ridge just North West of Hinton, I “sank out” and landed at the bottom of the ridge without soaring much. It takes a knack to be able to catch the rising air currents consistently. Much of the motivation to learn how to stay in the air comes from just such a short “sled ride” on a hang glider to the bottom of the hill. My buddy Dainas Madness named this landing field Klaus-Base seeing as I was a frequent visitor, while everyone else was going to cloud base.
It was a nice sunny day with cumis (cumulus clouds) popping up and ravens soaring. The 1300 ft climb up the face of the ridge to retrieve my vehicle was more disappointing than daunting. I smoked a joint of some good Afghani “freedom fighters” hash, the gold star stuff and started out with my flying “errors” on my mind. Soon I was moving quickly through the alder brush and dense thicket at the bottom of the slope. The mosquitoes were thick and hungry.
In about 40 minutes I was only a hundred or so feet under the rocky cliff along the very top of the ridge. The spine I climbed was very steep and mostly free of alders at this point. An old overgrown exploration switch back wound its way up the face here. The intermittent breeze cooled me while reminding me how good the lift that I had missed was. I was lost in thought about soaring, when a sudden noise above, where the switch back crossed again, made me look up.
The sight I beheld made me freeze. From about 20 meters away a black bear exploded over the brink of bushes growing on the road shoulder and rushed at me full tilt. I did not see how it could stop, the ridge was so steep! It began to apply it brakes sending gravel and rocks rolling my way. I watched its muscles ripple as it dug its paws in and came to a halt about one meter away, up the hillside. As it came to a stop, it stood on its back haunches. This put the bear’s face at eye level with mine, less than 3 feet away. It wasted no time in swinging its head side to side in an exaggerated no, making loud grunts. As its wild eyes met mine at each pass of the swinging head, I could smell its foul breath over the strong odor of bear. The message couldn't have been clearer!
I hated to do it, but I had to turn around to move down the hillside. This I did slowly at first, after backing down a meter or so. Once I had gained about 15 meters I stopped to have a peek. The bear faked another short charge making me high-tailed it down about 30 more meters. Then, not wishing to loose too much altitude and have to climb it again, I moved laterally to the next spine of the ridge. The climb back up began again and this time I was very loud and verbally threatening towards bears.
The next day I had learned from the previous day’s lessons and was soaring with the Ravens and Hawks. Sometimes I would rise to the bottoms of the clouds, and sometimes I would be within 30 meters altitude above an old friend whom I had met in a moment of terror. There she was below me, in almost the same spot on the ridge with her two cubs. It was a flight to remember. I shouted down at her and she looked up at me. I thanked her for leaving me alone and complimented her on her the beauty of her offspring.
Listening to a bear expert this morning on the radio, I marveled at his advice: Stay calm, don’t make abrupt movements, and back away carefully keeping an eye on the bear. I’m sure that having smoked my favorite substance caused my perception to be enhanced and I did the right things instinctively.