The bear story... what is your favorite Alaska story?

Went to Alaska this June. Many people we know have asked our favorite story... would love to know yours. Ours is below...

We had a great excursion, part of which took us to the Mendenhall Glacier. We hiked around, looked at the glacier, etc.

At the end of our meandering, with 20 minutes till we needed to meet the bus, we headed back. As we walked, we heard people say, “bear, bear”! So, we walked down a trail, over a little bridge, and saw an awesome black bear. We took pictures, and headed back to bus. We got to that plateau area, where up the hill is bus, down the hill a ways is bear, and an older “grandpa looking” older guy is by a stroller, and says- “is this your baby”? A cute little one year old is sleeping in there. Not ours :). So I find a park ranger, and tell her about the baby. She comes over, makes several calls, more rangers come. Approx 10 minutes later, a couple comes up from bear watching, to get the baby. They left sleeping baby alone, to go watch bear! So many things wrong with this...

So glad baby was ok!! Can’t imagine leaving sleeping baby alone in public place, with bears! Note, we looked around for the parents a lot... no way they could have seen her, because no one was anywhere nearby except us and “nice grandpa looking guy”!

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In 2008 we were on a tour in Alaska . Our tour guide stopped the bus so we could look out both sides of the bus for bear .A bear approached from the front and attempted to enter

Wasn't on a cruise (My Sister and her DH and kids live in Anchorage) and we were visiting in 2011. Well, about 11:30 in the evening, we were getting hungry - we were staying at their house outside of town. I was chosen to ride back into Anchorage to grab a couple of pizzas. No big deal, right?

I opened the door to head to the car and there - not 5 feet from me, standing on the porch was a black bear. I looked at him - he looked at me and we both stood VERY still…I backed up, slammed the door and stood there (like Curly in the 3 Stooges) making all kinds of strange noises. :)

I told my Sister that I had just seen the biggest Black bear in the world standing on her porch….She and BiL started laughing, we all went to the porch, looked out the window and it was, of course, a bear. About 5 feet tall - a mere cub. They told me that the Momma and her cubs are constantly walking around the area….nothing to worry about.

I STILL waited until they had "shooed" the cub away before I left. Now, understand this…I live in the Rockies. I have seen (literally) hundreds of bears, Elk, big horn Sheep, a few Moose and many mountain Lions. But never stood eye to eye with one of them….Big Game hunter…..yeah, right. :)

On July 30,2006 I was fishing at the Russian River in Cooper Landing. I was camping at the Russian River campground in a 1 man tent. At 4:30 in the morning I could feel the top of the tent being ripped off. As I was sleeping on my stomach on a sleeping bag I felt something on top of me and felt something biting my shoulder. I stayed still and he let go and grabbed me again. I decided I needed to do something so I started yelling to my nephew who was in a hard shell camper with his family next to me. He opened the window to see what was happening and evidently startled him as he ran off.That's the best bear story I can come up with. If you don't believe it Google 2006 Russian River Campground bear attack. I am currently up in Eagle River for 5 weeks now and have about 1 week left as I have been doing for the past 20+ years. We will be going down to the Russian River this week to go fishing again. They have dispatched 6 brown bears in a subdivision across from ours in the past couple weeks and a black bear was in our garbage a couple days ago.

Last September. Ketchikan. We were walking up to the Deer Mountain Tribal Hatchery and Totem Heritage Museum. Passing the Ketchikan Indian Community Center when someone yells out "Bear!!". I turn around and see a huge black bear walking up the steps out of the center maybe 50 feet away from me and start to head my way across Deermount Street. I remember being told not to turn your back to a bear and slowly walk backwards so I decided to snap a few pictures while my wife was behind me freaking out. As soon as it crosses onto my side of the street, it turned away from me and headed up the mountainside. My wife said I was an idiot but I was just following what I was told to do minus the picture taking!

I have three.

1. The first one is similar to diesel1973's above. Four of us did a fly-in fishing/camping trip to Upper Russian Lake on the Kenai. We camped on a sandbar at the top of the lake; there was a small lagoon behind us where many red salmon were in the final stages of spawning and dying; the fishing was useless because they weren't interested. (Don't know what possessed us to go there; we knew they wouldn't be catchable.)

Anyway, that night my friend and I were in our tent when I heard the fish in the lagoon go nuts, then something bumped into my arm through the tent wall and I realized it was a bear. We had a couple of guns with us (9mm for nuisance, shotgun for serious events) but both were in the other tent, not that I would have used either in close quarters. I lay there petrified for a few minutes, then I heard the fish go crazy again and silence. Needless to say I didn't go back to sleep. In the morning I looked around the tent and there were prints the size of dinner plates from the (big, jumbo sized) Brownie that had nuzzled me. Yikes.

2. The second was when I was working on the Alaska Peninsula near the village of King Cove, locating sites for a native housing development I was planning. The local chief of police drove me out to one of our possible sites - around a mile from the village out on the tundra. We were walking around when he saw a fishing boat approaching back in the village. As he was also the acting harbormaster (the actual one was sick I think) he had to hustle back to the village and process the boat. So he asked me if I wanted to ride back with him or stay and hike back. I said I'd hike, whereupon he handed me his service revolver and said that the previous day he'd seen a brown bear sow and two cubs right where we were walking around. I looked at his .38 and asked what the hell was I supposed to do with this.

"If she charges, shoot yourself." Ha ha. (Note this is something of a cliche in Alaska but it actually happened.)

At this point I accepted his offer of a ride.

3. Also on the Peninsula, at the Cold Bay airport (not far from King Cove but not reachable by road) I was schmoozing with some Reeve Aleutian Airlines (RIP) people at the little cafe and bunkhouse operated (at the time) by the Flying Tigers airfreight firm. (Cold Bay was on a "great circle" route between Europe and Asia, so Flying Tigers used it as a refueling stop.)

While we were drinking coffee and telling lies, we heard a lot of noise coming from the kitchen - pots clanging, things breaking, all hell breaking loose. Then the swinging door to the kitchen flew open and the two Filipino cooks came tearing through the cafe, their eyes looking like saucers. They ran out the front door while we sat there gobsmacked, then through the same swinging door comes this giant head - the biggest damn brown bear I've ever seen. The good news was he (she?) was too big to fit through the door, so s/he looked at us while we looked back, then turned around and made more noise in the kitchen, no doubt helping itself to whatever groceries it could find. We didn't wait around to see what happened next; we were trying to catch up with the cooks.

Luckily you had a gun,I didn't(that has changed). Fish and game measured the distance between the canine teeth punctures and estimated it to be 350-400lbs. Dont know why he decided to taste me as I had a clean camp but I guess tasting bad is a good thing. I see the bear every year while up here and I know it's him because he keeps spitting trying to get that bad taste out of his mouth!!LOL

Loving your stories!

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^^^ Me too! I hope i come back from my Alaska trip with a bear story -- but perhaps not quite as intense as some of these.

And Herfnerd, your pics are stunning...

No more stories????????