In Your Own Backyard.

In Your Own Backyard -July 11, 2015

We recently completed a five-day trip in the Sierra Nevada. Among other things, we were hoping to see some bears (tens of thousands live there).  Unfortunately, we did not. No bears. No tracks. Not even any bear poop.  The trip was still amazing without them, but I wished we could have seen one.

Still feeling depressed and a little gloomy that out trip was over, we decided our legs were recovered enough to go for a hike. So, we did as we often times do and headed down to Mount Wrightston in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson.  About a quarter-mile beneath the summit we heard the clacking of a small boulder bouncing off the granite wall a few switchbacks above. It seemed the sound came impossibly long before the large rock actually flew by us and we had plenty of time to avoid it. We thought  this strange, since it was fairly late in the day, around 6:30 PM.  As we made our way up, we heard a rustling in the bushes. And then, there it was. What appeared to be a young adult black bear maybe in the 100-200 pound range. He was apparently flipping over rocks to eat the bugs crawling underneath. We saw hundreds of flipped rocks and small boulders.  We got a really good look at him as he casually made a wide arc down the mountain away from our position. I took the below picture right before he disappeared into the forest below as evidence. You can see him below the tree in the middle of the frame.

Sometimes what you're looking for is right in your own backyard. We also saw deer, an amazing sunset, and a random border patrol agent loading his A.R. 15 about 2 miles from the trailhead. That part was actually kind of creepy.