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I’m in the south. The only thing that worries me more than mad-maxing raccoons is other, redneckier humans.
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Jul 16, 2022 05:56
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I’m in Colorado, so my greatest fear is a dudebro with a guitar.
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Jul 16, 2022 14:28
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newts posted:I’m in Colorado, so my greatest fear is a dudebro with a guitar. Moose. Terrifying creatures and they’re everywhere now.
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Jul 16, 2022 14:58
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Moose and trees falling over were my main concern in Idaho. I don't think I've actually camped out since I moved to Utah, I just sleep in my truck.
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Jul 16, 2022 15:14
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waffle enthusiast posted:Moose. Non-comedy option. I am definitely terrified of moose. When I was a kid, my dad and I got trapped by a bull moose on a hike. It charged us and my dad picked me up. Then it spent a good 5 minutes threatening us. There wasn’t any place to hide or get away, so my dad just did his best to keep a big tree between us and the moose. Eventually, it got bored and left.
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Jul 16, 2022 15:17
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Growing up in Anchorage, every winter there'd be at least one news report of a moose trampling someone. When the snow got deep they'd linger more in the cities because it was easier to walk and that created a lot more interactions.. some of them pretty nasty. So yeah, gently caress moose. I came within a few feet of one when hiking in the forest, if moose have a sense of humor it was probably laughing its rear end off as I scrambled to reverse and get the gently caress out of there. From what I saw it didn't care at all, never even stopped chewing on leaves.
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Jul 16, 2022 16:40
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Wow all this Moose talk is kinda surprising, I had no idea they were that aggressive. The whole time I was hiking in N.H. I was hoping to see a moose and avoid a bear, but um never mind now… 
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Jul 16, 2022 16:54
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When I was in Grand Teetons I bumped into a pair of moose on the trail that we couldn’t really get around. Eventually another group came though and we hitched to their wagon because, as I said to my wife “they can’t get all of us” and we passed within a few feet of them. It was terrifying but the moose couldn’t have cared less that time
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Jul 16, 2022 17:13
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last year in algonquin I heard a medium sized critter of some kind right outside our tent, which due to weird terrain was right next to the trail into the site. woke up and found a giant bleached bone, prob deer or moose even, sitting right in the middle of the path. good poo poo. love backpacking!
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Jul 16, 2022 17:14
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Naramyth posted:When I was in Grand Teetons I bumped into a pair of moose on the trail that we couldn’t really get around. Eventually another group came though and we hitched to their wagon because, as I said to my wife “they can’t get all of us” and we passed within a few feet of them. It was terrifying but the moose couldn’t have cared less that time This was how we got past a grizzly by the trail in Teton a few weeks ago. It was blocking the only way out. I don't think it ever even acknowledged our presence though.
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Jul 16, 2022 17:15
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Yeah I saw a black bear in Olympic and she was so busy with huckleberries she did not even lift her head up
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Jul 16, 2022 17:30
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liz posted:Wow all this Moose talk is kinda surprising, I had no idea they were that aggressive. The whole time I was hiking in N.H. I was hoping to see a moose and avoid a bear, but um never mind now… They will chase bears.  90% of the time they're pretty docile, but like any wild animal if you threaten their children or they're sick of your poo poo they will go full crazy and because they're so large they can really gently caress things up. I think it's normal for people to underestimate ungulates too.. we're used to deer and cows that just run away and assume all grazers are the same.
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Jul 16, 2022 17:31
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Naramyth posted:When I was in Grand Teetons I bumped into a pair of moose on the trail that we couldn’t really get around. Eventually another group came though and we hitched to their wagon because, as I said to my wife “they can’t get all of us” and we passed within a few feet of them. It was terrifying but the moose couldn’t have cared less that time We did this in the Smokies too with a mama bear. We ended up hiking the rest of the trail with a family because ain’t no way I’m separating with a mom and cubs nearby… I used my bear bell in N.H. and I’m sure it annoyed the poo poo outta a lot of people but there were times when I didn’t see anyone for awhile despite a good number of cars at the trailhead.
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Jul 16, 2022 17:40
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xzzy posted:They will chase bears. and deer are basically 100% lean mass that can clean vertically jump over a six foot fence and will absolutely break your average human adult with ease if they feel the need to every year at least a few dozen people end up hospitalized because the whitetail they thought would run away at their threat, or stand docilely while they took a selfie, or that they thought was deader than it really was, or that it wouldn’t buck as much as it did when they tried to untangle it from some netting, etc called their bluff
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Jul 16, 2022 18:21
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I wonder if the "make yourself big and loud" trick works on deer too or if they think your stick(s) are antlers and decide to throw down
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Jul 16, 2022 18:41
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FAUXTON posted:I wonder if the "make yourself big and loud" trick works on deer too or if they think your stick(s) are antlers and decide to throw down adolescent bucks and adult bucks in heat will absolutely throw down if they interpret your threat display as a legitimate threat of violence/combat and they think they can take you I got chased back into my house by an ornery teenage buck one time as a kid when my mom asked me to scare a group of deer away from her hostas
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Jul 16, 2022 19:13
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In most cases, just wait it out. If you can't get past, don't try to squeeze through. Let them pass and don't try to press your luck passing too closely. It's a risk that's not worth the consequences of backing off and hanging out for a few minutes. A lot of animals like to chase. With all the times I've encountered deer, they're usually gone before you even get close. Bucks in rut could be aggressive but they also tend to scatter before you get too close. Black bears generally the same but obviously cubs change everything. Just go away and give them space. Goats. gently caress goats. So far they're the most aggressive species I've ever seen and it hasn't made a difference if there was a baby or not. They'll confront you if you're too close and start backing you down the trail. They'll try to get above you. They're big, incredibly strong, masters of steep slopes, plus they've got horns that will gore you. Someone in Olympic national park died getting hit by a goat. I've seen them in several areas and they've all been pretty fearless. If you see them drop their head, back off. I wouldn't gently caress with a moose at close range. They kill more people than bears. They're super fast and really aggressive when in close. My Canadian and Alaskan friends say they worry about moose more than anything else. We had some in upper Michigan but I only ever saw them at a long distance. Never seen any out west yet so I've never had a run in. I have a friend of a friend whose dog got killed by a moose in their yard out in Utah. Elk can be pretty aggressive too but they tend to be similar to deer and run off quickly. Still wouldn't take my chances though, especially during the rut. Grizzlies, I don't have any experience with but I would give them all the space they need. They absolutely terrify me because they know their place on the food chain and it's up to them if they feel like enforcing it. https://youtu.be/D-s9ybWdVH0 I always think about this video. This guy took a poo poo ton of risk to try and out run a bear while skiing. he should have got loud and tried to scare it off. He easily could have fallen and got mauled. Not only did he trigger the chase instinct, but he brought the bear running into other crowds of people who were standing still and couldn't easily get away. Long story short, give animals their space, back off slowly and wait it out.
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Jul 16, 2022 22:54
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slingshotting a preying bear into crowds of unsuspecting skiers is extremely badass
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Jul 17, 2022 00:27
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Don't need to be faster than a bear, just faster than the unsuspecting skiiers.
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Jul 17, 2022 02:34
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waffle enthusiast posted:Moose. A møøse once bit my sister.
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Jul 17, 2022 20:20
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evilpicard posted:Don't need to be faster than a bear, just faster than the unsuspecting skiiers. kiting mobs into town is a tried and true strategy
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Jul 18, 2022 05:09
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Moose are terrifying and fairly common in the part of Northern Arizona I go to a lot, and is the reason I go 25 in a certain 65 mph zone where multiple times I have turned a corner and seen moose just hanging out in the middle of the road. And they don't move, you have to just slowly go around them and hope they don't decide to attack your car. So far so good.
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Jul 18, 2022 05:27
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Rick posted:Moose are terrifying and fairly common in the part of Northern Arizona I go to a lot, and is the reason I go 25 in a certain 65 mph zone where multiple times I have turned a corner and seen moose just hanging out in the middle of the road. And they don't move, you have to just slowly go around them and hope they don't decide to attack your car. So far so good. Those are elk.
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Jul 18, 2022 08:39
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Those are elk. I was reading that and thought "I really never would have thought there are moose in Arizona!"
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Jul 18, 2022 13:32
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I googled it and came across a picture on tripadvisor with the caption of moose in Grand Canyon parking lot and what's very clearly a photo of an elk. Like yeah, elk are big bastards, but a full grown moose is loving huge
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Jul 18, 2022 14:44
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Moose vary in size by region too. I grew up in Anchorage where I got used to seeing moose of a certain size then one summer we visited Yellowstone and the one we saw was the scrawniest shrimp moose I'd ever seen. It was much later that I learned that Alaskan moose are the largest in the world (approaching 2000 pounds).
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Jul 18, 2022 14:58
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I didn’t notice until too late but I walked by a moose and her baby in Wyoming once. I realized I spent all my animal prep time learning about bears and didn’t know what to do so I backed off while taking pics as evidence of what happened to me. They let me live and I waited for them to leave once I got some distance. Rolo fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jul 18, 2022 |
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Jul 18, 2022 18:18
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The one time I saw a moose on the highway it was a - the same size as my car, and b - the same speed as my car. Fortunately it did manage to stay in its lane so I lived.
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Jul 18, 2022 18:45
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Went for some short hikes: Chicago Stump and Boole Tree trails in Sequoia National Forest.               Getting photos of sequoias is always a challenge since the drat things are so large it's almost impossible to get the whole thing in frame.
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Jul 19, 2022 01:51
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Verman posted:
I always heard the advice “get loud and stand your ground/scare them off” applied to black bears, but for grizz I’ve heard “speak and move away slowly, don’t make them think you’re a threat”. I had a close encounter with a grizzly once in glacier but fortunately it didn’t seem to give much of a poo poo about me and went about its business (I followed the latter advice and did not Get Big or try to scare it off). Ironically that’s probably the only sort of sketchy encounter I’ve had with wildlife on trail, despite more goat and buck encounters than I can even count.
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Jul 19, 2022 02:13
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Went for some short hikes: Chicago Stump and Boole Tree trails in Sequoia National Forest. Are these from smartphone or a camera? My outdoor photos never look this good!
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Jul 19, 2022 03:49
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  Mt Washington NH. I love feeling like part of the clouds 
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Jul 19, 2022 04:20
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TheSlutPit posted:I always heard the advice “get loud and stand your ground/scare them off” applied to black bears, but for grizz I’ve heard “speak and move away slowly, don’t make them think you’re a threat”. I had a close encounter with a grizzly once in glacier but fortunately it didn’t seem to give much of a poo poo about me and went about its business (I followed the latter advice and did not Get Big or try to scare it off). Ironically that’s probably the only sort of sketchy encounter I’ve had with wildlife on trail, despite more goat and buck encounters than I can even count. I’m not worried about black bears, mountain lions or moose as much as I probably should be but grizzlies scare the absolute crap out of me. I’ve never seen one hiking and I never want to, even from a distance. Also polar bears but I’ve never been in their world so I just gotta stay away from the zoo.
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Jul 19, 2022 04:39
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Grizzlies scare me. The one time we saw them in Tetons it was abundantly clear they both knew we were there and simply didn't care enough (yet). Much different vibe than black bears I've seen, although maybe it was in my head. Also rattlesnakes scare me, but mostly because I'm worried I'll stumble across one I couldn't see and it'll reflexively bite me. I had a close call with one hidden in the brush directly next to the trail one time, far from cell signal and the trailhead. It was amazing how quickly my lizard brain reacted to hearing that rattle immediately to my right. I jumped away before even processing what had happened. Later I looked up how quickly you can die from a rattlesnake bite (even if it's not super common). Not coincidentally we got our inreach mini a while later.
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Jul 19, 2022 04:52
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evilpicard posted:Are these from smartphone or a camera? My outdoor photos never look this good! Smartphone. I've got a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, and it usually takes pretty good photos. I actually did bring my DSLR on the hike as well, but like an idiot I forgot to charge the battery. Anyway here's some more recent photos from a trip to Point Lobos and Pinnacles:    
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Jul 19, 2022 05:36
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Those are elk. Ah yeah that's probably the case. I've never seen them in the light.
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Jul 19, 2022 06:11
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incogneato posted:Grizzlies scare me. The one time we saw them in Tetons it was abundantly clear they both knew we were there and simply didn't care enough (yet). Much different vibe than black bears I've seen, although maybe it was in my head. We ran into grizzlies on all three hikes we did in Teton. There's that narrow strip of forest at the base of the mountains that all of the popular hiking trails pass through, and they seem to be spread all throughout it. Really cool. I was glad to see so many before we actually spent some nights in the backcountry, because that would have been a lot scarier otherwise.
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Jul 19, 2022 13:41
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My Telluride hike to 12,222 got me itching for my first 14er. Can someone recommend a good one in the US to start with? I’d like it to be challenging enough to feel like an accomplishment while also not dying. I have no mountaineering experience but I’m pretty good at scrambling and hiking on ice/snow. At that altitude I’d guess 10 miles +/-2 out and back would be ideal. What I don’t want is a peak that is so popular and accessible that I’m dealing with crowds of inexperienced hikers. Not sure if those even exist that high up but still. I love Grand Teton but once the ferries start taking people the first several miles the canyon hike stinks if you’re not done by then.
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Jul 19, 2022 16:56
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Rolo posted:My Telluride hike to 12,222 got me itching for my first 14er. Can someone recommend a good one in the US to start with? I’d like it to be challenging enough to feel like an accomplishment while also not dying. If you’re looking specifically in CO the easiest ones are always busy but you can still get an early start to beat most of the crowd, or do it on a weekday. Quandary Peak is a good starter 14er, Bierstadt too. Grays and Torreys are also considered “beginner” 14ers but they’re so busy that I’ve never tried them. If you want to be an overachiever you can do the Decalibron, which hits Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross Peaks (though Bross is on private land so you can’t actually reach the summit of that one). It’s not too long a hike since you’re hiking the saddles to each peak in succession, though the scramble down the scree field to the bottom after Bross is dicey.
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Jul 19, 2022 17:08
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Evans, Quandary, Bierstadt, Grays & Torreys are conga lines anymore. If you want something slightly less packed, I’d recommend something in the Sawatch like Harvard or Yale. Or buy Roach’s book and do a less popular route. Also, go on a weekday.Freaquency posted:Bross is on private land so you can’t actually reach the summit of that one It’s been over a decade but I don’t remember any more than a few battered private property signs on the mountain (it’s mining claims), which I and everyone else definitely turned around for. That said, Bross is a slog and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to check it off the list.
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Jul 19, 2022 19:16
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