Photo submitted by Geoff, “There has been a lot of bear activity lately and these two Aspens had especially fresh claw marks!”
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Its not a bear trail. And many, many trails in CO are likely to have black bears throughout the year. Actually most places in the East and West will, even if people don’t always know it.
Wear a bear bell on your mountain bike. As a side benefit, they work great to alert non-headphone wearing hikers of your presence.
Yes, better we congregate in cities/suburbs and completely drive out all wildlife, then proclaim when we are going outside the city we are “encroaching on wildlife territory”.
Do you have any idea how many people use areas for hiking and biking on a daily basis with no bad interactions with wildlife, including bears and mountain lions (which statistically are very low risks compared to other issue)? I’d say tens of thousands a day easily, if not an order of magnitude more. Yeah, stuff happens but its exceedingly rare and even more so when even a simple precaution is taken.
Colorado doesn’t have grizzly bears, only black bears. While black bears can be dangerous, they will 99%, of the time totally avoid any human contact. I’ve run across them several times, sometimes within a couple of feet, never had problems, in fact, they are the least of my fears on a ride, mountain lions or freaky bush people and hunters worry me more.
Grizzly bears on the other hand, are a complete other story, the only thing predictable about them, is their unpredictability.
So keep your guns at home( in black bear only country) and use a bell if need be.
