A Family Hike Up Mount Washburn, Yellowstone

It all started as a harmless hike up Mount Washburn.

The four of us, two adults and kids ages seven and ten were camped at Canyon and our hiking trip this day was to start early in the morning at the Mount Washburn Trailhead. This hike was received well by three of us. Upon parking and starting the hike up the mountain the hike was waylaid, like many, by me. I had spotted numerous birds, Clark’s Nutcrackers and grouse to name a couple and the bird photographer in me was interested and thus the trip up was delayed an hour or two. I couldn’t resist. These birds were posing. Eating seeds they went about their business without a real care that a dude was lying on the ground with a 500mm lens in hand. Luckily my family was good with this and they entertained themselves with the view and some meandering about until I had satisfied the photography urge.

Moving now toward the real hike, up Mount Washburn, I went thru the rules. The bear rules being the most important. It was late August and bears are attracted to Mount Washburn by the lure of white bark pine trees and their seeds. You see bears, both black and grizzly favor eating these seeds on Mount Washburn in August into September. So the main thing is if you see a black bear, freeze, don’t give up ground. If we see a grizzly, make ourselves big, gather together and slowly back away. Ok the  rules are set.

Beginning up the trail to the top is a fairly easy hike and we were looking forward to seeing and experiencing this mountain for the first time. As we started to ascend the mountain we could not have been 300 yards up the trail when a black bear popped out right in front of us just on the edge of the trail. Now having explained the basic black bear rule 3 of the 4 us froze ready to watch this bear go about his or her business from a reasonably safe distance. There were no cubs and I was comfortable viewing the bear at 50 yards or so. To me this bear has seen people, probably mulitple times and it was just on it’s way somewhere. But now, in a split two seconds my daughter of 7 starts to bolt back down the trail! The chase was on to grab her and stop this madness of which I did. But now the bear had been spooked and it trotted across the trail and ran down the mountainside with me pointing may camera and pushing the shutter button while simultaineaously holding my kid. The running shots were trash but I did get a couple at the begining of this experience that shows what we saw initially. Probably needless to say, but the hike was suspended at this point and we went to Dunraven Pass which is just a hop skip and jump down the road to see if the bear was headed there. No bear at Dunraven but all was now calm and we had an experience to be remembered for life. It ended up harmless too.

Mount Washburn Sightings