Birthday, and The Bear

For my 34^th birthday, I decided I wanted to go climbing.  My wife and I spent the night in Pennsylvania and were going to visit Mount Minsi at The Delaware Water Gap on our way back to Jersey and climb the Practice Face.  The Practice Face is a 40-50ft tall buttress of rock that can be easily accessed by a well-protected traverse across the “Cat Walk” to the large ledge up top.  My wife belayed me as I lead across the Cat Walk (placing two cams) and then I brought her out to the top of the ledge.  I built an anchor off of two trees on the very edge of the ledge, but just beneath was a smaller ledge and on the rock face was a bolt.  My plan was to lower myself to this smaller ledge, clip into the bolt, and then help my wife down to that ledge (while tied-in) where I would lower her off the anchor so she wouldn’t have to rappel.  But as soon as I stepped onto that ledge a large copperhead slithered just inches away from my ankles and buried itself into a crack.  I quickly climbed back up and decided we would not climb that section, for fear of the snake reemerging.  While breaking down the anchor I heard a loud rustle of branches and looked out over the Cat Walk area into the woods where I saw a Black Bear.  This was the first time my wife or I ever saw a bear in the wild.

The first thing I did was make our presence known to the bear by shouting (not screaming, or yelling).  Normally, bears will run away from humans when they see or hear them.  Oddly enough, all the bear did was look at me.  I continued to shout, but the bear didn’t seem interested and was more or less sniffing around the area.  This is where I got worried.  I felt we were somewhat protected on the ledge, but wasn’t one-hundred percent sure whether or not the bear was capable of climbing up the Cat Walk to reach us.  At the same time, descending would put us either right next to or downhill from the bear…so we were essentially stuck up there. 

After what seemed like an eternity, but were only a few minutes, the bear started off in the opposite direction and headed along the cliff.  My wife and I were relieved, and I began formatting how and where we would descend the ledge.  But, just as we started coiling the rope the bear returned, and this time he came much closer to us.  The bear didn’t exhibit any aggressive behavior, but the fact that he came back after all the noise we made had me very concerned.  All I could think of was protecting my wife, who wasn’t quite panicking but was obviously terrified.  I moved us down the opposite end of the ledge and threw the rope around a tree and set my wife up on rappel telling her not to go all the way to the ground.  From the face of the buttress, I could see around the corner where the bear would come from, if he was to come.  By this time, there was no sign or sound of the bear and I felt like we were in the clear.  I had my wife descend slowly, stopping every few feet, and I told her when she was about 15 feet from the ground that when she touched down to immediately unclip herself and head down the trail.  I told her not to run, but to walk quickly and keep looking back.  I was already set up to rappel, so I was never more than a few feet away from her.   

When we reached our car a few minutes later I called the Park Service and asked if they could send a Ranger to accompany me back up to the cliff so I could retrieve my climbing pack (it contained no food, so I was sure the bear would have left it alone).  My wife waited at the car, and the Ranger and I headed up finding no sign of the bear and my pack and its contents still intact.  The Ranger told me that the bear was foraging the acorns that had littered the forest floor.  The bear wasn’t exhibiting any aggressive behavior because he wasn’t interested in us, as much as he was the acorns (which kept him in the area).  He also asked if I saw any tags in the bear’s ears, and I didn’t.  He said the Park Service will tag aggressive bear’s ears; thankfully our bear wasn’t one of them because he told a story of a double-tagged bear’s aggressiveness with two fishermen a few weeks back where the bear had to be shot.  I asked the Ranger if the bear would have been able to climb the rock to the ledge we were on, and he said no.

I’m not sure I would have handled the situation any differently than I did.  My main concern was keeping my wife safe from the bear, as well as getting her down from the cliff safely.  As shook up as we both were, neither one of us feel like this will keep us from the woods, or from climbing.  I suppose this situation was a bit of an oddity in that the bear didn’t leave us.  The bear was busy eating, and since we were up on the ledge he might not have felt any threat where he would have to run or need to pursue us.