All good ideas. When I was in the Winds, I did a lot of singing when going around blind corners or through dense woods when hiking up the Green River valley, where griz have been spotted and occasionally raid the campground below the lakes. My singing didn't endear me to passing hikers, but I didn't see any bear. I also kept my dog on leash unless the country was completely open so that I could see a long way in all directions.

Of course you all know the joke about how to tell grizzly scat from black bear scat; grizz scat contains bear bells and smells of pepper!

Here in the Pacific NW, bears are not an issue except in National Parks. Outside National Parks, bears are hunted and generally quite shy. Occasionally, though, some human does something stupid,like the ones who left a slab of bacon in their tent up in Washington a few years ago, and the authorities have to ban camping in the area for a while.

There's a move by the NPS and Fish and Wildlife Service to import grizzly to the North Cascades. Thirty years ago, they talked about grizz recovery and assured us that they wouldn't do that, just let grizz wander in from Canada. Well, the Canadian grizz decided they didn't like the US, so they didn't come. That;s probably because when grizz lived in the PNW, they lived in the lowlands, not the high mountains. Now they're talking about transplanting grizz from Montana. That sounds really scary. I would sure hate to meet a grizz that had been yanked out of its home and dumped down in a strange place!