Hking by myself

[chuck]

It seems to be very rare and does not happen around here. I have read things about attacks in not so far away Ontario though.

http://www.ottertooth.com/discus/messages/35/2881.html?1126373808

There was an older more famous attack up there of 3 boys fishing all being killed by one bear I think they actually had fish in their pockets.

I think the last recorded fatal mauling in NH was in the 1700s .... a 10 year boy on a farm or something like that.

sorry if I did not do the link right.

Chuck

 

[mommabear]

At the risk of being labeled a gun freak, might I suggest you take a course in gun safety and purchase a small handgun to carry with you. It's really just a psychological crutch but it might help. Carrying it unloaded is probably the best idea - it's just there to make you fell better.

No matter what you think of guns, I would think that since most hiking is done on government-owned lands, there's likely to be a lot restrictions about whether or not you can carry a gun with you legally - even if you have a pistol permit. I know in New York State, they're very strict.

 

[NH_Mtn_Hiker]

Sierra wrote:

...Black bears eat people huh, could you and your vast knowledge of black bears site some cases for me...

Sierra: I believe this it what you requested.

Jacqueline Perry, age 31, killed September 6th, 2005 by a predatory black bear while camping in Ontario. Her husband was nearly killed while trying to keep the bear from dragging her away. Two hikers were attacked by the same bear about 45 minutes earlier, but they were able to fend off the attack. While we may never have proof of why this bear attacked these people... I think it was very likely because he was hungry. What do you think?
Read all about it

want more

I agree, fatal black bear attacks are very rare,...but they can and do happen.

Would I worry about black bears while hiking and camping? Hell No! The chances of being killed by a black bear are about 1/100th that of being struck by lightning...and that's pretty rare.

As far as black bears defending thier( is that better)cubs that my friend is a commen fact and your disbelief in that very point leaves your knowledge of BB questionable at best.

Out west where there are far fewer trees, bears, both blacks and browns, will attack humans to defend their cubs, but here in the eastern U.S., where there is lots of tree cover, black bears will usually send their cubs up a tree then run away, or they will simply run away and leave the cubs. Except in a few cases where people were trying to handle the cubs, eastern black bears do not attack humans to defend the cubs, and that my friend, is a fact.
Don't take it from me though, read the last paragraph here

Here's some more black bear info:
NJ Black Bear Conference

 

[Nessmuk]

No matter what you think of guns, I would think that since most hiking is done on government-owned lands, there's likely to be a lot restrictions about whether or not you can carry a gun with you legally - even if you have a pistol permit. I know in New York State, they're very strict.

NYS is very strict about obtaining a pistol permit, and much is up to the determination of the licensing officer (usually a judge in the county where you live) issuing the permit. The officer may have a policy to place limits on your permit as to where you may keep or carry the gun, purely at his or her discretion.

But once you have a permit without any extra imposed locality limits there is nothing specific about restricting you from carrying on "government-owned lands", regarding hiking with it anyway. Hunting regulations may come into play from the DEC, depending on your intended or perceived intended use, but carrying on NYS public lands in the Adirondacks, for example, is not further restricted. There are restrictions in other states in National Parks that prohibit otherwise legal handguns, but not in the state owned lands of the Adirondacks or adjacent areas. There may be a few exceptions... of course NY City and environs has an entirely different set of rules.

This does not mean that I would advise obtaining a handgun for "personal protection" while hiking. As a matter of fact that phrase alone would likely get your application thrown out by many licensing judges. You better have a reason demonstrating you are active in the sporting aspect with proper training and not just out to kill something or be a danger to yourself and others.

 

[PerksGTI]

I wouldn't be too concerned about bear or any other animal (or person, for that matter) in the woods. There is really so miniscule a chance that you will be attacked in the woods. If you are worrying about anything hiking solo it should be about injuring yourself and being prepared enough to get out on your own. If you truly are concerned about these things, maybe you should find a hiking partner or stick to heavily used trails until you feel a bit more comfortable.

And please...DO NOT consider bringing a handgun into the woods...There is a far greater chance that you could cause harm to yourself or someone else due to nervousness/misuse/accident than having an actual need for one. And if you do actually need one, it isn't going to do anything against a bear except piss it off.

I've only had one encounter with a bear, and it wasn't in the Northeast. I was hiking in Arizona, and I didn't even notice the bear until I was about 15 feet away from it. There are a lot of venomous snakes where I was hiking, so I was more concerned with looking around my feet than ahead of me. It was just sitting there to the right of the trail, looking at me. It definitely freaked me out, just because I was so close to it, but I just slowly continued up the trail. I was a bit nervous about seeing it again on the return trip, but I was just cautious and made sure to be more observant of my surroundings.

One thing you'll realize when you become more comfortable with the woods, is that those moments that may make you nervous around animals are some of the best experiences when you look back on them.

 

[Neil]

ok, I conceed that it has happened, if you will conceed that it it so rare, that it is not worth mentioning to someone who is a beginner and worried about being eaten himself.

I readily concede I should have mentioned that it was almost as rare as rocking horse droppings but I forgot. Pretty gruesome none the less, huh?

 

[redcloud]

Again, a heartfelt thankyou to this fine group.
I have no intention of packing a gun. You guys are right, I would most likely shoot my big toe off anyway!
I will carry a knife for multiple reasons though. One being a bit of peace of mind, even though it's mainly pschycological. But if it makes me more comfortable, then it's ok with me.
I enjoyed reading all these postings. I hope I can contribute to other threads here as well.
Take care, Eric

 

[gaiagirl]

Hiking by myself

I have had some of these same issues of late, though not to this extent. I am hiking a lot right now as I figure out what comes next for me. And I am working on my 4,000 footers, recently going it completely alone unfortunately, and find fewer and fewer people on the trails when I am there during the weekdays. I am generally all right hiking alone but like to give myself plenty of extra time so that I'm not out there in the dark, etc. Yet last week I heard a bear grunt and moan down bellow me as I made my way past Webster cliffs and toward Jackson. I'm sure he caught wind of me after I had gone by and got pretty scared himself, but it still gave me pause. There were 2 guys behind me but I was much faster and some trails I've been on lately are totally deserted so I wondered if I'd be alone coming back down. I did not summit Jackson that day unfortunately . I hiked in the Sandwich Range Wilderness last Monday, summitting Passaconaway, and never saw another soul. The trail was somewhat confusing and the route longer than expected and rougher. That one made me a little nervous too. I was a little banged up at the end of the day, but no worse for wear really. But sometimes I think it's good when that happens because it makes you think about what you need to do to be safer next time.
Black bears are absolutely omnivores and there have been rare cases of predation on humans (those bears, after being shot and killed, generally have been found to be very sick and basically with so little body fat that they were found to be starvng to death and therefore with the capability of seeing anything and anyone as food) but this is really a very irrational fear. But irrational fears are still fears and when you are freaked out it can take the fun out of a hike. I would say hiking alone in places where you are likely to bump into people and taking lots of precautions ahead of time is the best you can do. Hike with others when you can too. Hike as much as you can in as many different places as you can and be smart about it. Its the best thing I've figured out so far.

 

[Chip]

And a GREAT first post by gaiagirl ! Welcome ! There are ALOT of White Mt hikers here, post your intended hike or look at others if you need partners.
I know "The Gaia Hypothesis" proposes that our planet functions as a single organism, but you don't have to !

 

[gaiagirl]

Hiking by myself

Thanks for the welcome and the advice. I am sure there will be times when hiking alone isn't perfectly comfortable, but I don't intend to let fear stop me. And I am looking at posts of others to see when I might join along. I am hoping to get Jackson tomorrow as a Saturday out there on Rte. 302 should look much different than a weekday this time of year. There may even be too many people out on the Webster cliffs for my taste! Thanks again and hope to see some of you out there on the trails soon.

 

[crazymama]

As a psychiatrist, any discussion of anxiety always piques my interest.

Redcloud: I too, have the crap scared out of me when an animal (deer, grouse, whatever) suddenly darts out in front of me while hiking, whether I'm alone or with a group. I guess the difference is that for whatever reason, I don't have the anticipatory anxiety which you experience, which you find problematic. I agree with the others that continued exposure (by continuing to hike) should reduce that anxiety over time, so that you can enjoy it more.

If I worry about hiking/camping alone, it is my fear of other people (the deranged, psychopath type) that gets to me the most, rather than the animals.

 

[thuja]

repeated exposure will desensitize you

Hello people,
I can't seem to get comfortable in the woods by myself. I keep thinking that something is going to charge out after me. I know that this must sound silly to you veteran hikers, but I can't seem to shake it.
Yesterday evening I went for a two mile hike in a wooded protective area not far from my home that has alot of space and some trails. Whenever I get in a closed in area, I feel jittery, and when I come to a meadow or open field, I feel safer.
Take care, Eric

The greeks had a name for this sort of anxiety, they called it "panic" fear, after the god Pan, Pan being the god of forests. It's pretty much hard-wired in all of us, I think. That's why when we create artificial "beautiful" landscapes they tend to be open and park-like. English deer parks, golf courses, Central Park in New York city. Perhaps because our hominid ancestors lived in the park-like savanna and shrubs, brush, dense forest, and darkness were places where predators could hide, or had sensory advantages over us. At least that's the ten-cent evolutionary biology explanation.

Most people who have this sort of fear are not sufficiently introspective about it to recognize that it's just an irrational evolutionary holdover. Out here in the west, many people tend to invent or exaggerate various threats from wild animals to justify carrying handguns. Perhaps people are more sensible in the Northeast.

As to what you should do about this fear, well, I assure you that if you are out enough you will lose it through sheer habituation. The best way to cope with it is probably to enumerate the actual threats out there. Coyotes? Nah. Bears? Attacks are extraordinarily rare in the NE. Cougars? You don't have appreciable numbers, and even if you did, the odds of being attacked are very low. People? Only a threat near roads. Regarding dangerous wild beasts, the usual comparisons made are with the risks of traffic accidents, dog attacks, and bee stings, all of which are orders of magnitude more dangerous.

You could perhaps make the analogy with top-roped sport climbing, where the objective risks are close to nonexistent, but, at least at first, the primitive brain insists that the middle of a cliff is very scary, bad place to be. As with "panic fear", it disappears with repeated exposure.

I said that "panic fear" disappears with habituation, but it's probably more accurate to say that the fear or anxiety threshold gets much higher. There're still situations which will spook even the most hardened of us. Speaking for myself, bear (grizzly) country in British Columbia and Alaska, continues to make me jumpy at night, and while bushwhacking alone. I recall crossing a very large old burn in N Tweedsmuir, in BC, really low, featureless terrain, a lot of it with very obstructed visibility, brushy regen over head height, all day just following a compass course blind (something which I very rarely do in more featured terrain). That area just gave me the fantods, I put in an extra long day just so I wouldn't have to camp in that scary place, breathed a great sigh of relief to get back to more mature forest just at dusk. I should stress that the risk of griz encounters at that season, in that terrain, was low, so all the jitters had to do soleley with the irrational claustrophobia.

 

[Warren]

I still get the jitters from time to time even after years of solo travel. Most often it's bushwacking solo where every shadowed underlip of a rock is a potential animal den. The harder, more remote the hike, the more likely this will happen. Most recently after going off route on the approach to the Emmon's slide, this erupted. Once my confidence in my route was back, I was fine.

It's largely physiological. Bred tendencies surely play on these anxieties. I see this often when talking with hikers of various styles. Some for instance cant imagine tarp camping, I frequently translate that into anxiety over being with out walls. But it affects folks in many ways, the fear, the anxiety seizes hold of many topics: personal safety from humans, animals, the breaking of a leg, fear of wet gear or self, getting lost. Sometimes the anxiety precedes the hike, other times it's hit unexpectedly mid hike. The ways folks counter the anxiety are varied and often designed to make them feel more comfortable, not to address the cause anxiety. There's a hiking partner of mine whose Mom and girlfriend always tried to get him to tote a cell phone, but didn't really care much about him learning first aid. Knowing they could contact him or him them addressed their anxiety over personal injury but surely knowledge of first aid is of more use in the context of back-country travel.

You can overcome such anxieties. To get more comfortable bivying solo in the forrest, I bivied alone in the forest and had a few not so comfortable nights. For me anything that increases my awareness of where I am, what's around me helps. Pay attention to your surrounding and try to piece together what you see. I spent a lot of time looking for the Emmons slide pausing before a shadowy could be a monsters den rock looking for signs of an animal tread, broken branches on ground or signs of a browse level. No sign, Ok go ahead, hmmm, I better be right about this. Do your best to understand why you're anxious, genetic savanna desire, fear of animals, other people? How specific is the fear? Are you afraid of other people or just Hannibal Lecter? If it's Mr. Lecter, well you can reason yourself through that. If you name just what's getting at you, you can work on the why of it and work through it from there.

I find that the physiological factors to be the most difficult and rewarding challenges of back-country travel and are often ignored. Of course I'm pretty heady by nature.

 

[coldfeet]

Redcloud...I know how u feel...i posted something almost the same last feb/march titled "first and last solo"...check it out...my imagination plus "the newspaper man" almost gave me a heart attack i think i am my worst enemy growing up watching horror movies and learning to look over my shoulder and not trust people when living around a big city..funny thing is..my story might get published in a catskill book, if i ever rewrite and edit it.....anyway..i hike so slowly sometimes that it still feels like a solo when the group is a little ahead of me...the only thing i'm afraid of going solo is injuring myself and no one is around...gotta work on my first aid..take care!