On Friday afternoon a HF friend, Chigger from Raleigh N.C., went to Raven Cliffs wilderness for a three day hang. No one was camping but us. We had the whole place to choose from. We set up two hammocks with tarps, and two hammocks without tarps. We had a real nice camp set up and had settled down to lounge a while. I looked up the trail toward the parking lot and couldn't believe what I saw, a female bear with two small cubs beside her. We immediately started yelling and waving our arms and it was effective, she retreated a bit and sent her cubs up a tree. After a while she brought them down and left us alone. Okay, we have it made again. Not. Less than an hour later another larger bear came down the same trail alone, we tried to run it off and it ignored us completely. I checked out the entire area and then it turned toward us and we could not detract it. It picked up the first thing it saw to eat, a zip lock bag of Oreos, took them across the creek and hid behind a tree and ate them. We began to evacuate the area, arms loaded with whatever we could grab, and took it to the car, came back and got another load. At this time it wanted more food and came and helped itself to a pack of hot dog buns. Same scenario, across the creek and behind the tree. We successfully emptied the camp with no blood shed, not even a stumped toe. Needless to say we camped a long way froom there that night.
On the way out we stopped at Tesnatee Gap parking lot and talked with folks about to leave, they had had two pickups vandalized by a bear the night before.
It would seem that bears are a fact of life in that area, and at least one of them is not shy of humans at all, and has learned to forage in camp sites.
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Originally Posted by Doodad
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