Emmons Moraine, Glacier Basin — Saturday, Jul. 2, 2011

Mount Rainier Area > NE - Sunrise/White River

Hiked from the White River campground up the Emmons Moraine Trail. There was a bit of snow, but it was easy to walk around/over. On the drive up the White River road, there was a small black bear along the road (only one, but it looked young enough that it might have just recently left its mother). Just after we crossed the bridge over the Inter Fork, two of our party spotted a similar sized bear disappearing into the brush on the north side of the river (just below the main Glacier Basin trail before the Emmons Moraine Trail forks off). When we returned to the junction with the Glacier Basin Trail, we decided to hike up that trail for a bit. Reports were that there was plenty of snow on this trail, so we weren't planning on going far. After about 50 yards, we came across a group of hikers who said they came across a bear right on the trail, and had retreated a few minutes ago. As we were debating when/whether to go on, another group of hikers came down the trail in the opposite direction and said they hadn't seen a bear, so we continued on. Fresh bear scat was visible soon after, and at the first switchback, we all stopped as the bear was on side of the hill just above. Again, a small bear, on its own, just digging around in the dirt. We were downwind of it, so it didn't notice us, but soon enough another group of hikers came by upwind of it, and the bear noticed them. It looked like it just wanted to be left alone, and we decided we were unlikely to see anything more interesting if we went on, so we turned around and walked back to the campground. On the way back down, we heard reports of another bear about '20 minutes' downtrail (toward the trailhead), so there were probably 2 black bears in the area. Possibly siblings that had just been let go by their mother, but that's just a guess. We reported our three sightings at the ranger station, where they said they'd had numerous reports of bears on the road, but apparently this was the first day they had reports of a bear near the trail.