My odds of seeing one hover only slightly above my chances of high-fiving Sasquatch. From now on, every movement-a jiggling twig, a fleeting shadow-catches my eye as a potential sign of the Griz. It’s easy to believe that if we’re lucky enough to find a grizzly out here, it might look a lot like this. As the bear gains distance in the dimming twilight, it mixes with its own shadow, inflating in my sight as it noses through an electric-green huckleberry understory and past dense trunks of silver fir. Glossy black fur, Roman nose, big ears: From 30 yards away, there’s no way I’d mistake it for its larger cousin, but it still feels like a good omen. Probably a few thousand calories short of its daily huckleberry haul, it ignores us without so much as a glance before leaving a splat of half-digested mixed-berry casserole on the trail. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong kind: a runty black, not much bigger than a large Rottweiler, that ambles past our camp at Copper Creek. We run into a bear at the end of our first day looking for grizzlies in Washington’s North Cascades National Park.

Enjoy this classic story from the Backpacker archive

Frog leap system for pools