We were hiking a trail in the Lamar Valley in north-west Yellowstone National Park: it’s a wide alluvial valley with lots of grassland, which was giving me serious hay fever. Lamar Valley is also habitat for a number of Yellowstone’s biggest animals, which is why we hiked there.
We were following two hikers, Terry spotted a bear ahead, we froze to see what would happen as the bear had already spotted us. I suppose it knew the route hikers would usually follow. The hikers up ahead carried on, I’m not sure they had yet spotted the bear. The hump on its shoulders characterised it as an adult grizzly, so maximum caution. Of course we didn’t have the binoculars with us as we were hiking light, but I did have my telephoto lens which I swapped on to the camera as quickly as I could.
The grizzly turned, marked his territory and retreated towards the woodland; I think we went tangentially, reasoning that the bear would be more threatened by the other hikers who were still approaching directly at it. Meanwhile, I snapped a few frames of our limited film budget.
We decided that enough was enough and ourselves retreated, keeping a good eye over our shoulders, where the bear was keeping a watchful eye seated deep in the grassland. We saw various black bears elsewhere in Yellowstone but in the far distance and never close enough to photograph.
My new scans (Epson 4990) of Fuji NPS 160 negatives, bought in the UK. Canon EOS300 camera with Canon 70-300 mm f4-5.6 lens.