A quick refresher: The USFS ranger (see July 20 post) did a nice job stopping or slowing traffic and escorting this black bear as it crossed the road near Mendenhall Glacier.  She was only 40-50 feet from the bear most of the time.  It was snuffling through the underbrush on the "uphill" side (on the right approaching the glacier), and digging a little on the verge by the bike trail/sidewalk.  The bear was the only pedestrian.  When it started to cross, the ranger stopped traffic, including a tour bus.  Traffic was sparse but a few private vehicles, including ours, had stopped on the other side by the big bus parking lot.  

This bear was well-mannered, and just wanted to get on with it.  He didn't seem particularly perturbed by the ranger, the stopped bus, a second ranger near the bus, nor by us, nor by the idiot holding the smartphone camera.  He (the bear) might have been a little nervous (check the ears) and he walked past everything with the sort of straight-ahead focus you might have walking on a sidewalk in a tough area of town.  He did give me a couple of close looks when our eyes locked  when he first decided to cross the road and his eyes saw the big lens.

You can't tell this from the last photo, because I couldn't get the right angle to show everything:  But the idiot was actually filming his 10-or so year old daughter, who was standing between him and the ranger and the bear.  Her back was to the bear.  She wasn't looking at the bear and hadn't even seemed interested in the bear; she was looking at her father and his phone-camera.  Luckily for everyone, especially her, the bear just wanted to cross the road and get back into the woods; it wasn't interested in a well-fed 10-year old, even though he certainly wasn't full of fish (there were no fish in the stream that day, nor any carcasses, so the next run hadn't yet begun) and he had been rooting for grubs.  On the other hand, since the fish weren't in, he wasn't yet on a mission to work the stream under the viewing walkway and wasn't interested in her or us, either, and didn't think we were between him and food.  I had wondered for a few minutes if I would be photographing the man filming the daughter being eaten by the bear.  That didn't happen.

Ranger and bear

The bear's eyes are on me.

Digging around before crossing

Eyes ahead, but ears back

How to say this nicely: Bear have funny feet.  Big pads.  And they walk like circus clowns, with their toes up when their rear legs step forward.

Having crossed, the bear just wants to re-enter the woods.

Idiot filming daughter, ranger, and bear, from 60 feet.  Daughter was at 50 feet.  Their car was 40 feet away, behind ours.  A bear at 30 mph covers 44 feet per second.  They can hit 45 mph.  Even allowing for time to accelerate, the margin was closer than necessary for the daughter.