Bear at the Goose-necks

Some of the fondest memories of my youth are times we spent at Bear Lake and Flaming Gorge. The ward I grew up in took the Explorer Scouts on a kayak trip to Flaming Gorge every year, and from what I have heard they still keep up the tradition today. Each year the new boys built their kayaks and joined the trip. I was able to go on two of these wonderful adventures.

We stayed at several camping areas on the trip which took 4 days to paddle the length of the lake from Antelope Flats to Cedar Springs Marina near the dam. The favorite camp spot along the way had to be the Goose-necks, a remote camp ground only accessible by boat. There were two docks at the goose-necks one on each side of the bend in this narrow canyon. The camp ground was about a 75 yard walk up the trail from the water and the side we always stayed on had a small creek that ran along side the trail that was covered with willows.

There are several interesting stories that took place over the years at the goose-necks one was the story of the sack no more tree. But that is not my story and happened a year before my first trip.

The second year that I went on this trip our group split into two groups and stayed at two camp sites. the leaders and a couple of the boys stayed at a camp site a little further up the hill from us and the rest of us stayed in the first camp site as you come up the trail from the dock.

One of the things that made these kayak trips nice was that we were able to eat decent food since we did not have to back pack anything. We mostly ate canned foods like spaghetti, ravioli, chili, soup etc. A lot of the boys brought dry cereal.

Well our first night we ate dinner then sat around and told stories then went to bed. We all spread our sleeping bags across the trail except for Curtis Barnett who brought an one man tent that he slept in. along the trail was Wayne Passey, John Jensen, my brother Ken, Brad Barber, Alan Arbuckle and me on the end.

About1:00 a.m. in the morning I woke up to a fairly strong breeze, I had taken my kayak out of the water and set it upside down on the dock to dry out. We had gotten into a water fight and I got a lot of water in my kayak. I was worried that the wind might blow it away so I got up and walked down the trail to the dock to tie down my kayak. On the way back up the trail I thought I could hear something splashing in the creek. I couldn't see anything but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hurried up the trail and climbed in my sleeping bag. Just a few minutes later I heard some banging around on the picnic table that was just a few feet away from Wayne. I looked up and there was a bear sitting on the table going through the food that we had left on the table. I woke up Alan and told him there was a bear in the camp, at first he thought I was pulling his leg and trying to scare him then a very frightened sounding Wayne said he is not kidding there is a bear. Well all of the boys woke up we were all scared but just laid in our bags quitely hoping he would just go away. After a few minutes of rummaging around in the food the bear got off the table and walked over to the tree just a couple of feet from Wayne and started scratching it's butt on the tree. Then he walked around the back of Curtis's tent and started pawing it. I stuck my head around the side of his tent and right into the face of the bear. I quickly crawled as far into my sleeping bag as I could. I could hear him sniffing me for a minute then he walked off down the trail. We all waited for a few minutes then figured he was gone so we started talking about it. Then I felt a thud on the back of my leg and the bear came up the side of the trail and walked across us and though our camp and on up the trail and didn't return. It took a while but we all did go back to sleep.

The next morning the leaders came down and we started telling them about our bear experience. They gave us a bad time for a while and told us they didn't believe us. Then they told us they had seen it too. Our Leader Clarence Jones told us that he had taken the garbage can and set it between the three sided fire pit and his sleeping back to block the smoke from the smoldering coals left from their fire. He said he woke up to a crash and saw nothing but black, no light no stars nothing then he realized he was looking at the bears butt. He said if the bear had sat down he would have been a goner.

The next night after sitting around talking tough and telling bear stories 4 leaders and 8 or 10 boys all slept together under a lien too, that we made by lashing several tarps together.