Hi all, I'm Paw and I just wanted to share some video footage of a bear encounter that I had in 2018 in VA during an attempted thru. (970 miles and I'm starting over in 2019!) I'm posting this mostly for newcomers of the AT who have concerns of bear encounters. And the point that it makes hopefully, is that it isn't always what your imagination tries to tell you. I saw my first 2 bears about 15min into the smokies, 2 young ones, and one of them couldn't slide down the tree fast enough to get away. And I can tell you that I was so happy, that it literally brought tears to my eyes. It felt like such a gift to have that first. And by the time of this video, I had already seen a total of 14 and all of them couldn't run away fast enough. Until the one in this video.. lol And if you read the description box, you'll see what lessons I learned from the experience. I'm sure others will want to critique me, but I'm not really interested in hearing it. They were my judgement calls and that's all I have to say about any critiques. The one thing I'll say is that you can't tell by my tone of voice or words how my mind was actually reading the situation. It was a beautiful experience, but let there be no doubts that I recognized them as wild animals that have the ability to cause bodily harm or worse. And I only made one main attempt with a raised voice to see if that would encourage the bear to leave and would not have continued that course of action further. I probably would have pulled back a bit and just waited. And then, the little "surprise" came into view... Enjoy...

Bear video...
https://youtu.be/kELMy9SBfFk