American Black Bear

Description:

Partial front bear track. Found on dirt path within a dense Ponderosa Pine and Gambel Oak forest. This track was near a large lake in the area. About 15 minutes after spotting the track, I intersected another hiker who had decided to turn around saying they had seen more bear tracks in the area. I continued hoping to find more tracks but only found other less defined partials. I have found more distinct black bear tracks on previous backpacking trips which can be used for comparison. I will upload those soon.

Habitat:

This track was spotted in the Ponderosa Pine dominated forest of Sugarite Canyon State Park.

Notes:

This forested area is located within the Sugarite Canyon State Park which had suffered major devastation from the 2011 track fire. The fire burned massive amounts of trees and ground vegetation which forced the park to close for several months. The severity of the track fire is still seen today. Approximately 27,000 acres of surrounding land was burned, fish populations were completely decimated in the park's lakes and rivers due to massive amounts of ash. It has since recovered quite a bit and is full of green life; though signs of massive amounts of burned and felled Ponderosa Pines still haunts the area. Despite the obvious destruction I thoroughly enjoyed my time hiking through the park's mountains and was very impressed with abundant presence of flora and fauna.