One theme to appear in an upcoming issue of the print magazine, and online, is that of bears in the backcountry.

Part of this will be a presentation of personal bear stories from our community at BPL.

If you have one, we'd love to publish it. If we use your story, you'll get a $25 gift certificate to BPL.com.

Please submit your story - 500 words maximum - with a 50 word max biography - to submissions@backpackinglight.com - and include a hi-res JPG self-portrait for your bio.

If you have a particularly outrageous bear story that needs to exceed the 500 word limit for the purpose of poetic license, go for it.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MAY 15, 2007

It was a dark and stormy night...

Sounds like great fun. How mandatory are the Self Portraits? I'm kinda camara shy. :-/

1 week, huh?

Edited by kdesign on 05/07/2007 19:36:19 MDT.

You could photograph your face behind a bear mask, that would be pretty cool.

:-)>

A bear hung around our campsite in GSMNP last weekend with two cubs. Didn't get a shot of the cubs though.

Sadly my best bear encounters did not occur in the back country. ;-) So I'll bore you!
The first bear I saw at Rainier came flying out of the Ipsut Creek Campground privy. And nearly ran into my truck. That was hilarious.
The second best was I had a friend who was deathly afraid of seeing a bear. As we were driving in the Olympic Mountains, I saw a black blob on the side of the road. I hit the brakes so hard she nearly went into the windshield. We had the windows down and we were maybe 3-4 ft from a bear. She was screaming, and I had the window lock activated. Oh, that was hilarious. Especially since the bear was sitting on it's butt scratching it's stomach. Cured her though.

Ok, Maybe I'll write about my backcountry bear experiences ;-)

Whoops, sorry about that.

Edited by eaglemb on 05/07/2007 22:21:04 MDT.

Will leave the outcome up the reader's imagination...

Hard to beat this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOpKFPEah3E

Edited by oiboyroi on 05/08/2007 01:38:41 MDT.

I love that video. Shared it with some friends when I first saw it. Hilarious!!!

And this one time...at band camp...

It's the early 60's and my wife's family is vacationing in Yellowstone. They're driving along taking in the sights and encounter a slow down ... "What's out there?" ... "Bears"

Well, mom has a bag of chips on her lap. While everyone is craning their necks trying to see the bears, one ambled up from behind their car, stuck it's head thru the open window and "Yogies" the bag of chips. `

I'd give my eye teeth to have seen that one first hand.

Edited by jcolten on 05/08/2007 11:51:07 MDT.

When my mom was a child, the whole family went to Yellowstone...back in the dark ages when they had the garbage pits. The cars were stopped and the kids were running around outside.
My mom came back to the car carrying a bear cub she found wandering around. It was squealing. She asked her dad if she could take it home.

Needless to say, my grandfather tossed the bear and threw everyone into the wagon ;-) And didn't stick around.