Once that was all over I figured it probably wasn't terribly sane for me to walk up the same trail and have a 3rd encounter. I doubled back to the road, but since my legs were feeling ok I didn't wanna go directly back to the lake. I decided to just continue up the old logging road and see how far I could walk. By this time the smoke was rolling in pretty thick and ash was again falling, which I found pretty surprising considering how far away from the fire I was. I walked for a pretty good distance before deciding to head back, figuring if I could make it back to a nearby town I might be able to find some food.
I walked quite a way without seeing anything more than the occassional chipmunk and birds, but I again heard something moving in the brush above the road a little distance away. I found it pretty quickly, realized what it was and thought, "there's no way I'm gonna see that bear a third time", but I was wrong. I again saw a dark mass moving through the brush, but this time had a much more open view and couldn't believe what I'd seen. This thing was big! I watched him angle down through the brush toward the road and decided to move a bit closer to get a better shot. Once he hit the road I got a pretty fair idea how big he was, snapped a couple pics and watched to see what his path would be. He walked a short distance down the road, eating berries as he went, then angled off over the edge of the road. I moved closer to the edge where I could watch him work down the hillside and snapped a couple more decent pics. It was funny, cause even though I was pretty much ready to snap pics, he was so big and moved so fast that it made getting them difficult, despite the fact that he appeared to be walking slowly. I watched him sneak off into the brush, then decided I should ready the camera for video incase he made it through the area a ways below where I'd seen a small pond. I made my way down there and waited maybe 15 seconds before seeing him heading exactly where I'd hoped to see him, got several seconds of video of him passing behind the pond before dissappearing into the brush. That was it, the last I'd seen of him, and I figured now would be a good time to head back toward the lake before he did.
Once I got back to the lake I couldn't resist the temptation to fish again, so I just kept an eye out for him entering the top of the valley. I half expected to either see him there or to glance up and find him standing on the shore end of the large log I was fishing from. I wouldn't have minded seeing a normal bear again, but considering he didn't exhibit any of the typical fears of humans most bears have, I didn't wanna tempt fate anymore. No fish were biting, and I needed to search for my own meal, so I said my goodbyes to the little lake and left. And no, I didn't find any food in town, so I just headed for my next trailhead and made a sandwich.
I maybe shoulda prefaced this by saying I've seen many many bears, and have even patterned their escape habits enough to know what they typically do when realizing that they're looking at a human. I also (like a lot of morons) like to think I'm a decent judge of size, and I conservatively figured this guy at 350+ pounds. I was discussing this with my dad, who for years had helped a friend of his guide for bears, and his thoughts were that if you're used to seeing bears on a regular basis and one strikes you as being huge, it's a safe bet it's probably a 400+ pound bear. I hadn't thought of it that way, but when I saw it I'd figured it atleast 100 pounds heavier than any other bear I've ever seen, so it makes sense to me. Either way it was really neat, but it's a whole different experience being in that situation without a firearm, though I've never had a bear indulge in a staring contest with me either so
