Blame Tom for the title.

Headed down to Tilley’s tonight to organise a hike for the weekend with Tom. Jess happened to be there, as did Aunty Sue – nice to see she has good taste in Cafés.

At some point we got to talking about hiking in Canada and Tom reckoned he wasn’t keen because of the Bears. But Jess and I thought it probably wasn’t a big issue, and might be similar to some foreigners attitude to snakes here. That is, that it’s insane to hike in the Australian bush because there’s snakes everywhere chasing people down in packs. Er, packs of snakes that is.

I couldn’t find any really good stats on Bear attacks, although I haven’t tried very hard, Jess is much better at it. The problem is that most pages don’t make any distinction betweek hikers, hunters or just people in their yards.

I did find this page which mentions half way down:

Over 62 million people visited Yellowstone National Park (YNP) during the 23 year period from 1980 through 2002. These visitors spent over 15.4 million use nights camping in developed area campgrounds and over 956,000 use nights camping in backcountry areas within the park. … During the 1980-2002 time period, 32 people were injured by bears within YNP, an average of only 1.4 bear-inflicted human injuries per year.

And that’s injuries not deaths, although either would suck. I’d be interested to find some more comprehnsive stats, but as a start it sounds like the risk is pretty reasonable.

While I’m on my box of soap, I’ll just point out that you’re six times more likely to be killed this year by a bee than a snake. So avoid gardens and get out into the bush, it’s safer!