I thought bears hibernated for the winter

You are not going to believe this but yesterday on one of our girl skiing adventures we came across a bear. 

It started with us (girls) looking for a new adventure.

We had Javed, Adele & Ben’s Kashmiri guide to ourselves as Ben was in Srinagar meeting up with friends.   Javed suggested we ski down to Tang Marg.  We (girl adventurers) did not hesitate, we all agreed because the mornings skiing had been fun so far.  

That was soon to change. 

It was midday, we thought we would ski down to Tang Marg, have lunch at Downhill Restaurant and catch a taxi back up. 

Unfortunately we never made lunch and almost missed dinner. 

It was just bad luck.  Javed chose the wrong way.  After two hours of skiing we were in a canyon.  We had no way out but to back track to a point where we could attempt to climb up a hill to a ridge which would hopefully lead us to the road to Tang Mang.  At this point Javed phoned friends for help, made difficult with sketchy mobile reception.

He was worried about the infants (as he called the girls).

His three friends turned up to help when we were climbing up the hill.  By this time Adele had nearly reached the top of the ridge.  All of a sudden the boys started yelling, sounding like noises scaring a wild animal off and that is exactly what was happening.  There was a black bear standing behind Adele.  She said she saw its breath.  Javed was between me and Adele and the girls were below me with our rescuers.  I only saw its shoulder as I was hanging onto a tree stump to help from slipping down the hill.  I feel I can’t write how steep it was because you may not believe me.  

Anyway, both girls climbed up to me and we huddled behind the stump while the other boys climbed up to Adele.  One of the boys produced a huge knife.  They saw the bear had cubs; it was protecting its young. More yelling!  I hugged the girls; we remained quiet behind the stump.

We had no choice but to skin up and traverse across the hill we had just climbed up to take a wide berth of the bear, not really knowing where it’s den was.  Skinning up is when you place strips of fabric that stick under your skis to enable you to walk up hill & you also need touring bindings, where your boots fit which release so you can lift your heel to walk freely.  Adele had her skins but she was in a set of Javed’s skis (trying them out), they didn’t have touring bindings so she had to walk with her ski boots locked in, not an easy task especially uphill and the steepness of the uphill which we were tackling.  She was amazing, so strong.

We were in darkness for about three hours skinning, climbing, and finally the last leg of our adventure skiing down to the road.  Even though the darkness was unnerving to move in, we coped as one of the boys had a head torch and two others had mobiles.  Because we were moving on a side of hill, which was tree lined there was very little light coming off the night sky.  The truth was I was glad of the darkness because the steepness was easier for me to deal with not being able to see it. 

The boys were brilliant with the girls mostly carrying them on their shoulders while they were climbing, skinning and skiing.  They were good with us as well making sure we were okay.  Insisting we drink water and eat chocolates that they have brought with them.  I have nothing but praise for everyone who helped us.

We finally got into a taxi on the road at 8.30pm.  The girls were amazing, giggling and chatting in the taxi, saying how brave they were, which they were.  Having the girls with us made it easier to be calm and braver (well on the outside anyway).

Our adventure lasted 8.5 hours. 

PS.  I will hopefully catch up with Adele tomorrow and get some photos, earlier on in the adventure Javed was taking photos for Adele.