I know of one grizzly bear that avoided us while we slept. Two of us back-packed up an abandoned guides trail on a goat hunt. We made camp where the guide did, while he was using the area, in the last trees before timberline. We were in a tiny tent. One night it rained a bit, early in the night. The next morning we went up the trail and about 100 yards from our tent was a large grizzly track, made after the rain, coming down the mountain, but disappeared into the grass off the trail. Going up the trail we saw where the bear was constantly in the path and came from well above timberline.
A couple of days later, without any more rain, we went home, down the trail. A hundred yards down the trail from our camp, the grizzly track again came onto the path and it followed the path most of the ten miles to the trail our vehicle was on.
So, the bear had come down the path from the mountain, smelled our camp, then went around us until he picked up the trail a hundred yards below our tent. I would really like to know how close he came to our tent. But, in this case, the bear had no bad intentions, whatsoever. Furthermore, we had taken no precautions of any type, to get our food out of reach, or even out of our little tent!
