Thank you for this, this is very helpful! How busy/popular is this trail in the mid/late part of August, considering that bears may start becoming more active around that time? Will the possibility of bear encounters discourage folks from venturing to Phelps Lake?
Not usually. Negative bear encounters are incredibly rare, so during that time the park will do a reroute to avoid the densest bear area, but to my knowledge, there's never been a conflict along the trail. The bears just want to be left alone, so as long as people do that, the bears focus more on finding food. To answer your other question, once kids are back in school, the traffic drops off quite a bit. That's also a really good time because it's a narrow window between the end of the peak summer season and Labor Day weekend. So there will be other people, but it won't be peak summer busy.
Thank you for this, this is very helpful! How busy/popular is this trail in the mid/late part of August, considering that bears may start becoming more active around that time? Will the possibility of bear encounters discourage folks from venturing to Phelps Lake?
Not usually. Negative bear encounters are incredibly rare, so during that time the park will do a reroute to avoid the densest bear area, but to my knowledge, there's never been a conflict along the trail. The bears just want to be left alone, so as long as people do that, the bears focus more on finding food. To answer your other question, once kids are back in school, the traffic drops off quite a bit. That's also a really good time because it's a narrow window between the end of the peak summer season and Labor Day weekend. So there will be other people, but it won't be peak summer busy.