Outdoors/Adventure

Beware: Bears along Anchorage's Rover's Run Trail

Anchorage's Rover's Run Trail -- No. 5 on Travel & Leisure magazine's list of "World's Scariest Hikes" -- is back in the news.

Surprise, surprise.

Bears, of which Alaska's largest city has many, have again been spotted on the trail that runs adjacent to what at the moment is a salmon-filled Campbell Creek. Bears like to eat protein-rich salmon.

Officials in the state's largest city are advising people to avoid the dangerous trail. They could meet a bear, either grizzly or black. The same could happen on just about any trail in and around Alaska's largest city.

A grizzly was shot and killed on the popular Turnagain Arm Trail above the even busier Seward Highway just days ago. But the odds of meeting a bear on Rover's Run at the moment are higher than elsewhere.

How many bear watchers this will attract to the trail is unknown. The Russian River on the Kenai Peninsula has become a significant attraction for bear watchers ever since officials started warning anglers to be wary of the many bears that feed where the Russian flows into the larger Kenai River.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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