Officials at Great Smoky Mountains National Park closed a trail in the Tennessee portion of the park after three recent incidents between hikers and black bears.
Park officials said Monday there were two instances on the Ramsey Cascades Trail last weekend where a bear approached people and took their backpacks, and another incident in which a bear got aggressive and chased a group of people.
The trail is closed until further notice while rangers at the park, which straddles Tennessee and North Carolina, continue to monitor the situation. Officials did not say how many bears they believed to be involved in the three incidents.
The closure coincides with the reopening of the Abrams Falls trail, also located in the Tennessee part of the park, which had been shut following its own spate of bear incidents the weekend prior.
The Abrams Falls incidents included a bear biting someone who entered an area that rangers had closed off, park officials said.
Spring is a time of heightened bear activity as mother bears and their cubs emerge from hibernation to search for food. Getting too close to the bears during this period, officials said, “can cause stress and lead to unsafe encounters.”
The park’s bear activity will peak between May and August. Over a 10-year span, the park averaged about 339 negative interactions between people and bears per year, according to the park website.
