Picture the scene. You’re driving through Lamar Valley in beautiful when suddenly, a dark moving figure off to the side of the road catches your attention. A and her cubs! There’s nowhere to pull off, but no way you’re missing out on this opportunity, plus the two cars ahead have already pulled over.
So you pull as close to the side of the road as you can and jump out without even lacing up your to get a closer look. Only a few minutes go by before there are dozens of cars half-parked on the road, their owners and passengers milling about trying to get the best shot, and a queue of gridlocked cars snaking a half mile in either direction. You’ve successfully created your first bear jam.
And that’s a problem. Sadly, a bear jam doesn’t involve a bunch of bears shucking and jiving to some sweet tunes, though that would be cool. A non-technical term, “bear jam” is now frequently used by the National Parks Service to describe the increasingly common phenomenon of traffic jams forming around bears on the side of the road.
Now naturally, you should be driving through any with caution, and if you see a bear on the side of the road, or a , or any other big mammal for that matter, you should slow down. A bear jam occurs when the flow of traffic becomes so slow as to impede other drivers, and often involves multiple cars stopping or illegally parking on the roadside in order to watch – or photograph – a bear. Bear jams have become such a problem that some spots like C.