'Late' risers: Grand Teton confirms first grizzly sighting of 2024

JACKSON (WNE) — Sunday found Ryan Kempfer driving up and down a road near Grand Teton National Park, looking for what he and plenty of other folks assumed was in the area — a groggy grizzly.

That afternoon, the waiting paid off.

“I drove down the road and, boom, that grizzly came right out of the willows where I was expecting,” Kempfer said. He grabbed a quick video of the bear moving across the hillside.

That may be the first grizzly sighting, but it’s hard to verify, given how many wildlife watchers crawl the Teton area each spring, searching for signs of bears emerging from their dens.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sue Pepe was driving through Grand Teton National Park when she saw a “very large, healthy bear” running alongside the road, splashing through creeks and shaking itself off like a “big dog.”

Teton park confirmed that the bear Pepe saw Tuesday morning was the first confirmed grizzly sighting in the park this year.

Every spring, wildlife watchers flock to the Jackson Hole valley to catch a glimpse of some of the celebrity bears that pad around the park. The queen is Grizzly 399, a 28-year-old sow who has mothered 18 cubs across eight litters, mostly along the crowded roads in Teton park.

Male grizzlies typically emerge in early March from hibernation. Females, meanwhile, emerge with cubs in April and early May.

Yellowstone confirmed its first bear sighting on March 7.

The bear that emerged in Teton park Tuesday was “late,” Schwabedissen said.

In Grand Teton, the first bear of the season typically is seen around March 15. In 2023 the park’s first spring bear was spotted on March 23. A March 26 sighting in 2024 is about nine days behind average.

This story was published on March 27, 2024.