Watch as bear takes leisurely stroll on hanging bridge in Tennessee theme park
A Tennessee bear took advantage of a rainy day to do some exploring at a theme park last week.
The black bear was caught on video taking a leisurely stroll on the treetop skywalk at the Anakeesta theme park in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on Thursday — seemingly unbothered by the rain.
“Thursday had the perfect amount of rain for SOME of our guests, like this guy who really seemed to enjoy his walk on #Anakeestas TreeTop Skywalk,” the park wrote in a Facebook post along with the video.
The park was open that day but guests were “minimal,” and the bear didn’t come into contact with any humans while on its adventure, Michele Canney, the vice president of marketing and sales at Anakeesta, told McClatchy News on Monday.
The video, captured from a “safe distance” by a mountain manager at the park, shows the bear slowly walk across the bridge while looking around.
After the video ended, the bear climbed down the steps to get off the treetop skywalk and eventually left the park, Canney told McClatchy.
The skywalk is composed of 880 feet of hanging bridges that are suspended between 50 and 60 feet in the air. Anakeesta says it’s the longest “tree-based skywalk in North America.”
The attraction lets people — and, apparently, this bear — see “what it feels like to be a bird in the tree tops.”
Canney said the park has never recorded a bear on the skywalk before. But guests will often see them wandering around below the bridges.
And in September, video posted to TikTok caught a family of black bears crawling along the tracks of the Rail Runner mountain coaster at the park as a cart nears. The bears eventually decided to move along.
The park is close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where about 1,500 bears live. Bears are also out and about more in the spring and summer months, the National Park Service says.
Black bears can get up to 6 feet in length and up to 3 feet high “at the shoulder,” the park service says. Canney estimates the bear seen Thursday was born in the last year or two and said it wasn’t fully grown.
Managers monitor bears spotted at the park and “keep an eye on them” until they leave, Canney said.
If guests see a bear in the park, it’s important to keep a safe distance, Canney said. The National Park Service also says it’s important to “treat bear encounters with extreme caution.”
Those who see a bear should remain watchful and should not approach it or allow it to approach them, it says.
“If your presence causes the bear to change its behavior (stops feeding, changes its travel direction, watches you, etc.) you are too close,” the NPS says.
