Triple H Hikers: Hex, we just can't get enough of this one can we?

Hex, the summer return!! We did this little lovely climb on July 4th. It was a warm, blue skies kind of day and why wouldn't you want to add a little sweat to it? We decided on making this an AUTHENTIC hike by going up the snowshoe route as we love to add pain and more elevation to our lives. It's obvious no one else wanted to as we so no other HUMAN footprints on the way up. Lots of deer prints and scat along with some other stuff we didn't want to identify. We parked at the sno park area and headed up. We made it to the yellow gate and saw our first deer of the day hopping towards us. We ran into many deer on the way up, even a mother and her young one with spots still. They were on the trail coming at us. We made it to the trail head easily enough and then headed the brutal next few miles. It's so worth it, so just suck it up and go. The ridge is beautiful, breezy and one of our best lunch spots ever. On the way down, we ran into more deer and more of note a big ass brown bear. Walking right across the trail and then stopped to look at us. We were pretty close...as close as we would ever wish to be...maybe 25 to 30 yards away upwind from him. (We assume it was a him, no young cubs in sight thankfully.) With the wind the way it was and we both were coming around corners I think we surprised one another. We turned around up the hill for 20-30 feet, made a lot of noise, and he was gone after a few minutes time. This was our first bear sighting and hope to make it our last. Keep the deer, lose the bear is what we have to say about that. No we didn't take pictures. We value our lives thank you very much. But we saw him about 1.5 miles from the winter trail head, so if you do go this way, please be careful. It was odd as we saw him about 2:30 in the afternoon--but it was near the creek.