bear jam

A traffic jam caused by tourists stopping to look at bears near the road; - a phenomenon once common in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.

References in periodicals archive ?

In the course of a single day, they might assist with a bear jam at Signal Mountain, talk to visitors hiking along String Lake or even get called to help relocate a campsite's paper wasp nest.

The retirement cure: making the most of retirement with a 40-foot RV, a patch of dirt and full-time seasonal volunteer work in the national parks

Then we get back in the car and on the way we come upon a bear jam - lots of cars and people looking at another bear and her two cubs.

Wonderful taste of Canadian Medicine; SUNDAY Mercury reader Hilda Hutchinson from Worcester responded to our challenge to turn travel writer and compiled this diary of her holiday in Canada

At the Canyon Village Ranger Station, as hikers inquire about backcountry campsites, an oversized walkie-talkie begins crackling with a familiar broadcast: "We've got another bear jam on the north side of Dunraven Pass," declares an anonymous voice.

Grizzly fate

In Yellowstone National Park, "bear jam" is code for grizzly bears sauntering at close range along the roadside.

GRIZZLY FATE. (grizzly bears at Yellowstone National Park may be removed from federal protection

There is wildness too: 'bear jams' disrupting traffic, cougar sightings and soaring eagles, towering ancient trees, log- strewn beaches and distant snowy peaks.

36 hours in victoria, British columBia

"I get how Yellowstone is more than postcards and bear jams. I know it now on a totally different level."