YOU'RE ALL WRONG. This is obviously a prequel to the first movie:
At the very end, the bear is riding along and falls off, off of a cliff, and loses his hat. The hat landed halfway down the mountain as the bear kept falling, and some french dude took it. So the bear, OBVIOUSLY, was trying to climb back up the cliff, which is where the first movie picks up.
Hrumph. >:(
(great job by the way. It was hilarious.)