As thru-hikers and backpackers, we think about bears. At one time or another we study them, or at least learn their habits. Years ago when I lived in Yosemite, I got an up-front education on how to live peacefully and respectfully among them. I remember being terrified the first night I camped in Little Yosemite Valley, an area of the park known for heavy bear traffic. I was fresh from the city, it was my first night in the backcountry, and we were camping under the stars. I remember wondering if a bear would step on us, and prayed that we'd hung our food properly. I didn't see a bear that night, but over the course of the next six years I saw many, and I grew to love their large beauty and spirit.
During the five summers prior to my bear attack, I solo thru-hiked long trails. Quick list: The John Muir Trail (x2), The Colorado Trail, The Pacific Crest Trail, Vermont's Long Trail twice - once hiking north, and once hiking south. In over 4,000 miles I saw only seven bears; six on the PCT and one on the Long Trail. And yet, they were often on my mind. I sang at the top of my lungs in the evening and early morning hours to alert them of my presence. I ate dinner miles before making camp. I made sure to look for mama bear when I twice saw cubs. You know the drill.
In the spring of 2014, I left my New England home to volunteer for a month at a meditation retreat center nestled in the mountains of southwest Colorado. Among other things, I wanted to know what it would be like to camp night after night in one locale, without the thru-hiker need to pack up and walk 20 miles the next day. I wanted to know what it would like to be a stationary camper. What might it be like to deeply observe the mountains, the dry brittle earth, the deep blue sky, the wildlife, without the pressure of thru-hiking? I arrived at the retreat center and was shown where to camp.
Eleven days later, at 5:45 a.m., I hear something moving outside my tent and think it's probably a raccoon, so I yell, "Shoo!" I'm lying on my stomach. A few moments later, my tent poles snap and part of my tent collapses. Then a heavy, lumpy thing sits on me. It presses my pelvis into the earth. A bear is sitting on me! Several moments pass, then the bear gets up and starts walking away. Wow, am I lucky! I assume he's leaving, but he's not. He walks to the front of my tent, where my head is, and starts tearing the vestibule. It's a silent morning - no wind, no rain - and each tear sounds phenomenally loud, and so very close. The sound reverberates throughout every cell in my body. I can't wrap my mind around what's happening. A black bear is doing this? There's no food in my tent, no reason for such behavior. I don't understand. I can't understand. Then I black out.
I wake to an intense pain in my left arm and turn to see the bear's big head very close to mine. I'm lying on my back now, and he's lifted my left arm up high, dangling it above my head (still attached to my body). My shoulder is off the ground. His teeth are jammed into the thin cotton jacket that I sleep in, and jammed into my arm. Thank goodness for the thin protection of that jacket. Blood is everywhere. Red blood against pale blue jacket. Red blood dripping onto pale blue sleeping bag. His head with my arm hanging from it is astonishingly close to my face. What to do? My mind remains calm and very clear. Fight! Scream! Fight for your life! Give it all you've got! His wet, black nose looks soft and vulnerable and the moment I decide to make it my target, my body takes over completely. I watch as my right arm swings and I punch him in the nose. Over and over I punch him on his black, moist nose. Every morsel of energy, every ounce of desire to live-my entire life force-accumulates in my right fist as I punch and punch the black bear that won't let go of my arm.
While I'm doing this, I scream at the top of my lungs: "Hey bear! Hey bear!" I scream and punch, and can't understand why he won't let go of me. I try looking into his eye, his right eye, the only eye I can see-I want to look into his eye-I want to get a sense of this beast. I want to understand him. But he's shaking me back and forth and his eye is high and looks off at an angle. I can't get a sense of him. When he refuses to let go, I calmly think, "Ok, next he's going to claw me down the center of my body. One big swipe. I bet that's all it will take." I fight like hell with a calm knowing that next he will rip me apart. His teeth are white and clean and I think, "That's a good thing. Fewer germs."
For some reason the bear drops my arm. I survive the attack. He bit me twice, leaving twenty-one punctures. He was a three-year old adolescent male, who when captured had a belly full of wild turkeys. I can't help but wonder, did he eat the turkeys before, or after our visit? He could've killed me, but he didn't.
At the hospital the nurse tells me that she was on duty nine months ago, when they brought in the honey-faced girl who was bit by a bear. She was camping at the same retreat center and had gone to her tent for the night with honey smeared onto her face as a beauty treatment. A bear tore into her tent and bit her arm. She screamed and he immediately left. Her former campsite was not far from mine. The nurse tells me that my arm is "much, much worse." The other woman received two, maybe three punctures. Her bear was not tracked and caught.
In 2010, when I completed my thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, I reached Monument 78 at the Canadian border, and the phrase "everything and nothing has changed" coursed through my brain. Meaning, I think, that I'd just completed a dream. I'd walked for months in the wilderness, on a trail I adored, and with each step that I took I felt completely at home. My sense of the world, my sense of this planet we live on, my sense of myself (in some ways) changed, merely by going for a walk. When I returned to the world off-trail, not much was different. Everything and nothing had changed.
Since the bear attack the phrase that stays in my mind is: everything and everything has changed. I'm still sorting that one out.
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Companion forum thread to: Bear Attack in the Rockies
Guessing prior users left dirty camps and the bear for habituated and curious. Had a nocturnal visit a little over a year ago when a claw reached under my vestibule during my Maroon Bells trip (Aspen CO) . There's bear spray (or whatever), … but when resting flat, a biped human justs feel so vulnerable. Maybe a camera or iPhone flash??
Where in sw Colorado was this?
Wow Anne – thanks for sharing this experience and it is fantastic that you are okay. Best,
N/A
I read somewhere, I think it was BPL, about a portable, lightweight electric bear fence that a person could string around their camp, but I don't know if that would have worked in this situation. Surprising that a black bear would do this. I have seen several black bears here in Northern California, and they have all turned around and ran away in horror after viewing my ugly face. As for me, I consider the drive to the trailhead the most dangerous part of my backpacking journey.
#ERROR!
Did your dreams survive as well?
>"I read somewhere, I think it was BPL, about a portable, lightweight electric bear fence that a person could string around their camp" BPLer Peter Vacco has pondered about such a set up but for polar bears in the far north. We've emailed back and forth a bit about it. I don't know of any off-the-shelf solution, although there are "portable" units I've seen used in the Alps to contain grazing sheep and cows in an area for awhile before moving them to another area. But it looked to be a lead-acid battery combined with solar panels. And, since it might have some drainage of current through wet grass stems, etc, and there would be cloudy days, the battery was oversized, I'm sure. And the length of wire was much longer than you'd need in a camp. It was maybe 30 pounds for the whole set-up. I imagined striping out the low-DC to high-voltage circuit, waterproofing it, and using a similar voltage lithium battery pack of smaller capacity and greatly reduced weight. I suspect you could get it down to 3 pounds or so by scavenging those existing bits. A unit purpose built for UL backpacking could be far lighter, but there's no big market for it. I've seen electric fences used for black bears in the Yosemite backcountry around CCC camps. Well, actually, around the cook's cabin tent with the food in it. And I've seen almost all the campers at the Brook's Camp (in Katmai National Park) cowering inside the electrical fence the NPS installed around the camper's food cache shed. Almost all because my in-laws were outside the fence, yelling at the grizzly to move it along. I hung back from the front lines because I had our 5-month-old in the chest carrier. But all those were in fixed locations, using existing livestock electric fences without any regard for weight. I then, as I reread this, I thought, "I should google it again to be sure". And, yup, there's a UDAP version, $225 at Cabela's, 3.7 pounds, apparently with 6 fiberglass stakes and clips to hold the included wire. One review describes it taking a long time to set up. "Runs continuously for approximately five weeks on two D batteries." so it would go many nights on two lithium AA (and be better to lower temperatures. I'd guess you could swap batteries, trim wire lengths, settle for a smaller area, etc, and get the weight down to 2.5, maybe 2 pounds if you went CF on the stakes or relied on local wood and bushes.
The UDAP has been around for at least 10ish years. They were recommended around that time by a rafting guide after the Huffman deaths in ANWR. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0510/whats_new/anwr_grizzly_attacks.html "Thompson, the river guide who found the Huffmans' campsite, believes that a floorless tent, an electric fence, and a loaded pistol (that doesn't need to be cocked) might help future campers. "I never take bear food canisters," he said. "If the bear is hungry, he might get ticked off. It's no big deal for him to eat my food instead of me. Some guys stack pots on their food bags so that if a bear comes into camp, the pots fall off and wake them up.""
I built my own for far less that $225. But the most weight comes from the charger and batteries–size D. It allows you to sleep well knowing you are "safer". The main drawback is you must have a good ground and/or run a hot and neutral (ground) ribbon. By the time you add 1inch ribbon, fiberglass poles, clips, grounding rod, and charger with batteries, I doubt you would be anywhere close to 2lbs. Especially if you are like me and want this to be bomb proof–the weight far exceeds the purchase cost.
I'm glad Anne is OK. I sure did enjoy her book about her thru-hike of the PCT. This attack, like the ANWR attack, are "black swan" events. The difference is not in what the people did, but in how a very rare "crazy" bear behaved. I think in both of those situations people did "everything right." That ANWR bear tried to chase down the next boat that came along as well. Both bears were therefore repeat offenders and would almost certainly have gotten into trouble again had they not been shot. What are not Black Swan events are bears getting at unattended or poorly secured food or tearing up unattended gear. On my multi-week trip to Admiralty Island, the "Fortress of the Bears," I used a UDAP electric bear fence to prevent bears from smashing my unattended base camp while I was away in spike camps or just gone for the day. I know a guy who's unattended plane was torn up by a bear, that would be another good application for an electric fence. Personally, I'd never carry an electric fence for backpacking, too heavy and time consuming to set up properly and too unlikely to be needed from a personal safety perspective.
Hiking on the CDT in Montana I was tracked by a large brown bear and the trail crossed a waist deep stream and he stopped tracking me.
I’ve met plenty of bears in Maine (Black Bears), Grizzlies (Canadian Rockies) and even in my back yard bordering on the White Mtn National Forest. None of them threatened me, but I did tiptoe away from the Grizzlies and backed far away from them while they played with my gear and explored the pack (had been setting up the tent.)  Also had a blond bear run alongside my car while travelling north on the highway toward Walden, Colorado. Spoke with a Forester, who assured me it was a seldom seen blond version of a black bear, not a grizzly. That made sense, because a hump was not evident.
Since the Canada event, have avoided areas known to harbor grizzlies; but none of these many bears threatened me, let alone attacked. So am wondering how our experiences could vary so much. I do carry my food double bagged and on a shelf on top of the pack, and after dinner, hung up on a high branch on a tree far away from the campsite. Have also left weekly food caches hung up that way and also double wrapped and clipped in Op Sacs in the kevlar sacks that are always used for hanging or carrying the wrapped food on the pack shelf, the thought being to keep food odors out of the pack.
My best guess is that somehow food or cosmetic odors got onto you or into some article of your gear, but am still stymied by your attack. But bears can detect odors far better than we can, so it is a mystery. Or it may be that in recent years I’ve hiked with three generations of a couple of sheepdogs. In any case, congratulations on surviving your experience. Survival skills come in many forms.
That’s one heck of a thread bump! LOL
Nothing is ever 100%.
My dad was attacked by a black bear in Washington State in the 60’s. Luckily he had a gun and got lucky with one shot that took out its lungs and hip, letting my dad escape. Bear had a tumor in its head making it crazy.
I slept on that bear as a child. Comfy critter! :)
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