A 34-year-old woman was hurt in a bear attack in Glacier National Park, Montana, and experts say she’s lucky her hiking partner was there to blast it with bear spray.
It wasn’t clear whether the bear, a female with two cubs, was a grizzly or a cinnamon-colored black bear, according to the National Park Service.
It attacked the woman, whose name was not released, Wednesday after a close encounter along a brushy section of a trail near the Lake Janet Wilderness Campground.
The bear charged the woman and swiped at her shoulder and arm, park officials reported, then fled when a hiking companion hit the animal with a blast of bear spray.
The encounter lasted about 30 seconds, park officials reported.
The woman was later taken to Logan Health Medical Center in Kalispell, Montana, for treatment, according to the National Park Service, which didn’t provide details about the extent of her injuries.
‘Grouchy’ Bears
Glacier, along with Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in Wyoming, are areas that could be more prone to bear attacks because bears there are “grouchy,” Tom Smith, a bear biologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, told Cowboy State Daily.
It’s not really that Wyoming and Montana bears are born with worse attitudes than bears in, say, Katmai National Park in Alaska, Smith said.
It’s probably because resources are scarcer in the Lower 48, so bears, particularly grizzlies, are far less apt to be patient with humans invading their space, he said.
Smith has spent countless hours in the field with grizzly, black and polar bears. He and his team have also researched roughly 2,300 bear attacks across North America.
Oddly enough, places with fewer, smaller bears, might be more dangerous for hikers than areas packed full of big, fat bears, he said.
Lower 48 grizzlies are “much more inclined to engage and to neutralize a threat than, say, a Katmai bear,” he said.
Bear Spray Saves The Day
Bear safety expert Kim Titchener told Cowboy State Daily that places such as national parks that draw lots of visitors, especially people who don’t have much experience around bears, can be trouble spots.
Most bad encounters boil down to careless human behavior, said Titchener, founder of the Bear Safety and More organization based in Alberta, Canada.
Even so, she praised the hikers in Glacier for having bear spray immediately available.
“We don’t have very many people who carry it in places where they should, like Yellowstone,” she said.
She cited another recent case in British Columbia, Canada, where a woman came “face-to-face” with a grizzly that appeared outside her tent.
She blasted the grizzly in the face with bear spray and was able to retreat to a safe distance while the bear wrecked her tent, Titchener said.
“Bear spray undoubtedly saved her life,” she said.
Bear Tempers Vary By Location
Smith stressed that bear attacks are statistically rare everywhere. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that bears’ tempers can vary by location.
For example, “roadside bears” in Yellowstone and Teton might be more acclimated to human presence and more tolerant of people — although it’s still not a good idea to try pushing boundaries with them, he said.
Grizzlies on backcountry trails might be far less tolerant, and people hiking into the backcountry in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier should be mindful of that, he added.
Even in Alaska, the level of bear grouchiness varies from place to place, Smith said. In Katmai, bears are notoriously mellow and generally just ignore people.
In Alaska’s Denali National Park, resources are more scare and bears might charge from a long way off when people irritate them, Smith said.
Despite the Katmai bears’ reputation for tolerance, that is where Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and partially eaten by a bear in 2003.
That was likely because Treadwell pushed way beyond any prudent boundaries by living directly adjacent to bears, and “walking right up to them and singing to them,” Smith said.
Smith added that he was acquainted with Treadwell, and although he didn’t approve of Treadwell’s approach, he admired his passion for bears.
“I didn’t hate him,” Smith said. "He was just weird."
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
