A Maryland man was the first to come across one of two hikers seriously injured in a grizzly bear attack Monday afternoon in Yellowstone National Park. He heard the man calling for help before finding him “tore up pretty bad.”
“I was hiking up Mystic Falls Trail when I saw bear prints in the mud,” Craig Lerman told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday morning. “I kept walking a little further and saw a bloody hat with a watch torn off.”
Lerman, from Baltimore, was hiking on the Mystic Falls Trail when he was the first person on the scene after the grizzly attacked a pair of hikers.
Lerman kept hiking until he found the first victim, a severely injured 28-year-old man, lying on the trail.
“He heard me coming and started saying, ‘Help. Help me,’” Lerman said. "At first, I thought it was a prank or joke. Kids playing games. But when I got close to him, I knew this was a serious matter.”
According to Lerman, the man was “tore up pretty bad” with cuts all over his face, back, legs, and stomach with “flesh next to him.” The man had already managed to call 911 on his blood-covered phone.
“I called 911 from my phone and took over the call from there,” Lerman said. “I was scared the bear was going to come back around, so I just kept my head on a swivel.”
The dispatcher told Lerman to focus on keeping the man conscious and to turn him onto his side so he didn’t choke on his own blood, while responders coordinated a response.
“He kept talking to me the entire time,” Lerman said. “I ended up giving him my T-shirt (because) he said he was cold and wet, so I just laid it over him and reassured him help was on the way.”
The official first responders were two National Park Service rangers who reached the scene on foot, he said. Soon after, a helicopter arrived with more personnel to evacuate both victims to the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center.
“I never saw the other guy,” Lerman said. “He was 14, and I believe that was his brother, but I don’t know that. His mom was there, but not on that trail. She was on the phone with him, trying to keep him calm.”
Lerman described the experience as “scary, brutal,” and “not something I’ve ever seen before.”
‘One Or More Bears'
Yellowstone officials reported Tuesday morning that the incident occurred on the Mystic Falls Trail near Old Faithful. The victims may have been attacked by “one or more bears.”
National Park Service emergency services personnel responded to the victims, and the incident “remains under investigation,” the agency report. No additional information was provided.
Pastor and former Idaho Falls resident Travis Guse shared information he received about the incident on Facebook. He was contacted by David Jenkins, an associate pastor at Lake Church in Arlington, Texas.
“Two (men) from his church were up in Yellowstone with their mom when they were mauled by a grizzly bear,” Guse wrote. “The kids were life-flighted to the hospital in Idaho Falls, and the hospital still had my contact on file from when I was a pastor there over a decade ago.”
When Cowboy State Daily reached out to Guse, he confirmed he had made the post but declined to comment further.
Jenkins confirmed that the victims are members of the church’s congregation and had been taken to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center for treatment. He also declined to comment further.
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center to get an update on the victims’ condition, but hadn’t received a response by the time of publication.
Stimulus, Response
This is the first human-grizzly incident in Yellowstone in 2026 and the second to result in injury in the last five years.
The previous incident happened in September 2025 when a man hiking on the Turbid Lake Trail near the northeastern shore of Yellowstone Lake was attacked by a grizzly and suffered injuries on his arm and chest.
Based on what he could see at the scene, Lerman believes there were two grizzlies in the vicinity of the Mystic Falls Trail on Monday. He based his assumption on the two sets of footprints he observed on the muddy trail.
“There were two sets from a bigger and smaller bear,” he said. “The conclusion was that it was a mom protecting her cub, but that’s an assumption.”
Sow grizzlies with cubs usually emerge from hibernation in late April.
Mothers are fiercely protective of their cubs and will attack with little to no provocation, which can lead to serious and potentially lethal attacks on humans in spring and early summer.
In May 2024, Shayne Patrick Burke was attacked by a mother grizzly while hiking on Signal Mountain in Grand Teton National Park. He survived but was seriously injured.
NPS personnel and officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service usually categorize these attacks as defensive rather than aggressive.
That means it’s unlikely the grizzly responsbile for this attack will be removed from the park’s population, but there’s been no official information other than that the investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Lerman didn’t know the status of either victim but hopes they are recovering at the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center.
“I’d like to eventually know if they survived,” he said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
