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HOW TO SURVIVE A BEAR ATTACK

I wanted to toy with the student reporters a little, to lead them through tangents and digressions, to try and get their second-day stories off-track. I figured I’d just mention Alaska a lot, knowing full well that the attacks occurred in Montana. But what I also really wanted to tell them is that in Alaska, where the lines between civilization and wilderness are blurry at best, and nonexistent at worst, more people are killed by moose most years than by grizzly bears or black bears.

Many of these moose-related deaths occur in yards, neighborhoods, parking lots, and along the roadside. Moose often graze along the roadways, where the weeds are kept back, the trees trimmed, and lush green grass is plentiful; and quite a few of these deaths have occurred because a tourist stopped his car to get up close to a moose or a moose calf for a photograph and was stomped to death by a 1500-pound animal that kicks with its hoof-armored front legs.

“Moose are not horses with antlers,” I would say. “They are not domesticated or docile. They will kill you. But they won’t eat you afterward, which is a plus.”

I thought that might get some laughs.

Then I figured I’d take them even further down this tangent and offer some advice if you should encounter an angry moose in the wild. They are a lot easier to escape than a bear. Several guidebooks I read offer tips for escaping a charging moose, but it seemed the best survival strategy was to put a tree between you and the moose. When it charges you simply run around the tree.

This sounded cartoonishly simple to me until I thought more about it. Moose can’t corner. It’s like a school bus trying to chase a motorcycle around a telephone pole. If only avoiding a bear attack were so simple.

ACCORDING TO A NUMBER of sources I read before and during my time in Alaska, the number one tip for avoiding bear attacks is to avoid looking or smelling like food. You’re not going to outrun a bear; despite how fat and slow they look, a grizzly can run up to forty miles per hour. And you’re not going to fight off a grizzly or overpower it.

It seems so simple.

Don’t be food.²

But surviving a bear encounter is more complicated than you might think. I read a lot of travel guides for Alaska when we visited there, all of which made special mention of how to avoid attacks. The more specific following tips on how to survive, taken from a website (unironically and unfortunately) called The Art of Manliness, are fairly typical of what I found.

1. Carry bear pepper spray. Experts recommend that hikers in bear country carry with them bear pepper spray. UDAP bear pepper spray is a highly concentrated capsaicin spray that creates a large cloud. This stuff will usually stop a bear in its tracks.³

2. Don’t run. When you run, the bear thinks you’re prey and will continue chasing you, so stand your ground. And don’t think you can outrun a bear. Bears are fast. They can reach speeds of thirty to forty miles per hour. Unless you’re an Olympic sprinter, don’t bother running.4

3. Drop to the ground in the fetal position and cover the back of your neck with your hands. If you don’t have pepper spray or the bear continues to charge even after the spray, this is your next best defense. Hit the ground immediately and curl into the fetal position.

4. Play dead. Grizzlies will stop attacking when they feel there’s no longer a threat. If they think you’re dead, they won’t think you’re threatening. Once the bear is done tossing you around and leaves, continue to play dead. Grizzlies are known for waiting around to see if their victim will get back up.

Surviving a grizzly attack is difficult but not impossible. It’s unwise to surprise a grizzly, especially if he’s eating or resting in the alder thickets; and cubs, as cute as they are, will never be too far from their overly protective mothers. Just ask Hugh Glass about this.

Within the first two weeks we were in Alaska, a grizzly attacked a local family of hikers outside of Anchorage. It was a well-traveled trail, one the family had traveled many times before and knew well; but a male grizzly had killed an elk calf near the trail, the sort of thing you can’t really predict in Alaska, and the bear was protecting his cache of food. Anyone on that trail would’ve been a threat to his food.

Before he was done, the bear had killed a mother and her son and chased the woman’s fourteen-year-old grandson up a tree. The bear dragged off their bodies and ate part of the mother and her son before rescuers arrived and park rangers eventually killed the animal. The boy waited out the attack and listened; and I remember reading the story and thinking about him, about how the worst part must have been afterward—the waiting up in that tree and listening, the hour or more before help came, when he was alone with the bear and the bodies of his grandmother and his uncle.

Q: Have you spoken with Ms. Craighead’s daughter?

I don’t think so. My thoughts are a little jumbled. I don’t know if Brandi wants to talk to me, honestly. There’s no way I’m the one who survives. Janey was so much better in the woods than me, so much more comfortable.

How did Brandi feel about her mother backpacking in bear country?

What kind of question is that? I mean, how am I supposed to know that sort of thing? Do you imagine that there was a fight or something? Maybe Brandi hated that her mom spent so much time with me. Maybe she was jealous. Maybe she’ d called her mom the day before we left and told her it was crazy for her to go backpacking in Glacier. Maybe she mentioned bears, fucking huge grizzly bears that can kill you. Maybe she mentioned her long-dead father and asked, “What if something happens to you?”

But did she say those things?

I’m tired. My head hurts. You don’t . . .

Do you think you’ll go back into bear country, Mr. Haas? Will you return to Glacier Park?

I can’t stay away. Perhaps I need some help. Perhaps you should come with me. That’s where you’ll find the second-day story. It’s still out there, floating around. The ground is stained with it. The bears are innocent. They could never be anything other than innocent.

Have you forgiven the bear that killed Janey?

Of course.

2. Because the best way, apparently, to avoid acting like food was to make a lot of strange noises, many places in Alaska sold “bear bells,” which were just cheap metal bells that you were supposed to clip to your pack or belt. Reviews seemed to be mixed regarding these bells with some anecdotal evidence suggesting that they simply sound to a bear like birds or a dinner bell.

3. Maybe. Other stories I heard in Alaska mentioned the likelihood that pepper spray might just aggravate a charging grizzly or, worse, blow back in your face. Most of the locals we encountered on the trails packed a different kind of heat—typically a .45-caliber Magnum pistol or a shotgun with lead-slug shells—but there was something about this that I found extremely unnerving. I didn’t keep a gun in my house, and I didn’t pack a gun when I was out in public, and I didn’t understand why that should change when I was backpacking in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

4. If you are, however, an Olympic sprinter, then, by all means, try to outrun a bear.