Life is made up of a series of moments. Some seemingly timeless – etched upon our minds forever, while others, less remarkable, slip quietly into the wispy stream of forgotten memories.
For me, when it comes to Nature, there are two defining moments. The first, was seeing the movie, Jaws, which meant I was afraid to swim anywhere for years – even in a swimming pool. The other was reading a book called The Bear’s Embrace, a personal account by a Canadian woman named Patricia van Tighem, who survived a savage grizzly bear attack, but suffered serious, disfiguring injuries.
To set the record straight, it’s not all bears that I’m afraid of. I live in a fairly remote mountain area in southern BC, where bears are regularly seen – walking through my backyard or on my favourite forest trails. These are black bears though.
Thanks to Rob Stewart and his debunking of ferocious human-ravaging shark myths, I can once again swim in pools, and even in the ocean – if it’s crystal clear.
I was hoping that a hike in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Alberta, a known grizzly habitat where van Tighem’s attack occurred, would help me achieve some peace with my grizzly anxiety.
The hike that I originally signed up for was Goat Lake Trail. Ironically, my local guide, Kris Robinson, contacted me the day before, saying that reports of an aggressive bear on the trail had resulted in a temporary closure, a not uncommon occurrence in the park. His new recommendation? Crypt Lake Trail, the very trail where van Tighem’s attack occurred.
“It’s an amazing hike; you’ll love it,” says Kris. “National Geographic voted it one of the world’s 20 most thrilling trails.” Crypt Lake Trail is only about 5.5 miles, but you gain over 2,000 heart-pounding feet in altitude on the way and pass through three biomes.
We arrange to meet the next day at the Waterton wharf. Kris turns out to be a tall, pony-tailed redhead who speaks in a slow, gentle way that instantly evokes confidence – the kind of guy you want around when things go wrong. He later tells the story about Rambo-style piggy backing his sister-in-law-to-be down Crypt Lake Trail after she twists an ankle. Even though he’s a certified guide, I’m pleased Kris’ buddy, Devin, is joining us, a friend who also grew up hiking these mountain trails. Safety in numbers.
A 15-minute boat ride across the glacier-blue waters of a lake tightly skirted by steep mountains, brings us to the trailhead. On the day of van Tighem’s tragic hike, there were only two others who disembarked at the trailhead, so I’m happy that there are at least 20 of us on this sunny summer day.
The trail is heavily forested from the get-go, with underbrush as thick as a dog’s undercoat. I can feel the niggling sense of anxiety start to rise, my heart beating faster than this section of gradual switchbacks warrants.
“Do you remember hearing about a tragic grizzly bear attack on this trail?” I ask Kris. He wasn’t yet born in 1983 when the attack happened, but he admits he heard about it. He thinks it happened right around where we are, about a mile up from the dock. He didn’t know much about the story but said that he’d never heard of any other grizzly attacks in his 29 years.
“And, knock on wood,” he says, “I’ve never had any negative interactions with aggressive bears in all my time in the forest.” Devin echoes this. Between them, these two have clocked hundreds of miles in the backcountry. This is reassuring.
Several hikers make it to Crypt Lake before us and sit chatting and eating their lunches. The lake is dead calm and glacier blue, surrounded by long scree slopes covered with dirty patches of snow, dipping into the water like long, bony fingers. Just over the southern mountain is Montana.
Devin has a fishing pole and starts enthusiastically casting. “I’ve never caught a fish here,” he says, “but not for a lack of trying.” So, when he catches, not just one, but five, getting a bite each time just seconds after his line hits the water, I’m happy for him, thinking it’s catch- and-release, like most national parks. But apparently here, you can carry out two for your dinner, and Devin’s already talking about how he will cook his rainbow trout as he wraps them in newspaper and places them in his backpack.
Great, now we’re going to be hiking through one of the densest grizzly bear regions in the world, the smell of freshly-caught fish wafting from our group, like the smell of fries drifting from a food truck, enticing hungry passers-by.
I learn later upon re-reading van Tighem’s book that it’s at the sub-alpine tree line where it joins the rocky boulder switchbacks, that the grizzly bear ferociously attacked first her husband, then her – going back and forth to maul each of them twice.
“After summers of handing out ‘you are in bear country’ pamphlets in Banff Park, instructions for a bear encounter flash through my brain,” van Tighem writes. “Climb a tree, grizzlies can’t climb.” She climbed 20 feet up. “I freeze, terror fills me. It’s right there. Eye contact. Small bear eyes in large brown furry head, mouth open. It’s charging the tree and knocks out the branch from under my feet.”
As the bear starts mauling her head, she writes, “Protect my head. Roll on front and play dead; don’t fight. Tuck my chin in. A grizzly is chewing on my head.” Van Tighem hears the crunch of her own bones, slurps and heavy animal breathing.
There’s something personal about being attacked and bitten by an animal, especially on the face. I know all about this, as I was previously attacked by a dog – a large, aggressive Akita – with teeth as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. It took 162 stitches, give or take, to sew my face, throat and arm back together. That dog wasn’t fooling around.
In investigating van Tighem’s attack, park wardens figure the bear and her cubs were feeding at the carcass of a big horn sheep that they found 23 metres off the trail where the attack happened. The grizzly’s cubs were almost her size, 136 kilograms.
“Bears will defend carcasses violently and this one did,” writes van Tighem. “Perceiving us as a threat, she used her powerful jaws to break ours. That’s how bears incapacitate their opponents.”
As North America has been settled, grizzlies have been pushed to the very edge of their existence, mostly up into Alaska and northern Canada. Habitat loss and human-caused death are the biggest contributors to the loss of grizzly bears. The population of over 1,000 grizzlies that roam the Rocky Mountains of Montana, BC and Alberta, where Waterton Park is located, is one of the densest this far south. Their existence depends upon good management and cooperation among all land users throughout the entire range. Bears, of course, don’t recognize land borders. They also do what they need to do to survive.
Van Tighem never did get over her severe PTSD. And grizzly bears still scare me. But in the end, it doesn’t matter whether I’m afraid to hike in grizzly country or not. I just need to believe in the preservation of their habitat. May the grizzly bears forever roam.
IF YOU GO:
For more info go to: Visit Waterton Lakes National Park website: https://mywaterton.ca
Waterton has a variety of accommodations. For an affordable motel, with a cute retro vibe, try Bear Mountain Motel: http://bearmountainmotel.com/
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