Howard Mah and Lori Arnason had never seen a wild grizzly until Saturday.
And if they ever see one again, they’ll be sure to be carrying bear spray the next time.
The Calgary couple had set out for a short hike to Troll Falls in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country on July 19 to celebrate their wedding anniversary — one they won’t soon forget.
They expected the trail to be busy, as it often is, but were pleasantly surprised, at first, to find they had it pretty much all to themselves.
The solitude suddenly turned scary, however, after Mah sent Arnason ahead on the trail so he could take a photo of her.
“And as I was walking ahead, he said, ‘Oh, Lori, no, stop,” she recalled.
Mah had spotted a grizzly bear descending through a clearing, just behind his wife, toward the trail.
“And then as the bear walked down and hit the trail, I was hoping he would just continue on,” he said.
“But he instead came onto the trail, saw us and then started walking toward us.”
Grizzly followed, snorted, rose on hind legs
The frightened couple did their best to remain calm.
“We knew not to run,” Mah said. “And so we just started backing up … and then, because I was taking photos of Lori, I just happened to have my phone in my hand, so I just quickly switched it to video.”
He captured more than a minute of video of the bear slowly pacing toward them as they retreated.
At one point in the footage, the bear rises on its hind legs, snorts and waves its front paws in the air as it accelerates briefly toward the couple, before resuming its plodding pace.
This grizzly bear followed Howard Mah and Lori Arnason along the Troll Falls trail in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country on July 19, until the couple finally roared at it and the animal fled.
Mah said the animal made that “aggressive move” a few times during the encounter.
“To be honest, my life did actually flash before me,” he said of how it felt, in the moment.
He estimates the bear came within about 15 metres of them as they continued to walk backwards, wondering if it would ever stop following them.
“When he didn’t look like he was going to give up, that’s when I thought, ‘Well, I’ve heard to make yourself large,'” Mah said. “So I put up both my hands, made myself as large as possible, and just roared as long as I could.”
“And so when Howard did that, then I stood beside Howard and did the same thing,” Arnason said. “And it worked!”
The bear, they said, finally walked off the trail and left them alone.
They decided to cancel the rest of their hike to Troll Falls, returning immediately to the parking lot instead.
One of several recent encounters
The couple warned other would-be hikers in the parking lot about the grizzly, and then immediately reported the encounter to Alberta Parks and provided conservation officers with the video.
Alberta Parks issued a bear warning for Troll Falls, citing a “grizzly bear bluff charge.”
It’s one of several similar incidents in recent weeks.
A grizzly warning was also issued for the Bill Milne trail on July 8 due to a bluff charge.
And the popular Rawson Lake and Sarrail Ridge routes were closed on July 11 after a grizzly bear with cubs charged a group of hikers.
Bluff charges typically occur when a bear feels threatened or is caught by surprise, bear safety expert Kim Titchener told CBC News after those incidents.
“If you aren’t making noise … the problem now is that bear thinks that you were trying to sneak up on them, and that means that they’re going to feel threatened,” she said.
Lessons for next time
Mah and Arnason said they realized, in retrospect, they were being too quiet on the trail.
“We were just enjoying nature and, yeah, we weren’t talking a lot, or loudly,” Arnason said.
The couple also said they wouldn’t be caught without bear spray again.
They had figured the Troll Falls trail is usually so popular with hikers that the chances of a bear encounter were low, but realize now that’s no reason not to come prepared.
They hope sharing their story will help others stay safe in bear country, and avoid similar encounters.
“To have it right on the path with you, and no one else around, and no way of defending yourself — you just feel so vulnerable,” Arnason said.
“I thought we could die. I was just shaking afterwards.”
