An attack by a grizzly bear is reported to have left an Anchorage-area man dead on a primitive trail near the popular Chugach Outdoor Center about 25 miles southeast of the city across Turnagain Arm.
Details of the attack remained sketchy on Thursday.
An Alaska State Trooper dispatch, which did not identify the man, said the agency was notified late Wednesday of the attack and the fatality.
“It was reported that a Hope resident had been clearing a trail approximately a mile behind his property which is located off of Mile 8 of the Hope Highway,” the dispatch said.
A Hope resident on Thursday questioned that report, saying he believed the victim and his family have a cabin in Hope but actually live in Girdwood, the ski resort suburb about 40 miles east of the city.
Though Hope is physically closer to Anchorage, it is on the Kenai Peninsula side of the 45-mile-long Turnagain Arm and getting there via the Alaska road system requires driving around the eastern end of the Arm, climbing over Turnagain Pass, dropping down to Six Mile Creek on the other side, and then doubling back along the south side of the Arm for a total distance of about 90 miles.
That number swells in the summer, however, when many head for the Kenai to recreate. With a bounty of creeks and trails, the area is popular with hikers, anglers, mountain bikers, campers, river rafters and more.
The Chugach Outdoor Center along the highway is a focal point for rafting on the Six Mile – a world-class, whitewater stream. There are also many trails, some of them now little used, in an area which was crawling with gold miners at the start of the Twentieth Century.
Distracted by work?
Troopers provided no details on what trail the man might have been clearing.
“His wife became concerned when he was overdue and their dog, which had been with him, returned home alone,” the dispatch said. “The body was located by family and friends in the area he had been working (with the victim) deceased with wounds consistent with a bear attack.”
Troopers said the trail was described “as not ATV (all-terrain-vehicle) accessible,” which in the area in question could be due to thick alder brush and trees, rock-strewn hillside or cliffs.
The Six Mile cuts a cleft through the Kenai Mountains as it charges toward the sea. Both Alaska Wildlife Troopers and Chugach National Forest rangers were reported to be investigating at the scene of the attack on Thursday.
Much of the land in the area is in the Chugach National Forest, but there is a cluster of private property near the old gold mining community of Sunrise just north of Chugach center.
Alaska did not witness a fatal bear attack in 2019. But two people died after being attacked by grizzly bears in 2018, and two died after being attacked by black bears in 2017.
Black bear attacks are highly uncommon. There were only 10 black-bear-associated fatalities in all of North America in the past decade and one of those deaths involved a captive bear. Of the nine fatal attacks by wild black bears, however, three took place in Alaska and four in Canada.
Canadian wildlife biologist Stephen Herrero, an established expert on bear attacks, has said the data indicates black bears living in remote areas such as Alaska and parts of Canada are more likely to attack people than bears living near or within populated areas.
It is not known at this time whether the dead man was carrying any sort of protection against bears.
Grizzly bears attacks in the 49th state, unlike black bear attacks, usually happen several times per summer. The most common attacks involve grizzly bear sows with cubs who attack because they think someone got too close to their young.
Most people survive those attacks by playing dead. With the threat neutralized, a sow grizzly almost always flees with her cubs. But there have been a spate of predatory grizzly bear attacks in recent years, and wildlife authorities have begun stressing that if you are attacked by any bear that persists, you need to fight back in whatever way you can.
Others have beaten off bears with rocks or tree limbs used as clubs. Aggressive action using whatever weapon is available should always be the response to black bears that try to get too close, but greater judgment is required in dealing with grizzly/brown bear given that the aggression shown by many sows might just be aimed at protecting their young.
They have that bear’s DNA and have continued to search for her. There remains a death warrant on her head.
He did have bear spray and the entire can was used. Also a gun that he couldn’t get to. He has lived there 20 plus years and was very educated in the outdoors!
This is the most insensitive account of my poor cousins tragic loss. You should be ashamed. Do your research before writing.
I’m sorry for your loss, but there is no sensitive way to approach the manner in which bears kill.
And this research, like all research, is purely subject to the data available at the time. In the early days of this incident, government officials weren’t being very helpful in providing much of any of that.
I believe Dan deserved more attention! Dan was a great friend and this article doesn’t recognize that! You mention Dan, but no other mauling by name!
Don’t know if this was the case, however, I personally know a couple of people whose dogs brought angry mother moose or mother bears back to their owners who then had to deal with them.
Craig,
Please tell us More about this ability to link something called DNA to the sex/ gender of a Bear.
I have been told that such practice is medieval, dangerously old school.
Are today’s College trained wildlife biologists really comfortable assigning a gender to an individual based on something called DNA?
It’s almost slanderous, certainly scandalous.
Strange times we live in.
Mavo, I thought all colleges made “gender neutral” madatory?
Are we sure the death certificate dose not state “cause of death” was covid-19 related?
“Others have beaten off bears with rocks or tree limbs used as clubs.”
I can still remember a bear encounter that I had while camping in the Grand Canyon of Tuolumne down in Yosemite NP. My climbing partner woke up in the middle of the night and said “we have a large bear outside the tent”. Since it was Yosemite, we were not carrying weapons and needed to use rocks to push the bear away. The mature bear continued to circle around us in the dark for over an hour while we wound push back it’s “bluff charges” with a barrage of rocks. The whole event did not end until I started a large campfire and lit up the surroundings while my partner continued to toss rocks at the black bear. Beautiful country down in that canyon and at least a couple of wild bears still remaining.
Bryan
One Brown Bear per square mile on the Kenai? Really? What is the source of those “stats”? The Kenai Peninsula has almost 26,000 square miles. 26,000 Brown Bears? I don’t think so!
AF, I could have sworn at one time I read it or I was confusing with other locations: “The density of brown bear populations in Alaska varies according to the availability of food, and in some places is as high as one bear per square mile. There are about 3,500 Kodiak bears; a density of about 0.7 bears per square mile.
In areas with easily obtainable food, such as Kodiak and Admiralty islands, densities are as high as one bear per square mile (2.6 km2).”
So, 1,000 pardons sir if I stand corrected. I was shooting from memory.
Hmm, alone, extremely short visibility, in a fairly dense population of brownies, can’t even get an ATV through, moose calves, etc.. what could go wrong?
Stats put a brown bears per square mile on the Kenai. So, theoretically, that puts one bear in this man’s domain.
I get it and I don’t get it at the same time. Should have waited for late Fall or early Spring. Tragic.
Craig, did you ever hear what was going on on the Iditarod Trail around Meridian Lakes?
You forgot to mention that dogs often aggravate the situation with a bear encounter (rather than help).
The data is they help more than they hurt, but they can aggravate the situation.
I left it out because the dog debate seemed sort of irrelevant given the outcome. There are cases of the dog bringing a bear back to maul someone.
I am unaware of any cases of a dog bringing a bear back to eat someone. There appears to be a predatory bear involved here and in that situation the dogs role sort of becomes meaningless.
It was actually 4 bears, you or this article do not know anything about what happened. There are many things in the article that are incorrect. Your comment is very insensitive!