Posted on 09/11/2005 4:46:29 PM PDT by Archidamus
•As he's mauled by the bear, the marathoner can think only of his youngster's safety
In the split second before he saw the grizzly's fangs, Johan Otter heard his daughter Jenna's startled voice.
"Oh NO!" Jenna Otter, 18, had been hiking just ahead of her dad as they zigzagged up the steep switchbacks of the Grinnell Glacier Trail at Glacier National Park on Aug. 25. As she turned a blind corner just above the tree line, she stumbled into the path of a sow with two cubs.
The mother bear surged straight for the man. Her teeth sank into his right thigh, and her long claws raked his face, shattering his right eye socket.
In the surreal moments that followed, he tried to keep the bear focused on himself.
"Stay with me," he remembers thinking. "Just don't go to Jenna."
And so the bear, and the 43-year-old hospital administrator from Scripps Memorial Hospital, locked in an ancient battle hardwired into each of their genes: Protect your young at all costs. Even your life.
Otter, a marathoner, threw himself 30 feet down an embankment with the bear in pursuit to try to get further away from his daughter. The bear, estimated at about 400 pounds, landed on top of his back.
She had an "out of this world strength," said Otter. "I was like a rag doll, and I weigh 185 pounds." She flung him back and forth. By then, he could feel his spine had fractured. (Doctors would later find five breaks.)
Frantic, he tried to cover his head with his arms, as hikers are warned to do by park rangers.
"I felt her tooth go into my scalp," he said. Then he felt his scalp rip clean away.
Otter recounted his ordeal last week from Harborview Medical Center where surgeons bolted his battered body back together.
With his head clamped in the bear's jaws, he could hear his skull crack. And just as suddenly, he felt the bear release him.
He lay wedged into a stream, on a small embankment 50 feet below the trail. He couldn't move. What he couldn't see was his daughter curled into a fetal position, on a ledge 20-feet above him, her eyes wide open, facing the bear. The bear clamped down — biting first Jenna's face, then her shoulder.
Jenna didn't flinch, her father recounted later. "That's courage."
The bear, finally spent, left the two alone.
The pair, bleeding and shaken, yelled for help and within half an hour, four hikers discovered them.
Jenna Otter was treated at Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Montana, and released in good condition.
Johan Otter was airlifted to Harborview. Despite arriving with his skull exposed and having lost half his blood, he was conscious.
Doctors stabilized him until Dr. Nicholas Vedder and a team of plastic surgeons could transplant a square-foot of thin sheet muscle from his right side to make a new scalp.
Otter was released from Harborview. Doctors have said they're not sure yet how much of his eye function he'll recover, but he can already wiggle his toes, so they're optimistic about his recovery of movement.
The only thing he won't get back, for sure, is hair.
That doesn't matter to Otter. "I'm so lucky," he said.
You can't just sing to it. You have to bring a guitar with you and sing all of the greatest hits by Joan Baez and Joanie Mitchell in quick succession.
These constant stories of bear attacks on people is proof of the Disneyfication of the drone populace inhabiting America.
Too many Americans actually believe real life wild animals are harmless like The Bear Jamboree, Dumbo the elephant, Mickey mouse, etc.
Yeah, the bears hate chewing on unseasoned meat.
LOL, beat me to it.
Why not just kill all the grizzlies? What do they contribute to the world? And to hell with the wacko environmentalists.
Don't remember that one. Was that over that idiot that thought he was one of the bears and did that? (And who has a film out now about his life.)
Well the last words of that guy on the video recording was something like, "Hit it with the frying pan".
I like spicy food!
"All Federal parks are slated for congressionally approved mineral exploration."
So. You say that like it's a bad thing.
America, balance and compromises.
Guns aren't allowed in National Park. I found this AFTER we toured Yellowstone in a 1984 Caddy limo (zebra striped with Budweiser frogs painted on it) and the driver said he always carried a loaded hand gun in the glove box.
Sure, but I've read about people being attacked by mountain lions in much more populated areas. Whose fault is that?
It is a bad thing. Let the friggin oil companies buy the land and fend off the grizzlies if the real issue is minerals, not petunias.
I hiked the Cut Bank creek trail on the east side of the park back in 75....one of half dozen trips there
as we were going in, an old ranger with a mule team was going in to track and kill an old male grizzly that had killed one or two girls backpackers a few days before
bet today's park rangers have little track and kill experience
anyhow....we had a 9MM SW M69....the ranger laughed at us and told us we'd only make him made....he was right of course...he was loaded with 44mag and 45-70....the right tools
nowadays i don't think you can even carry in a NP.
the good old days
No it was about this time last year, this guy was a photographer. He used to crawl up to bears and sing to them all the time. They had a thread on that last year that lasted about a week.
He was some hippie for CA that decided to go back to nature to help him cure his drug problems. A bear killed him and his girl friend. They had a video recorder on at the time, so the DNR guys got to hear the entire thing. A lot of growling and screaming and his famous last words of, "Hit the bear with the frying pan".
According to an Alaskan native I know, who used to work as a guide, there is at least one case of a one shot kill of a grizzly using a .22!
The Eskimo lady got a lucky shot off, hit the bear in the brain through the roof of it's open mouth while it was charging her.
My personal favorite for a handgun would be an AMT Automag V in .50 AE, but they are hard to find.
There are some revolvers (HEAVY!) and derringers in 45-70.
ROFLMAO....
I wonder how long the bear that ate him was stoned as a result.....
"Sure, but I've read about people being attacked by mountain lions in much more populated areas. Whose fault is that?"
People, since they chose to purchase homes in housing tracts built right up to the edge of wild nature areas known for mntn. lion population. The out of touch people have the attitude of a child bicycling, walking and jogging without mace or a walking stick(club) to scare off an attack in such areas is very naive and ignorant.
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