Dave Bass was thinking about what he’d do if he saw a brown bear as he ran up the new Indian Valley Trail on Sunday. He made sure his bear spray was within easy reach in the pocket of his running vest.
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“I was rehearsing, like, ‘Okay, so I should not hesitate to get it out and get the safety off as quickly as possible,’” he recounted in an interview the next day.
Bass spends a lot of time outdoors and he’s seen plenty of brown bears. He’s even been charged twice. But after Sunday’s attack, he said he’s rethinking just how he’ll be playing in brown-bear country in the future.
‘Thinking I was about to die’
Bass said just after 12 p.m., he and his labradoodle Milli were less than half a mile from the trail’s turnaround point.
“We came around the corner and there were two brown bears 50 feet away, and the sow charged me immediately,” he said.
Bass grabbed for his bear spray, but he couldn’t get the safety off. He struggled with it. He’s not sure why. Maybe it was his hands, cold in the snowy alpine.
The bear closed the distance in a few seconds. Finally, the safety popped free.
“I was able to unload less than a second of bear spray, but super concentrated,” he said. “Got her right in the face.”
He doesn’t remember much after that.
“It felt like something crashed into me,” he said. “I was thinking I was about to die, and I was experiencing a bunch of pain in my left wrist as she was biting it.”
He curled up in a ball, covering his head.
He may not remember everything, but he knows what he was thinking: “I’m about to understand what it feels like to die a terrifying death by myself.”
But then, suddenly, the bear wasn’t chewing on his arm. It wasn’t on top of him anymore. It was running off downhill. The other bear followed.
Bass took stock of the situation: puncture wounds on his left wrist. Were his tendons intact? He wasn’t sure. There were scratches on his back and his T-shirt was shredded. He felt bruised. He had bear spray in his eyes. His dog Milli was just down the trail.
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There was no cell signal, but Bass thought he was well enough to run the seven miles back to his car.
Halfway down he managed to text his wife (who happens to be an editor at Alaska Public Media).
“I told her I got attacked by a brown bear and that I was okay – like fully okay – and that didn’t make a lot of sense to her, so she had a lot of questions,” he said.
She was worried, and confused, but she said the fact that he included a brown bear emoji in the text message helped her believe he really was okay.
Back on the trail
Less than 24 hours after the attack, Bass was antsy to get back outside. His tendons were fine, his wrist was bandaged, he had antibiotics. It was sunny, and the trails were only a quarter mile from his house. He buckled his bear spray on his hip and grabbed his labradoodle’s leash.
“Come on Milli, you’re going too!”
He said he wants to make sure he doesn’t brood. It’s a kind of subtle exposure therapy to get back into the woods, like getting back onto the horse.
Brown bears have injured at least five other people in the Anchorage area this year. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has reported attacks on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, on a trail above the Bear Valley neighborhood,on the Dome Trail and near the Prospect Heights trailhead.
Bass said his experience rattled him. Surviving it has given him a new lease on life, but it may also change the way he thinks about risk.
“I’m sure I’m still going to want to go into the mountains,” he said. “I’m a little less sure that I want to be deep in the mountains by myself, out of cell phone range.”
But then he paused, squinting into the sun.
“Being by yourself is riskier,” he said. “But if I were to remove all the fun adventures I’ve had by myself over 21 years in Alaska, that would be really sad.”
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