GOLDEN, Colo. — Apex Park in Jefferson County is closed after an aggressive bear reportedly attacked a woman along a popular trail, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) said Monday.
This marks the first reported bear attack in the state this year.
Denver7's Maggy Wolanske spoke with the woman who was attacked and followed on Monday, and shared some tips from experts on avoiding conflicts with bears. Watch her report in the video below.
The park, which has an entrance off Business I-70 on the east side and Lookout Mountain Road on the west side, is completely closed to the public.
The woman who was attacked reached out to Denver7 to share a brief video from the more than 30-minute encounter as the bear followed her down a trail. Denver7 is not naming her.
The hiker spoke with Denver7's Maggy Wolanske on Monday to share more of the experience. She said hiking around the state is the best part of living in Colorado, but this incident has left her shell-shocked.
The woman said she has hiked Enchanted Forest Trail hundreds of times. She was on the trail Sunday in the late afternoon.
"All of a sudden I felt, like, a tugging on my back," she said. "I was wearing a little Camelbak backpack and I felt something and I slid down towards the ground and I felt something. It's like a paw or claw (touched) my thigh and it just was pulling me back and I didn't know what was happening."
She said she screamed, thinking it was a person or mountain lion trying to attack her.
When she realized it was a bear, she relayed on her previous experiences with the animals, and yelled at the bear and made herself look large and intimidating.
But this time, it did not work.
"This one was not running away. It kept charging at me. It was circling around me," she said. "It kept trying to get onto the higher ground so it could, like, jump on me. I kept throwing rocks at it."
She tried to call 911, and attempted the SOS feature on her phone, but it wasn't working in that area of the park, she said. She added that she was trying to get around the bear toward the main trail, which she believed was her best chance of finding another person.
At one point, she said she threw off her backpack and the bear started to rummage through it. She ran back up the trail and it followed her at a "full speed run," she said.
As she was yelling for help, a man came running down the hill and the bear started to chase him, she said.
"Then, we were able to kind of link up and stay big together, and we had about a mile and a half where we were hiking backwards up Enchanted Trail," she said. "We eventually had another person — who heard us yelling — who joined us. So then it was three of us — me and two dudes."
The bear wasn't initially deterred, but eventually turned toward another trail.
The woman told Denver7 that she heard other hikers in that direction start to yell. At that point, she was able to connect with 911 and rangers were dispatched to the trailhead.
Moving forward, she said she will hike and run with bear mace and a Garmin with a SOS function.
CPW said this bear displayed "habituated behavior by approaching humans and following hikers." The incident was categorized as an attack, instead of just an encounter, because the bear had grabbed the woman's backpack and made contact with her leg.
"I think she's doing many good things in that video," CPW spokesperson Kara Van Hoose said of the woman. "She's making a lot of noise. She's using what's around her with the rocks and the sticks, and that's what we tell people to do all the time. If you encounter a black bear on a trail, don't turn and run because that can activate their prey drive. So, we want you to make yourself as big as possible. Hold your jacket over your head, hold your backpack over your head."
Van Hoose explained that yelling at an unhabituated bear will usually scare them and they will run away
"But bears that are habituated — their drive for food kind of overtakes anything else that they might be feeling," she said. "So they're no longer that scared of humans because they know, 'Well, I'm just going to get food. And that's my main purpose right now, is to find food.'"
CPW officers searched for the bear on Sunday night, but did not find it.
Jefferson County Parks and Open Spaces (JCPOS) posted online Monday morning that the park was closed.
CPW said a bear was spotted in a residential area nearby and the agency is investigating if it is the same one.
CPW said the public can report bear sightings to the Denver CPW office by calling 303-291-7227.
"Bear reports to CPW are high this year, likely due to the generally warm and dry winter Colorado experienced impacting natural forage opportunities for bears," CPW wrote in a press release. "This year, it is even more important that humans not provide unhealthy, unsafe food attractants for bears."
Van Hoose warned that other incidents like this are expected through the year.
"We're not definitively saying this happened because of weather or drought or lack of natural food. We can't say that for sure," she said. "So, we're preparing people that bear conflicts and bear sightings could be up this year, as we've seen in past drought years, because the natural food resources for bears were really depleted."
Wesley Larson, bear biologist and host of Tooth and Claw podcast, explained that his show covers animal attacks with a biologist perspective and how a person can trigger a specific animal reaction.
“I have mostly studied bear-human conflict,” Larson said. “That's everything from looking at different factors that might put bear and humans in the same environment, that might put bears in dangerous situations with humans. Then also looking at attacks and what we can learn from attacks and how we can prevent them in the future.”
Watching the video, Larson said this is not typical bear behavior and "there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of people that see bears every day on trails, hiking and it doesn't look like this." He believed at one point the bear got food from a human and was trying to get more.
For those enjoying nature and heading into bear country, he emphasized people should carry bear mace, hike in groups, and if a bear is continuing to follow you, that is when you need to act aggressively.
“These are really hard because it's scary and no one knows how they're going to react until you actually are in this situation,” Larson said. “I think as far as things go, she did really well. She picked up a rock. She was being aggressive. I think that things she shouldn't have done is continue backing away, because that bear just continued to follow her as she backed away.”
Below are CPW's general advice for bear encounters:
- Move slowly and casually, not directly at wildlife. Allow animals to keep you in view and do not surprise them. Avoid direct eye contact; watch from the corner of your eye.
- Face the animal and back away slowly if you can do so safely.
- Maintain visual contact with any predator so you can always see what it’s doing — but avoid direct eye contact! If you look away, the animal could move and then you will not know where it is or what it’s doing.
- Stay calm. Don’t run or turn your back — and never climb a tree.
