The three trip leaders, myself included, crawled inside my freestanding Eureka Timberline Two—meaning designed for two people—and agreed that we three would begin our overnight sleep by lying on our left sides, inside of our mummy bags essentially canoodling. My back was tucked tightly against the ripstop nylon illusion of safety that kept the rain, the snow, and biting insects safely outside. The two other young men—whom I will call Penobscot and Rainier with respect to their homes—fell fast asleep immediately. It was a tight and necessary fit. The twenty other backpackers were students attending Montana State University in Bozeman, and we were all members of the Outing Club. It was the last night of our three-night trip in the Tetons of Wyoming. Our camp was in The Meadow between Grand Teton and Middle Teton at about 9,600 feet, just below the saddle and near the tremendous Spaulding Falls. The long and narrow drop from the top aired the water, making it safe enough to drink in those days before potable water filters were available when every backpacker carried iodine tablets. It was sweet and delicious water—the kind of water that tastes of fresh mountain wilderness.
We three leaders had mountain, camping, and backpacking skills, with dozens of merit badges between us and many weeks and months accumulated over years of backpacking and high country training. We knew the dangers of being in Grizzly Bear territory as well as knowing, teaching and practicing the rules of Grizzly Bear safety. One MSU student that I had spoken with earlier had gone into the wilderness menstruating for which she blamed the attack of a Brown Bear that tore open her tent bit her on her largest muscle and dragged her inside of her sleeping bag away from the tent, and then bit her on her shoulder. We had told our club and warned our women about menstruation before coming on the trip. We had prepared ourselves and our twenty followers well for our backpacking trip, including a meeting on bear safety and trip preparation. Everyone was handed a packing list and safety rules.
We followed those safety rules in the Tetons and we checked everyone’s pack for gear before we left Bozeman. On the last night after cooking and eating our group-dinner one hundred yards away from camp, we washed up all of our cooking gear. We set out scouts to find a strong fifteen-foot branch that we wedged under a large boulder that sat atop a huge boulder twenty feet at its peak. We lashed the branch to the huge boulder with line, stuffed all of our food, food waste, pots, pans, plates, utensils, et cetera, into stuff sacks and strung them securely from the branch, tying them off so that they hung fifteen feet in the air. Not every one cooked, but those who did—myself included—took off their cooking clothes and donned their sleeping clothes. In fact, everyone changed out their day clothes in which they had eaten and put on clothes for sleeping. We hung our twenty-three backpacks on small boulders far from camp and went to bed at nightfall. We three awoke with a start at the sound of a large and deep snort of a beast that was inches from my head. I felt my friends awaken instantly with me, but no one said a word, no one moved, and no one breathed, as if by telepathic agreement, more likely because we all knew what the other fellows were thinking. “GRIZZLY BEAR!! OUTSIDE OF THE TENT! NEXT TO US!” We froze.
The snort came again and with it came the touch of a nose on the back of my head smelling me through the nylon illusion of safety. I did not move. I did not breathe as the beast pushed her nose to my neck and laid her head against my head and smelled my sweetness from head to foot as she laid her body over against mine as she slid her soft pad of deep fur and form down my back leaning evermore into me as she smelled the all of me slowly. No one moved. No one breathed.
She lay against me and as she shifted I could feel that her huge head was beyond my little feet and that her hind feet were beyond my head. She was gigantic and soft and scary and she rolled over on me with all weight crushing the breath out of me. The breath that I had been holding, and I was pinned beneath her great weight as she rolled over Rainier and Penobscot and crushed and pinned them too. We three began to suffocate and I thought, “How utterly embarrassing the headline in my hometown newspaper would read: Three Montana State Students Suffocated to Death by Bear in Wyoming. Not mauled, not heroically eaten saving the lives of their twenty charges, but suffocated. The article would read: The other students were shocked and puzzled to find their three leaders dead. It was only later that the Sheriff determined that it was the only known case in all American history where a Grizzly Bear suffocated anyone.” I laugh now that I had this long and airy thought as the bear was killing me, and I was finally blacking out for lack of air. I remember being pinned so firmly that I could move no part of me at all. Weight and soft and darkness came, and as quickly as it came it left, as the Grizzly Bear inexplicably rolled off of me and released me and I gasped for air, and the bear, she left. She padded off on quiet feet and we still froze, and slowly thawed and sat up and whispered, “What do we do?” I grabbed my Swiss Army knife and popped open the blade; the others did the same and we agreed that we had to get our flashlights, unzip the tent, pull on our boots, and go look for the bear for fear of an attack among our charges. We never found the bear; we never told our charges. What good leader casts fear into good-heartedness and fellowship once the unknown danger has passed? We still had a trip to run, so out we packed down the mountain.
We three leaders sighed relief, as hours later we emerged into the parking lot where our bus waited. The parking lot was filled with pick-up trucks, cars, and men in boots and hats with side arms strapped to their waists by gun belts, and they carried rifles; it was a patrol of hunters. Rainier and Penobscot eyed me and I them, and they steered our followers to the bus with happy distractions, and I approached one man as he exited his car. I picked him because he was handling a ten- inch barreled 44-magnum revolver. I know because I asked him what it was—the biggest handgun I had ever seen, and why did he have a high-powered rifle, and what were the men doing there. He said, “We are here to kill the Grizzly Bear that two days ago killed that woman on the other side of the Tetons and who was reported to be moving this way.”
I went back to the bus. Only I had that news. I told the people aboard that they were hunting for a bear that had killed a woman on the other side of the mountain and looked at Rainier and Penobscot who kept their mouths as shut as mine.
As published in Senior Hiker Magazine
Rev. Peter Baldwin Panagore is the author of Heaven Is Beautiful: How Dying Taught Me That Death Is Just the Beginning, available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and remains an adventurer in the outdoor wilderness and in the interior wilderness. He holds an M.Div. from Yale University. Find his book trailer at PeterPanagore.com, and see his Maine broadcast TV show—DailyDevotions.org—founded in 1926 as First Radio Parish Church of America.