Mark Stutzman

As told by James Ross Gardner

My eighteen-year-old daughter, Jenna, was a few yards ahead of me on a trail in Glacier National Park in Montana. She disappeared around a little hairpin turn in the path and a second later came back murmuring, "Oh, no" and darted past me. I stepped forward and I saw this animal running at me, mouth wide open.

I remember thinking, Wow, that's so weird, it's like a really big badger. Then its teeth were in my left thigh. I thought, How strange, I'm actually being bitten by something. The grizzly's fangs sank to my femur, and it jerked me all over the trail. I couldn't tuck into a fetal position, so my front side was exposed, and I thought, Man, it's going to rip my intestines out. So I dove off the trail, about twenty feet down.

Dense alder bushes broke my fall, and it looked like the bear might ease off. I yelled, "Jenna, come down here!" At the sound of my voice, the grizzly came charging down at me fast -- like you can't imagine how fast, like out-of-this-world fast. I curled into the fetal position. The bear's jaws clamped on my backpack and lifted me up and down. I tried to scramble out from under it but instead forced us into another tumble thirty feet down the mountain.

The fall really pissed off the grizzly. It gnawed on my head, and I could feel flesh tearing away. I grabbed the animal by the throat; its fur felt like a dirty wet dog, only thicker. I hit it with a rock, but the rock crumbled, so I wiggled back into the fetal position. Its teeth cut deep into the bottom of my skull; I actually heard bone cracking. I ripped myself loose and plunged another twenty feet down and into a crevice. The grizzly couldn't reach me. The terrain was too steep. It turned away, and a few seconds later I heard Jenna scream. And then I heard absolutely nothing.

I touched the top of my head and felt only bone. What was left of my scalp hung in front of my face, and I couldn't open my right eye. I called out to Jenna, and she called back from fifty yards away. Her injuries weren't nearly as severe. The grizzly had bitten her shoulders and head, split the side of her mouth open, clawed her back, and fled. She said she'd seen two cubs with the bear and that it was likely trying to protect its young.

I tried to crawl toward my daughter, but it hurt to move. Doctors later discovered a total of twenty-eight wounds, including a claw puncture to my right eye. One of my top vertebrae was broken in five pieces, and I would undergo multiple surgeries, including a skin graft from my back onto my scalped head. For now, I pushed my eyelid open with a bloody finger, saw Grinnell Lake shining blue in the valley below, and waited for help to arrive.

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