Indian Lake

Anyone considering messing with Amy Stafford should keep this in mind: she stabbed a bear, and walked away without a scratch.

Although it is bear hunting season in the Adirondacks, Stafford, 22, and an Army Reservist, didn't set out to tussle with one. It was a case of self defense.

"I'm 5-foot-8 inches" and I can handle myself, but I wasn't looking to fight a bear," she said.

Stafford worked as a lifeguard this summer at Golden Beach, a state campground on Raquette Lake in Hamilton County. She planned a hike along the 133-mile Northville-Placid Trail as a final sojourn in a place she loves and a goodbye to the summer between graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the rest of her life.

The first two days passed without incident. Stafford started in Northville and made two overnight stops. She passed two bear hunters and only one other hiker. On Sept. 18, she was "in a zone," moving fast in a remote stretch of an area called the Blue Ridge Wilderness near Indian Lake.

"I saw the ribbons that mean there was cell service, and I stopped to check my voice mail," Stafford said. "That's when I spotted them."

They were three grown bears about 25 yards away. Stafford wasn't scared. An experienced hiker and outdoors woman, she was glad for a chance to see a wild animal. She also knew what to do. She waved her hands, made noise, jumped around and yelled at the bears. The guidebooks say not to run from a bear, and she didn't. They ran off. Stafford started down the trail again, pleased with herself that she handled the situation well, and even managed to snap a few photographs. But then the bears came back. Stafford turned around again, yelling and smashing rocks. She played music on her phone as loud as it would go. Each time she yelled, the bears dropped back, only to creep up again. One seemed more curious than the other two. When they lost sight of her because she went down a hill or around a bend, Stafford could hear the bears running to catch up, sometimes behind her on the trail, sometimes alongside her in the woods. They stayed on all fours, sometimes dropping their heads when she yelled. Occasionally they bounced on their front legs and made guttural, huffing sounds.

"I was getting frustrated, because I did everything I was supposed to do and it didn't work," Stafford said.

Her shouts of "go away bear!" turned to obscenities.

The cat-and-mouse game went on for a mile. Stafford pulled a folding knife with a three-inch blade out of her pack. She held it in her right hand along with a trekking pole, gripped between her middle and ring fingers.

"It occurred to me that if this bear attacks, I need to do something," Stafford said. "The whole time I kept thinking, if this bear wanted me, it could have me in a heartbeat. I considered throwing things at it, running at it, but I was afraid it would provoke aggression. I didn't react until I had to."

Finally, the bear that seemed to be the leader charged Stafford. She looked over her left shoulder and it was there, inches away. She turned and threw a punch with her right hand, landing the blade in the animal's jaw. It backed off and jogged away. Stafford waited until she rounded the next bend, then started running.

Three miles later, she was at the Stephens Pond lean-to, where there is a caretaker's cabin. It was only when a woman came to the door holding a toddler that Stafford realized she was still gripping the knife. There was bear blood on her hand.

"I got a few words out before I started tearing up. I thought, 'I need to sit down and breathe for a minute.' "

Officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation took Stafford's statement and told her to get rabies shots as a precaution. Even through the bear didn't touch her — its blood did. Stafford was back in the woods, hiking another leg of the trail, when the officers invited her to help them look for signs of the bears. The paw prints they saw indicated the bears were each between 150 and 180 pounds. The DEC has posted warnings about the bears at trail heads in the area. Stafford had to head home to Pennsylvania and forgo her plans to finish hiking the trail.

Next time, she's packing pepper spray.

lhornbeck@timesunion.com • 518-454-5352 • @leighhornbeck