Alaska athlete uses bear spray to fend off animal attack: ‘nightmare come to life’

Klaire Rhodes was attacked by a brown bear in state park but spray helped her escape with ‘relatively minor injuries’

An Alaska marathon athlete used a repellant spray to fend off an attacking bear that officials say injured her while she ran on a popular trail recently – an encounter that she has since described as “a nightmare come to life”.

The particularly harrowing episode unfolded on 13 August, when a woman who later identified herself online as marathon winner Klaire Rhodes, 28, was running alone on the Wolverine Bowl trail in Chugach state park, officials with Alaska’s fish and game department said . A brown bear on the trail attacked and injured her, according to the agency.

She was equipped with bear spray and deployed the irritant on the animal to halt the attack – before “self-rescuing” to the Prospect Heights trailhead in the city of Anchorage.

The runner was then brought to a local hospital for treatment, officials said. Biologists interviewed her and went to the attack site to look for signs of the bear, but didn’t find any. They said they then posted warning signs at the trailhead while also reminding visitors to – among other things – carry deterrents such as bear spray.

Fish and game department officials didn’t name Rhodes in their statement on the incident. But on Sunday, she wrote in a social media post that she had been the attacked runner, adding: “I … feel incredibly fortunate that I came out of the situation with relatively minor injuries.”

Rhodes said the “most severe” of those was “a deep puncture wound” to her left hip as well as “claw and teeth marks” on her body.

“At risk of sounding dramatic but being totally honest, the moment felt like a nightmare come to life,” the professional runner’s post continued. “And yes, bear spray works.”

Rhodes recounted how “running in the Chugach is where I feel most at home”. Alluding to the bear whose path crossed with hers, she said: “It just so happens to also be someone else’s home, too, and despite all the precautions in the world, it’s just a risk to live life in the way we love.”

She also remarked, “The outcome was just about as good as it could have been, and I’m actually really proud of how I handled a completely terrifying situation.”

Having won three consecutive Mount Marathon races, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News , Rhodes said she had been preparing to race in Europe “in less than two weeks”. She said she was unsure what the attack meant for her race preparations. And she explained having mixed feelings about being able to get back to racing soon and simultaneously grappling with anxiety at the thought of again “running in the woods”.

“Strange to feel overwhelmed with gratitude to be OK and knowing I probably have some intense trauma to work through,” Rhodes wrote.

Alaska wildlife officials estimate that hundreds of thousands of bears inhabit the state. They calculate that some areas may have one bear every square mile.

The attack on Rhodes came roughly four months after a brown bear injured two US army soldiers in a mountainous training area at the Elmendorf-Richardson base in Anchorage.

A brown bear on 9 July then mauled a resident of the city of Kenai after climbing – with two cubs – over a fence into her front yard, Alaska’s public safety department reported .

Nine days later, Anchorage police said, a bear attacked and injured a woman who was hiking with a friend and three dogs.

A study by the state of Alaska’s epidemiology section, meanwhile, counted at least 68 people who were hospitalized in connection with bear attacks during a 17-year period beginning in 2000. Nearly all of the attacks in the study were by brown bears.

Neither authorities nor Rhodes provided specifics about the bear attack that victimized her. Although she said she was grateful for an outpouring of moral support she had received as word of the attack spread, she said she refused to “rehash” its details online “because the internet is a weird place with a lot of unsolicited opinions”.

“I might share the full story another time, which I know will open a can of worms of opinions on what I did or didn’t do wrong,” Rhodes wrote. “But I’d rather be in control of the narrative instead of leaving the [social media] trolls to their speculation.”