A grizzly bear took a bite out of an Anchorage woman Thursday near the Eagle River Nature Center.
Sarah Wallner, a volunteer with the center, was sore but otherwise in good shape after the bear bit her on the butt, according to another volunteer who came to her aid.
Wallner was jogging to the Rapids Camp yurt on the main trail and was about a mile and three-quarters from the visitors center when the attack occurred just before noon.
Paul Hanis was five or 10 minutes behind Wallner, hauling firewood to the yurt on an all-terrain vehicle. He said Wallner was on her feet, looking scared and shocked, when he caught up with her.
“She told me she had been attacked by a bear, and I thought she had just been charged until she said the bear bit her,” Hanis said. “I turned the machine around and got her out of there right away.”
Hanis drove her about a mile toward the center before stopping to check Wallner’s wounds. “Judging by the rip in her pants I didn’t think it was that bad, but then upon seeing the wounds, it was a little worse than I thought,” he said.
They continued to the center, where Hanis irrigated two deep puncture wounds.
Wallner, a nurse at Providence Alaska Medical Center, drove herself to a clinic, where she was treated and released, Hanis said.
“I talked to her last night, and she seemed like she was doing well,” he said.
State Fish and Game biologist Rick Sinnott said Wallner probably encountered a sow with a cub.
Some brown bears are already hibernating, but Sinnott said it’s not unusual for others to remain awake and on the prowl this late in the year.
What’s keeping them up?
Spawned-out salmon that migrated up creeks that feed Eagle River.
“They’re not finding live ones, but they’re certainly dead ones that they weren’t willing to eat a month ago that look pretty good now,” Sinnott said.
“We haven’t had a cold snap or a deep snow, so they’re hanging out,” he said.
The Albert Loop Trail, a trail near the visitors center that crosses the river in several spots, is routinely closed each fall because of bear activity, Sinnott said.
In 1998, a grizzly slashed the face of a hiker on the trail, the third time in three years an attack occurred on the trail. Later that same year, a bear charged two hikers, including a park volunteer.
But Wallner and Hanis weren’t near that trail Thursday, and Wallner was 150 or 200 feet above Eagle River, said Asta Sturgis, executive director of the Eagle River Nature Center.
Fish and Game biologists and Chugach State Park rangers visited the scene of the attack Thursday afternoon and found no evidence of a kill the bear may have been protecting.
“The bear just happened to be crossing through,” he said.
He said strong winds probably contributed to the attack.
Wallner was downwind from the bear, and the wind was making enough noise that any sound Wallner might have made was probably obscured, Sinnott said.
Sturgis said Wallner did the right thing when the bear charged: She fell to the ground and covered her neck. Sturgis said volunteers are trained so they know how to react to bear sightings, she said.
The main trail remains open, Sturgis said. And Hanis said anyone with yurt reservations should be fine.
“I’d be not nervous at all,” he said. “Fish and Game didn’t find a kill, and they think it was just a sow-cub issue, which could happen anywhere.”
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
