ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—An Albuquerque teenager who survived a grizzly bear attack in Alaska says he thought he was dreaming as the animal swatted and bit him, and that he kept asking himself: “When am I going to wake up?”
Noah Allaire, 16, and a group of friends were on a hike in the Talkeetna wilderness 120 miles north of Anchorage on July 23 when they apparently startled the bear and her cub.
Noah watched as the bear attacked two of his friends and then disappeared. But the grizzly returned moments later and charged Noah. The bear swatted him to the ground with a single swipe before biting his chest and puncturing a lung.
“I was just thinking, ‘How is this real?'” he told the Albuquerque Journal on Tuesday () in his home. “Things like this don’t happen to people.”
After the grizzly bit him, Noah said he looked up and saw the bear towering 10 feet above him.
“It reared up and was standing over me on its hind legs,” he said. “I just closed my eyes, and I was like, ‘All right, this is it,” he said.
But the grizzly then ran off for good, and Noah and his friends lay bleeding. The bear’s bite left two teeth holes on each side of Noah’s chest, and wounds on the teen’s head from the bear’s paw required 18 staples to close.
Noah said it all happened so fast that the group didn’t have time to use the bear repellent they carried.
He said the grizzly attacked the moment the first members of the group encountered it on the far side of a rock outcropping they approached while crossing a small stream single-file.
“It wasn’t like a regular bear scenario, where it’s like 100 yards out and then it roars and it charges. It was just like an immediate attack,” he said.
In all, the grizzly injured four of the seven teens who made up the hiking group. Two were critically hurt: Joshua Berg, 17, of New City, N.Y., and Sam Gottsegen, 17, of Denver.
And the teens were on their own. They were nearing the end of a 30-day course to learn how to survive in the backcountry and were at the stage of the course where they could try out their skills without adults around.
After the attack was over, the teens set up a camp and tended to the injured, making good use of their survival skills. They plugged a deep wound in Sam’s torso with a plastic trash bag secured with an Ace bandage.
They also activated a personal locator beacon to alert a rescue helicopter as a storm rolled in.
As they waited for rescue, the group focused on caring for the injured and protecting themselves from the rain.
With experience in first aid and CPR as a pool lifeguard in Albuquerque, Noah helped bandage his critically injured companions and keep close watch on their pulses and conditions while also tending to his own serious injuries.
The group fought of hypothermia by shedding their wet clothing and huddling in a single tent to stay warm and listen for the helicopter, which took eight hours to arrive.
“It was definitely a struggle out there, waiting for the helicopter to come,” Noah said.
After help arrived, Noah and Victor Martin, 18, of Richmond, Calif., were taken to the nearest hospital in Palmer, Alaska. A second medical helicopter was necessary for Joshua and Sam because they couldn’t walk.
Noah was released two days later. Sam was released from an Anchorage hospital this week, while Joshua remains hospitalized in fair condition. Victor was treated and released.
Noah’s mother, Patricia, flew to Alaska when she got the news about the attack and said she was thankful to find her son in good condition and the other hikers recovering well.
“I was just super proud of him, but also then absolutely sad for him that he had to go through such trauma and spend the night in such fear, and that we couldn’t take care of him,” she said.
Noah said he’s looking forward to hiking and camping in the backcountry wilderness again soon.
“I’m going to keep doing it,” he said. “Maybe not in Alaska, because there’s so many bears there.”
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Information from: Albuquerque Journal,
