This is why some people can’t have nice things…
A woman named Laura Gold was trail running on California’s Mt. Wilson on the Sierra Madre trail when she came across pretty much the last thing you want to see while in the middle of nowhere, on a cliffside, all alone.
Laura said she was running down the mountain and as she made a sharp blind turn, nearly ran into a mother black bear and her two cubs. She claims she was only about 5 inches away from the mother and nearly fell off the cliff when she hit the brakes. First off, that is terrifying. Absolutely bone-chilling and I’m happy she wasn’t eaten right then and there, I mean my heart drops just thinking about what that moment but feel like.
Second off, I feel less bad for her considering what she did next…
When the mama bear didn’t attack her, you’d think she’d reverse course, make some distance between them, and wait for the bears to move on before finishing her run as fast as she could. But nope, that’s not what Laura did.
Like the stereotypical Californian that she looks to be, she whipped out her phone and began taking a video of the bears. Not just taking a video from far away though, she took a video as she kept walking down the trail towards the bears…
I mean what? Are you trying to get mauled? There’s not many things pretty much everyone on earth knows, but not messing with a mother bear while her cubs are next to her sure is one of them. You can see the mama bear continue to turn around towards her, like “what the hell you following me? Wanna catch these paws?”
She posted multiple videos to socials media of this encounter, here’s one of them.
“While I was trail running alone, I was about 5 inches from hitting momma bear after turning a tight blind corner. To prevent myself from hitting her, I stopped as fast as I could and almost slid down the mountain doing so. I had already seen the cubs, so I knew I wasn’t safe.”
STOP WALKING TOWARDS THE BEARS WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
You had seen the cubs already and still stayed in the area? This just keeps getting worse. Gosh, I’ve completely flipped from being thankful that she’s okay to almost rooting for the bear… Okay not really, I’m pretty solidly on Team Human, but come on lady, you’re asking for it.
In this clip, you can see mama actually charge at her as she continues to follow the family of bears… phone in hand the whole time (shocker).
Naturally, there were plenty of comments saying exactly what I’m saying, and she defended her actions by saying another hiker was helping her to scare the bears away and posted a video of this dude practically skipping down the path directly at the bears, which isn’t the most menacing posture, but I guess it worked since both of them lived to tell the story.
My goodness, can anyone explain the rationale here? Sure, it worked this time but that has way more to do with the bear realizing there was no threat than the behavior of the so called “dominant species”.
Please, please, if you get near a bear in the wild, don’t act like this. If it’s being aggressive towards you, yes, made a ton of noise and get as scary as possible. But if it’s not, don’t get close. Create some distance between you and just wait from it to move away. Most encounters won’t end the way this one did.
Thankfully both Laura and the other hikers were fine, but this is a prime example of how not to act around a bear. ESPECIALLY, one with cubs in tow.
