How do you make the already dangerous activity of rock climbing even more life threatening? Throw a bear into the mix, of course!
I don’t mean to make light of this video, because it is, in fact, one of the most horrifying videos you’ll ever see. If you are an avid rock climber, you might second guess that hobby after watching this. If you’ve never been rock climbing and you watch this, I can promise you that you never will.
Back in 2022, a man was scaling Mt. Futago in Chichibu, Japan, and his chest mounted camera captured his near death experience. As he climbed up the rocky terrain and was searching for another foothold to continue climbing up, he found himself all of the sudden staring right at the face of an aggressive bear.
In the first few seconds of the clip, things are as normal as rock climbing can be. You can hear that before the bear even comes into the picture, the man is already breathing heavily (since he’s, you know, climbing a mountain).
Just as he’s about to look for another place to hold onto to continue climbing, he hears something coming from above him, and looks up to see a bear tumbling down the mountain.
A guttural scream is instinctually released from the man as he quickly has to multitask, and by that I mean he has to not fall off a mountain AND fight a bear at the same time. The bear comes flying down the mountain, biting and chomping as it falls to a ledge just below the climber.
But the bruin quickly climbs back up to the man, who is punching and kicking (and screaming) as hard as he can. I’m sure the climber didn’t go into the day planning on fighting for his life, though once he had to, he did a very respectable job.
The defensive maneuvers by the rock climber proved to be effective enough as the bear finally gave up on the pursuit and ran away. Exhausted, the man tried to catch his breath and continued to climb up the mountain while keeping an eye out for the bruin.
Climbing a mountain and fighting a bear all in one day? Pretty impressive, but I’m sure the guy in this video would have preferred to just focus on climbing. At least he got it all on video to prove he’s one of the toughest people on the planet:
