Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Noah Allaire assumed he was dreaming as he was shaken from the jaws of a massive Alaskan grizzly bear.
“I was just thinking, how is this real? Things like this don’t happen to people,” Allaire, 16, recounted from his Albuquerque home Tuesday. “It was kind of one of those points in your life like, ‘When am I going to wake up?’”
The Highland High graduate had just watched the bear attack two of his friends after the group of hikers apparently startled the bear and her cub in the Talkeetna wilderness 120 miles north of Anchorage on July 23.
The bear disappeared for a second and the group thought she was gone, but moments later she came charging back out of the brush with her eye on Allaire, swatting him to the ground with a single swipe before biting.
After the attack, Allaire lay on the ground as he looked up at the bear towering 10 feet above him. “It reared up and was standing over me on its hind legs. I just closed my eyes and I was like, all right, this is it,” he said.
But instead, the grizzly ran off again - this time for good.
The bite left two teeth holes on each side of his chest, puncturing a lung at one spot. “It’s incredible how large the bear’s jaw is,” he said. Allaire also suffered injuries to his hands and head, needing 18 staples to close the wound from the bear’s powerful paw.
When it was all over, the grizzly had injured four of the seven-man hiking group on a backcountry expedition through the National Outdoor Leadership School. Two were critically injured.
The group, which had been trained on handling bear encounters, was traveling without instructors and didn’t have a gun. Even a gun might not have helped fend off the attack, as Allaire recounts there wasn’t time to use the bear repellent spray they carried.
The animal 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,” Allaire said. "... There’s just a human instinct to either run away or go attack the bear yourself. We all chose to turn around and start running.”
Once the bear was gone, likely scared off by the number of hikers around, the group of teens turned its focus to caring for the injured. Joshua Berg, 17, of New City, N.Y., and Sam Gottsegen, 17, of Denver, were critically injured. The group set off an emergency beacon to alert a rescue helicopter as a storm rolled in. It took about eight hours for help to arrive at their camp, more than 100 miles into the wilderness.
With experience in first aid and CPR as a pool lifeguard in Albuquerque, Allaire helped bandage his critically injured partners and keep close watch on their pulses and conditions while also tending to his own serious injuries.
The group then turned its focus to protecting themselves from hypothermia after a delay in shedding their wet clothing following the attack. The seven hikers huddled in a single tent to stay warm and listened for a helicopter. They didn’t leave the tent because they feared the bears might be outside.
“It was definitely a struggle out there, waiting for the helicopter to come,” he said.
Once it arrived, it took Allaire and Victor Martin, 18, of Richmond, Calif., to the nearest hospital in Palmer, Alaska. A second medical transport helicopter was necessary for Berg and Gottsegen because they couldn’t walk. Allaire was released two days later. Gottsegen was released from an Anchorage hospital this week, while Berg remains hospitalized in fair condition. Martin was treated and released.
No regrets
Allaire’s mother, Patrica, flew to Alaska when she got the news and 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.
Allaire said he’s looking forward to hiking and camping in the backcountry wilderness again soon, but he may not be ready for another Alaska adventure where a bear attack is a “one-in-a-million” encounter.
“I’m going to keep doing it. Maybe not in Alaska, because there’s so many bears there,” he said.
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal