Jon-Kyle Mohr was less than a mile from completing an epic adventure he had been planning for years: a 50-mile run from his home in June Lake, over the towering Sierra Nevada and down into the spectacular natural amphitheater of Yosemite Valley.
His long, hot and exhausting day was about to end in triumph on Sunday evening when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a huge black figure approaching him.
In an instant, he said, he felt “a sharp pain” in his shoulder, followed by a powerful shove that sent him stumbling in the darkness. As he turned, people about a hundred feet away shone their headlights in his direction, shouting, “Bear!”
And then, right in front of him, he saw the big, adult black bear. The impact had knocked a stolen bag of juicy-looking garbage out of the animal’s mouth, and it didn’t look happy. Before Mohr could fully comprehend what was happening, “it came back at me,” he said.
Mohr, 33, began screaming and banging his running sticks on the sidewalk, he said, as people from a nearby campground rushed to his aid, shouting and banging pots and pans.
It worked. The bear disappeared into the darkness. Mohr's clothes were torn and he had a few scratches, but no more serious damage was done.
Mohr said he feels fortunate. Given the staggering force of that one blow, “if it really wanted to do any kind of damage, it certainly could have.”
Black bears are common in Yosemite; hundreds live in the park. But attacks — or accidental collisions, as appears to have happened in this case — are rare. Mohr said one of the rangers who responded said he had been in the park for decades and had never seen anything like it.
Scott Gediman, a spokesman for Yosemite National Park, said he was not given permission to discuss what happened to Mohr.
Bad things sometimes happen when people get too close to bears trying to take selfies, or when they surprise the animals sniffing around in their cars or tents. But an unprovoked attack on someone walking down the street is almost unheard of, park officials say.
Mohr said the collision happened on the road near Happy Isles, not far from the Vernal Falls trailhead, one of the most densely populated areas in the park.
As of July 6, there have been eight “incidents” involving bears this year, according to information posted on the park’s website. An incident is any time an encounter with a bear results in financial loss — such as a bear breaking a car window to grab food left inside — or a bear injuring someone, which the website describes as “fairly uncommon.”
According to the National Park Service, the number of incidents is down 20% from last year, when there was a total of 38.
But bears have become more active in Yosemite Valley lately, due to a ripening crop of natural raspberries, the park service said. A sow and her cub have been seen repeatedly on the trails, in the meadows and at the popular campgrounds.
All bears you encounter in Yosemite are black bears; the last known grizzly was shot in the early 1920s. According to the website, no one has ever been killed or seriously injured by a black bear in Yosemite.
Mohr was still a bit upset in an interview Monday afternoon and searched for words to describe what had happened.
That one swipe from the bear’s powerful paw ripped through his sun hoodie and the shirt underneath, Mohr said. It also tore a few holes in his running vest. He had two good-sized scratches with some blood, but nothing too deep or concerning, he said.
An ambulance arrived and doctors dressed his wounds, but Mohr said he refused to be taken to a hospital.
Using a tracking device, rangers found a known bear nearby and began searching for it, Mohr said. They told him the bear had been tranquilized and collared earlier Sunday morning. They did not explain what prompted that action, Mohr said.
“It seems like the bear and I had a crazy few days,” Mohr joked.
As an avid and experienced trail runner, Mohr knows there are many more hazards to consider on big backcountry adventures: rolling an ankle, wandering off-trail, dangerously dehydrating in the heat. Bears are far down the list of concerns.
That's why what happened just seven-tenths of a mile from the finish was so bizarre.
According to his watch, he had started running 15 hours and 59 minutes earlier.
“It was just a very strange, random collision,” he said. “If I had rested my feet for 20 seconds longer at any point in the 16 hours, it wouldn't have happened.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
