does anyone know if the teens attacked by bears in AK were armed?

[gunsmith]

http://www.adn.com/2011/07/24/1983379/grizzly-sow-attacks-group-of-seven.html

I have my doubts but no phone and my pc stinks means I do not know for sure.

Sending people out in the AK wilderness without firearms seems like a pretty dumb thing to do

[Balog]

Website has annoying pop ups, fyi.

A grizzly bear sow with a cub attacked a group of teenagers on a month-long survival-skills course Saturday night in the Talkeetna Mountains, causing severe injuries to two of the hikers, according to Alaska State Troopers.



Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/07/24/1983379/grizzly-sow-attacks-group-of-seven.html#ixzz1T99FYo34

Apparently "not getting mauled by the grizzlies" was not one of the skills taught at this course. Or it was, and they all failed the final exam...

[41magsnub]

I would be very surprised if any school, even a wilderness school, would send out 16 and 17 year old kids armed unsupervised.  The article mentions that they had 3 cans of bear spray but there were no indications they used any of them.

[MicroBalrog]

Website has annoying pop ups, fyi.

Apparently "not getting mauled by the grizzlies" was not one of the skills taught at this course. Or it was, and they all failed the final exam...

To quote a Russian survival manual:

"If the bear is too close to run away, and you do not have firearms, sadly we cannot offer you any further advice."

[AZRedhawk44]

I would be very surprised if any school, even a wilderness school, would send out 16 and 17 year old kids armed unsupervised.

Lawyer-induced hoplophobia strikes again.


A month in the AK back-country in a wilderness survival situation without so much as a .22 or shotgun?

No thanks.  Every additional day raises probability of a 4-legged encounter.  30 of those days makes it statistically highly probable.  

Maybe they need to take lessons from Anthony Hopkins instead of this particular survival school.  He can deal with bears, and treacherous Alec Baldwins, in the same back-country trip.

[gunsmith]

and then dine on their furry little brains

[coppertales]

I can't believe they sent all those teens out into the back country without a guide who should have been armed.  Yo, city kids, welcome to the country and the real world.....chris3

[MicroBalrog]

I can't believe they sent all those teens out into the back country without a guide who should have been armed.  Yo, city kids, welcome to the country and the real world.....chris3

Read the article. 'Adult' guides accompanied them (some of these 'teens' were legally adults themselves, as old as 18), and left on the 24th day.

[AZRedhawk44]

The article is full of "WTF?"

Berg and Gottsegen were so badly injured that troopers decided it would be safer for responders with more medical experience and better equipment to evacuate them, Peters said.

"We did not want to make them worse," Peters said. "We felt that if we moved them, they might not make the trip back."

[snip]

Pararescuemen aboard an Air National Guard helicopter arrived about four hours later

Um... You have a helicopter.  And you either have a back-board or can improvise one in 10 minutes using hatchets, branches, and backpackers gear.  There's no excuse to wait for "professional enough" folks if they are 4 hours away.  If you can make it to a hospital close to the "golden hour" then you do it, by G*d.


Apparently the bear spray they had was not effective.  Article sounds like it was not deployed at all.  None of the victims apparently considered it a viable solution in the forefront of their mind in the midst of a life-threatening situation involving a superpredator.  Psychologically, when a 1000 pound animal is mauling you, you don't think about nice polite chemical deterrents.  You think about wishing you had Superman's Punch in your own portable hand cannon.

he National Outdoor Leadership School is a not-for- profit organization that aims to teach leadership skills in wilderness settings around the United States, according to its website.

Um.  Leadership fail on the part of the other 2 hikers with bear spray (3 of them had cannisters), or the other 4 who should have remembered that their buddies had bear spray.

[41magsnub]

I'm not saying it is right to send them out that way, it would just seem extraordinary to me that any organization would do so due to the legal risk.  Of course I wonder how the legal risk looks now and if it will turn into a damned if you do and damned if you don't deal.

I wonder if the bear spray was packed away in the back packs instead of somewhere accessible?  Reading the article it seems like it happened really fast too and unless the gun or bear spray was in the hands of the second person it wouldn't have done much good anyway.

Wait..  when did Hannibal Lector eat Alec Baldwin?  Not that I'm not supporting such a concept...  are you thinking of Ray Liotta?

[AZRedhawk44]

Wait..  when did Hannibal Lector eat Alec Baldwin?  Not that I'm not supporting such a concept...  are you thinking of Ray Liotta?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119051/


Slimy little Baldwin is doing the dirty deed with Sir Anthony's wife, and plotting to strand/kill him in the AK bush.

Sir Anthony outclasses and outwits him in every possible way and does the world a favor by ridding us of one of the Baldwin clan, and spear-hunts a kodiak in his spare time.  You don't %^&# with Sir Anthony.

[gunsmith]

I'm not saying it is right to send them out that way, it would just seem extraordinary to me that any organization would do so due to the legal risk.  Of course I wonder how the legal risk looks now and if it will turn into a damned if you do and damned if you don't deal.

I wonder if the bear spray was packed away in the back packs instead of somewhere accessible?  Reading the article it seems like it happened really fast too and unless the gun or bear spray was in the hands of the second person it wouldn't have done much good anyway.

Wait..  when did Hannibal Lector eat Alec Baldwin?  Not that I'm not supporting such a concept...  are you thinking of Ray Liotta?

IDK, I know he ate someone who he didn't like, probably not Baldwin as that would induce horrible indigestion

[HankB]

Some years ago at a hunting convention I talked to an Alaskan guide . . . he said that if you take 100 bears, 90 of them will do all they can to avoid you. Nine of the remaining 10 are aware of you, but really don't care. The last one will eat you.

Sounds like the last bear found this group.

Even as a teenager, I would NOT have been foolish enough to go into the wilderness unarmed; no weapons allowed, I wouldn't be there. 

[dm1333]

Um... You have a helicopter.  And you either have a back-board or can improvise one in 10 minutes using hatchets, branches, and backpackers gear.  There's no excuse to wait for "professional enough" folks if they are 4 hours away.  If you can make it to a hospital close to the "golden hour" then you do it, by G*d.

Without having been there I'll reserve judgment on whether that was the right call.  I can think of plenty of SAR cases that I was either on or have direct knowledge of where the best course of action was to stabilize the victim and wait until the right resource got on scene to move them. 

[Ron]

NOLS, they've been at this a long time. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong bear.

From the article:

The expeditions instruct students on outdoor techniques that will allow them to later lead their own excursions into the backcountry, Palmer said. The school has been operating in Alaska for 40 years, he said.

Saturday's bear attack is only the second in the school's history, and the only mauling involving a grizzly, Palmer said. In 2003, a black bear wandered into a camp in Utah and bit a student, he said.