Getting Beyond the Bear

Father-daughter grizzly attack survivors hike to the scene of their horrific encounter in Glacier

In August 2005, father-daughter hikers Johan and Jenna Otter faced down any Glacier hiker's worst fear—a charging mother grizzly defending her cubs. Johan attempted to distract the grizzly, potentially saving her life, but both incurred serious physical injuries. They described the ordeal in their own words in "Attacked!", from BACKPACKER's 2006 Survival issue.

But the mental scars would prove even more lasting. As part of moving on, Jenna and Johan returned to Glacier National Park to revisit the scene of their horrific mauling two years later. The LA Times went with them.

Jenna felt slightly disoriented: She could have been back home looking at her computer, where she and her father had downloaded the photographs from the park service's report of the incident. She couldn't believe that she was here again.

"I have to keep reminding myself that this actually happened," she said.

"And how amazing that, if it had to happen, it happened in the most beautiful place in the world," (friend and rescuer) Heidi (Reindl) said.

Johan survived major lacerations, a torn-off scalp, and skull fractures to continue his career as a successful physical therapist and continue to compete in marathons. Jenna recovered from facial lacerations and a broken back to return to dancing at the University of California-Irvine, where she goes to college.

Don't miss their incredible and inspiring survival story (but be prepared for some graphic moments).

Could you have survived a similar attack? What would you have done? Tell us in the comments section below.

Jenna Otter returns to scene of grizzly bear attack

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Friday, November 21, 2008 in: Survival, News & Events
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Return to Rancho Elvis

Homecoming notes on changing climates, home heating and fall fashion

Ahh climate change, meaning, in this case, the change in climate from late November maritime Wales to my bone dry, eerily warm Southern Utah casa. Thanksgiving is only a week away and the autumn foliage is long gone, but the nights still aren't freezing here, even at 7,000 feet, and there's nary a breath of wind. Yeah, it's easy livin' and that's cool, but the weather feels decidedly off. It's as if the whole landscape is holding its breath for a seasonal change that's stuck like a jammed bullet.

After two road weeks and a frenzied couple days of photo process, e-mails and expense sorting, I'm in post-travel fashion mode, a couch-themed guy-without-chains style my wife loathes - rogueishly unshaven in a rodent-chewed sweatshirt I scavenged from a Sierra Nevada trail, a beater parka over that, then ratty cargo shorts and puff booties. Mistress Betty's eyes roll skyward, but the ensemble is warm for core and extremities, while the shorts lend street cred and a dash of rebel mojo.

The shorts also allow me to better bake my travel-hardened legs in the warmth of our new wood pellet stove, installed only weeks ago and now heating the spacious A-frame here at Rancho Elvis with a glass-encased campfire glow. Short version: This techno caveman stove totally rocks, providing us with a cheap, green, low-footprint heat source to replace expensive oil-refined propane. I'm quite puffy about it in a look-at-my-bright-red-Prius kinda way.

It's a simple but effective burning process and totally thermostat controlled. Compressed wood pellets feed automatically from a hopper, a sprinkle at a time, to be incinerated in a turbocharged ceramic bowl. The bellows-enhanced flame tornadoes around in a soundproof glass enclosure, kind of like a cross between bonfire and ore smelter. Other fans force incoming air across heat exchangers and out into the room. The flame throws out light too, a flicker-in-the-grove ambiance without any soot, smoke-dodging, or ashtray smell.

I've already been down that road and split wood is not for me. For years I heated Fort Torrey with nothing more than pinyon logs and a space heater, but eventually I tired of crinkling newspapers in the dawn chill, and fly ash doesn't blend well with high tech computers and film scanners. So I yanked the Franklin and put in a high-efficiency propane furnace, the only gas option available out here in Hayduke misanthrope country. All was fat  for a decade, until last December when we were suddenly paying $450 a month for glorified camping gas. Not sustainable. We changed strategies to prepare for peak oil and economic slumpage.

We chose wood pellets in part because of our location near a small timber mill that specializes in salvage logging and log home building. They've got a huge stock of logs courtesy of the local pine beetles, along with multiple acres of scrap wood and sawdust which they now process into pressure-molded pellet fuel that strongly resembles dry cat food. This provides us a huge local supply of formerly wasted byproduct fuel, and we now pay about $45 a month for heat rather than $450. Its seems that even in 21st-century-bill-paying-suburbia, fire and sticks can still be survival staples. --Steve Howe

P.S. Heads up readers! It's winter and the hiking rules have changed. Weather's tougher. Packs are heavier. Days are shorter. Storms are bigger. And there's usually no one else around to happen across your bacon and save it. Winter cold also means your crisis clock counts down much, much faster anytime something goes wrong. In fact, unexpected overnights may not be survivable without extra clothing, shelter or fire. So plan conservatively and always carry enough duds, nav gear and smarts to get you secured before nightfall. Always have enough emergency gear to make it until morning if Plan A doesn't work. Winter is beautiful, and solitude is an easy call, but it's like working without a net. The only second chances you'll get are the ones you bring along.

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Thursday, November 20, 2008 in: Survival, Skills & Tips
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Staying Fit During the 9-5 Grind

A new job requires a new fitness plan

If you’ve been reading Peak Fitness for a while, you’ve probably figured out that I lead a really flexible life. I’m self-employed, make my own hours, schlep all of 10 minutes to my office, and have it easy when it comes to finding 60-90 minutes a day to go exercise. Well, that all ends tomorrow, when I not only start a job in Denver that  requires me to be at my desk during working hours each day, but I also have to deal with an hour-and-a-half commute each way from Colorado Springs.

So much for training for a marathon. And it was going so well, too. This morning I ran the fastest 9 miles of my life. Now I face 12 hours of sitting in a car and at a desk every Monday to Friday. Woe is to me, blah, blah, blah.

I know everyone out there with a regular job just smirked and is saying to themselves, “Hey buddy, welcome to the real world.” And they’re not wrong. Finding the time to exercise, heck, finding time to do anything in our over-scheduled, stressed-out world is the first and hardest step to getting started.

Now I get to find out how everyone else does it.

I do know that my disciplined approach to training—specifically for a January marathon—is going to suffer a setback. Whether that’s a week or two, I don’t know. But I’ve got a plan, and I could use your help to see if it’s got a solid foundation or whether it’s going to fall apart the minute I hear the words, “Working lunch.”

1. Chill out. Working in a new place with new people means getting to know the in’s and out’s of a place. And more importantly, it requires respecting how stuff gets done. Showing up on the first week and blowing off lunch invitations to go train for a marathon isn’t very smart. Do the lunches, order salad, skip dessert. Fit in exercise anyway and anywhere else.
2. Then work out during lunch. Blow off steam, get outside. A quick exercise session empties the mind which helps me focus on what needs to be done with the rest of the day. Eventually, I hope my colleagues understand my passion for staying in shape (see above), and we meet for mid-morning coffee breaks to connect.
3. Keep exercise short but make it more intense. 45-minutes of running, Spinning, or strength training can produce some amazing results. That is, I’ll get results if I work out hard enough. That means mixing things up with a series of 1- to 5-minute, all-out efforts on my runs every other day. This type of exercise will keep the top end of my aerobic capacity in fighting shape so that when I do have the time to go long on the weekends, I should be able to tap into a solid dose of speed and stamina.
4. Join a gym near work. The biggest reason to join the gym is for the showers and locker room that I’ll use to clean up after a run. The second reason is that some days the weather doesn’t cooperate, and in my new life where I can’t simply reschedule a workout for later in the day or week, I need a guarantee that someway, somehow, I can exercise, even if it’s on a treadmill.

 Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear it.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008 in: Fitness
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