PRINCE GEORGE — An encounter that nearly cost one hiker her life: Shauna Terai was in the McGregor Mountains area Northeast of Prince George on October 12 when she came face to face with a grizzly bear.
“I just said to myself: this is it, I’m going to die,” Shauna said.
Shauna’s husband Chris Terai says the conditions were nearly pristine – clear blue skies, moderate temperatures, though windy. Shauna was pacing slightly ahead of Chris, walking through two sets of trees onto a patch of snow when she came within 10 feet of a grizzly bear. Their eyes locked, and the grizzly moved to reveal her two cubs.
“That’s where everything happened after that,” says Shauna. “I’m not going to get into all the details of everything that happened but after a little bit, she had grabbed me from behind and I just said to myself ‘this is it, I’m going to die,’ and then she dropped me.”
Shauna says she was able to crawl under a little tree where she was able to get to her inReach (a satellite communications device) to hit the SOS. Knowing there was no time to lose, Chris jumped in to confront the bear amid the chaos, knowing another attack could be fatal.
“I think one thing we do well is work together as a team. In this situation, Shauna saved me twice and I saved her twice,” he says. “It was dicey in a lot of cases but it was a better outcome then when you don’t take that kind of approach.”
“I saw the bear pull Shauna back and I heard a voice in my head say ‘get help.’ If she is to survive, you need to get help now. I managed to step away from the situation, Shauna played dead and then I heard another voice that said ‘make lots of noise.’
“So I did and I heard the bear come after me and I just kept moving forward in steep terrain. Difficult for the bear to navigate, especially after being sprayed with mace. I heard it following me for about 30 seconds and made my way out of the tree grove and went for help.”
He says he was able to use his iPhone from the area of the attack but the calls wouldn’t last for more than a minute or two. The calls wouldn’t connect so he finally decided to head back to the Farm Cabin to put more distance between himself and the bear.
Chris shouted many times to Shauna with no response.
“I knew she was either dead or playing dead. One of the two.”
Ultimately, he hiked back to the cabin, taking over an hour, and called for help, not knowing Shauna had done the same.
The help eventually arrived and Chris says their bright clothing made them easy for first responders to spot. They arrived within the hour.
“That was extremely fast. A lot of things went right for us to come out of this alive. The first responders were available. The chopper was ready. Everything was ‘go’ the moment they got the call. That doesn’t usually happen.”
They found Shauna who was wearing bright blue while Chris was wearing a bright orange hat.
“It was the bright colours that clued them into the fact that these were people,” notes Chris.
He says there’s a lesson to be learned from this, urging clothing manufacturers to create more brightly coloured apparel.
“It was the bright colours that they were able to see. Going up there in khaki or brown or black, they probably wouldn’t have found us. There was a 10 degree freeze happening there that night. We would have died.”
While Chris was seeking help, Shauna was also using know-how she’s developed over the years to ensure her survival, which included the use of satellite technology and more.
“I had a tensor bandage, a first-aid kit so that I could wrap my leg, which had been bitten by the bear.”
She also put on a hood because she’d been bitten on the head and face and got herself into a plastic bag she had brought along.
“I also had my winter gear with me so I put on my mitts and I also had a fire starter, a lighter – all the essentials for a wilderness trip – including a bright blue jacket.”
Chris says another takeaway from this is the importance of de-escalating wildlife/human encounters.
“A lot of people look at these situations and think, ‘the more we fight, the stronger we are to make it out of this. No, you’re not going to beat a 450 or 500 pound grizzly bear by fighting it. You’re going to beat it, by letting it know there’s no threat, and by backing away. And that’s what we did and that’s one of the reasons we’re here.”
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