Alberta woman catches close encounter with Kananaskis grizzly bear on camera

On Wednesday, June 24, a woman who was out walking her dog in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country had an encounter with an aggressive grizzly bear.

Jelmer de Blois, a guide with Wilderness Escape Adventures, which provides guided camping and hiking trips in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, said the woman was out for a morning walk with her coffee and her dog, when suddenly the grizzly bear appeared a short distance away on the gravel highway they were walking on.

Video shot by de Blois shows the animal walking toward them, then quickening its pace, appearing to come within just a few feet of the woman and her dog. She yelled such things as “stop, enough, no, hey, stop it, go away, bad,” in an attempt to scare the animal away.

The bear circled the woman and her dog several times, stopping on occasion to rear up on its hind legs in the face-to-face encounter.

As the woman continued to yell at the bear, it suddenly broke away and stepped into the woods, but was still staring at the woman as she quickened her pace and managed to escape.Responding to a request from Global News, Alberta Forestry and Parks sent a written statement saying it is aware of the video and identifies Mount Engadine Lodge as the place where it occurred.

The statement said a bear warning has been put in place in the area around Mount Engadine Lodge and nearby Mount Shark Road and Rummel Lake Trail due to the incident.

The warning, posted online, says “a grizzly bear exhibited persistent, dog-focused behaviour during an encounter with a hiker and their leashed dog” and made repeated approaches, closing within approximately one metre of them.

The encounter was just one of several recent encounters that have prompted a recent string bear warnings in Kananaskis Country and Banff National Park, located west of Calgary — both popular places for outdoor activities such as hiking, mountain biking, camping, canoeing and fishing.

In another instance, Alberta Parks said a family of four grizzly bears have been frequenting a campground and a camper was forced to use bear spray to scare away one of the animals when it tore a hole in the campers tent.

Following that encounter, Alberta Parks banned the use of tents in two campgrounds, allowing only hard-sided campers to be used.

In Banff National Park, located just north of Kananaskis Country, Parks Canada staff were forced to close a large area, popular with hikers and wilderness campers, along the north shore of Lake Minnewanka after a black bear “damaged and accessed an unoccupied tent” in a backcountry campsite on June 6.

On June 13, two other tents were damaged by a bear at another nearby campsite.

A day later, on June 14, two more tents were damaged at another campground.

While there were no reports of injuries, Parks Canada immediately evacuated all campers from the area and closed the area to backcountry users.