After years of stomping around the grizzly haunts of the wildest coast of North America without a serious bear encounter, forester Rick Rogers never imagined the first and only close call of his life would come in an Anchorage park visited by thousands of people.
On Saturday, the 50-year-old competitive skier and triathlete was run over by a grizzly as he and a running buddy were finishing a three-hour workout that took them from Hillside Park up to the base of Flattop Mountain and back.
Rogers happened to be wearing a heart-rate monitor for training at the time. He thought his maximum heart rate was 180. He later looked at the monitor and realized he'd hit 193.
The friend agreed to talk about the encounter but asked not to be identified because he hasn't told his children what happened, and he's afraid that if they find out, they'll be afraid to run and mountain-bike on local trails. The kids, he said, have already been traumatized by a bad moose encounter.
Read the full story at adn.com.