November 15, 2019

When Todd
and Kerri Mozinski left for the Northwest Territories of Canada for a weekslong
canoe trip, they told friends and family to expect them back in 40 days.

Five days in, sitting awake through the night as an 8’ grizzly bear circled their camp, they realized that perhaps they had misjudged that guidance. Their only mode of transportation had been torn apart by the claws of the bear — along with thousands of dollars’ worth of other essential gear and food.

The two
retired veterinarians from Colorado had dedicated their work lives to dealing
with animals. They even had other close bear encounters in their many years of
backpacking and canoe trips, but this time, they weren’t sure they would make
it out.

Trapped by a Grizzly

By the time Todd and Kerri decided to set up camp following a long day of paddling rapids and portaging, it was already 8 p.m. Keenly aware of their presence in bear country, they set up camp in a triangle; their sleeping area was 100 yards away from their cooking area, which was 100 yards away from their food storage area.   

They finished
up dinner around 9:30 p.m. when Todd saw something over Kerri’s shoulder.

“Grizzly,”
he said firmly.

Adrenaline
flowing, they grabbed bear spray, got out of the tent and began yelling and making
noise. The bear was a mere 20’ away, silently stalking the camp. It got closer,
and Todd sprayed, causing it to briefly retreat to the water.

As Todd and
Kerri tried to gather their gear, the bear approached again. Todd sprayed a
second time, and the bear backed off, clearly unhappy but not enough to retreat.
It was a habituated bear, so it was not afraid of humans and knew how to get
what it wanted.

Todd and
Kerri grabbed their packs and other essential gear and headed back to their
sleeping area to get the tent. It had already been destroyed.

“He had
broken the poles, it was collapsed, there were holes in it,” Kerri said. “All
sorts of things.”

They took
off with the gear they had and dropped it about a half-mile from the campsite. The
bear didn’t follow, but it was only a temporary reprieve. The only mode of
transportation in that area of the Northwest Territories is by boat, and their
canoe was back at the campsite.

Todd and Kerri only had one option: head back to camp, and retrieve the canoe.

The bear was
still there, and while they were gone, it had destroyed their folding canoe. Although
Todd had packed material to repair it, there was no patching the massive holes
the grizzly had created in the rubber raft material.

Knowing there would be no way out, they packed up all of their remaining gear and got as far away as they could. After about three-quarters of a mile they got to a lake that they had no means to cross, but by then it was midnight, and they finally seemed to have gotten away from the bear.

They set up a screen tent, and Kerri triggered an SOS on their inReach® Mini satellite messenger. Her hands shook as she typed messages to the staff at the International Emergency Response Coordination Center, who let them know a rescue effort would begin as soon as visibility allowed a helicopter to fly in the morning.

With the peace of mind that emergency services would be coming, Todd and Kerri sat up all night watching for the bear, knowing that if they let their guards down, they could be in trouble. It never came, so when the sun began to rise that next morning, they got out of the tent to get food.

They scanned
the area, and the bear was once again a distressing 30’ away. Todd held up the
can of spray — which the grizzly had come to recognize — and the bear walked off.

Not long
thereafter, the bear found their food and went on to spend the next several
hours tearing through it — less than 100 yards away from where Todd and Kerri
sat. They silently messaged back and forth directly with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police constable who was coordinating their rescue.

When the
helicopter appeared overhead, the bear was still nearby. The game warden and
rescue team saw the situation and moved quickly, landing the helicopter and
jumping out to whisk Todd and Kerri far from bear country.

A True Survival Situation

“Had we not
had the inReach, we would have been in a true survival situation,” Kerri said.
“This happened 5 days in to a 40-day trip. We were not scheduled to be overdue
until Aug. 25, so nobody would have been looking for us.”

And they had no feasible way out.

“With the
bear having destroyed our canoe and gotten our food, and us being a 3-hour
flight and a 500-mile canoe from the nearest city, we would have been in
trouble,” she said. “So your device truly saved our lives.”

Todd and Kerri bought the inReach device just prior to the trip, but more with the thought in mind of being dumped in a rapid or losing the canoe.

As for
surviving a bear encounter, they recommend doing research prior to heading into
bear territory,…