A trail runner ran smack into a grizzly bear in Glacier National Park In Montana on Saturday morning, but both were able to run away from the incident, according to NBC Montana.
Park officials say the Kalispell, Montana, woman was running on the Huckleberry Lookout Trail when she ran into what was a young grizzly sometime before 9 a.m. The unidentified woman was running with two friends, “when she and the bear collided. The woman and the bear tumbled together off the trail. Once separated, the bear ran off,” a park release said. The woman received only minor injuries to her head and an arm, it added.
The woman managed to construct herself enough to walk back down the trail with her friends and the three met the rangers just as they were coming out of the forest. She was taken to Kalispell Regional Medical Center for treatment and evaluation.
Thankfully there were no other reports of the bear or additional encounters on the trail and the bear wandered off. Rangers have not closed the trail.
Park Traffic Getting Worse
Bears out for a jog aren’t the only thing the Montana Parks division is dealing with this week.
As Montana reopened last month to tourists, no one paid much attention to the fact that the Blackfeet Nation borders Glacier National Park and the reservation was still closed off.
The result has created a bottleneck to get into the park and long lines of cars await travelers at what is now the only entry point to Glacier Park. Tribal leaders announced they would keep the roads to Glacier, which lie on reservation land, closed at least through August.
“Our number one objective is to keep people alive,” said Robert DesRosier, a tribal leader to a reporter from the Washington Post. “We don’t want one person to die. Our elders are the keepers of the culture, and we can’t afford to lose them.”
