Yukon cyclist chased by grizzly bear on highway

Sierra Van Der Meer of Whitehorse says she was usually revelation someone final week that she frequency sees bears.

“I always kind of fun that they’re stealing from me,” she said.

Turns out she spoke too shortly — within days, a zealous towering biker had not usually speckled several bears while out riding, though found herself in a hair-raising “once-in-a-lifetime sprint” divided from a grizzly as it gave chase.

It happened Sunday afternoon on a South Klondike Highway, between Whitehorse and Carcross. Van Der Meer says she was roving along a roadside when she unexpected speckled a grizzly bear on a shoulder, usually a few metres away.

She was climbing ascending during a time, and motionless to spin herself around usually in box she indispensable to make a quick getaway.

Good call.

“To my surprise, it motionless to stop munching a weed and arrange of travel adult onto a highway,” she recalled. 

She suspicion a bear was maybe heedful of her and would simply travel opposite a highway and away. 

“Instead, it motionless to arrange of follow me down a hill.”

Van Der Meer says a highway had been bustling with trade that day, though there was a peace when she stumbled onto a bear. The follow continued for about 5 to 10 panicked seconds, she figures, before a minivan came around a dilemma and speckled a action.

“[The driver] sort of sped adult behind me, and a bear went afterwards into a embankment again. And after it kind of had left into a ditch, [the driver] pulled onto a shoulder and followed me another maybe 200 or 300 metres, at that indicate we finally felt safe,” Van Der Meer says.

‘Super-grateful’ for driver’s help

She doesn’t know a driver’s name, though pronounced it was a lady from Alaska. 

“She apparently knew what she was doing, and did accurately what we indispensable in that time,” Van Der Meer says.

“I’m super-grateful that she was there, since we don’t know if it would have kept chasing me if she hadn’t been there. But she positively de-escalated a conditions really quickly.”

After a lady carried on her way, Van Der Meer kept riding as her father was approaching shortly to pick her adult on his approach to Whitehorse.

Looking back, she doesn’t consider she was in any critical risk of an attack. She suspects a bear just wanted her “out of his space.”

Still, it was a scare, she says.

“So I’m going to stop bragging that we don’t see bears, since we consider maybe we did this to myself.” 

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-bear-chase-whitehorse-1.5169982?cmp=rss