A woman in the Hart Highway area of Prince George will be putting her passion for trail running on hold for awhile after getting treed Monday morning by a black bear sow who saw her as a threat to her cubs.
Mandy Johnson, 39, had already changed her route after seeing the footprints of a mother and cub last week while following a route between Foothills Boulevard and the Hart Highway behind the weigh scales.
"I thought, 'you know what, I'm going to just finish my run, I'm going to come out a different way and I'm going to take a different trail,' " Johnson said.
"So I took the lower trail, which usually the dirt bikers ride and quads and all kinds of stuff, figuring she wouldn't be down there."
When Johnson heard some crashing in the bush, she initially thought it was a moose she had come across a few times.
"It's really curious so it kind of follows me along the trail sometimes, it makes me nervous," Johnson said.
As a precaution, she decided to go stand by a nearby tree just in case while she waited for it to move on its way.
As the crashing got louder, Johnson thought for a split second that maybe it was a bear and moved over to a tree with limbs.
"And at that second, a baby bear comes onto the trail and I'm like, 'ohh, that's so not good,' " Johnson said. "And then comes another baby bear, and I'm like 'OK, this is really bad.' "
As Johnson climbed up a couple branches to get a view, the mother popped out of the bush.
"She took one look at me and charges across," Johnson said. "So I just shot up the tree as fast as I could possibly go."
Johnson climbed up about 10 feet but as the mother got closer and circled around, she climbed up to about the 20-foot level.
That's when the tree started swaying.
Johnson held out hope that the mother would just walk away but there was no such luck.
"She circled around my tree, huffing and growling for like 20 minutes," Johnson said.
Fortunately, Johnson had her phone with her but it took her awhile to make the right call.
She tried calling her brother, her mother, her father and her husband, none of whom answered.
She then texted her husband, who was in Victoria taking a class, to explain her predicament.
"It says 'please help me, I'm treed by a mama bear and I don't know how to get away from her, I'm really scared,' " Johnson said.
"And then the phone ringed and he went 'what?' "
After Johnson repeated her story — adding that she was yelling at the bear and throwing branches, but nothing was working — her husband told her to call 911.
Johnson hung up and, after almost dropping the phone, she made the call, using an apologetic tone because she was still unsure it was the right thing to do.
She soon discovered that not only will the RCMP respond, but so will the conservation officers and the ambulance service and will do so within minutes and with their sirens on.
Even though the officers used their sirens twice as they made their way up the path along the hydro line that Johnson had been running, the mother bear, who was within five feet of the tree, left only when the vehicles got close. The cubs, meanwhile, were nowhere to be seen.
For Johnson, a mother of three who has been running for about a year now, putting in 45 to 50 kilometres a week, it's not an experience she wants to relive.
"I thought I was going to throw up when I saw she wasn't going to leave," Johnson said. "And then, after that, my next thought was 'who's going to pick my kids up from the bus?' because if the bear eats me and my husband's out of town, the bus driver's going to phone and no one's going to answer.' "
Johnson had accolades for her rescuers.
"I was so impressed. They came out right away," Johnson said.
"The dispatch officer, she stayed on the line with me and she was trying to distract me because every time the bear got closer I was getting hysterical. She was like, 'you're doing good, it's OK, it's OK, listen for the sirens,' that kind of thing."
Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass said Johnson did pretty much everything right, but should have called 911 right away.
"It's not just about catching criminals, it's public safety," Douglass said.
"And in this case obviously, we sent six police cars up code three, public safety, because that's what we do."
Johnson will continue to go running but will stick to the pavement for the time being.
