Attack On Trail Prompts Bear Warnings In Alaska -- Details Of Two Runners' Deaths Are Sketchy
ANCHORAGE - A section of Alaska's popular Chugach State Park remained closed today, two days after a fatal bear attack that may have been North America's worst, and officials were urging park visitors to be slower and louder on the trails.
Killed in the park's first fatal bear attack were Marcy Trent, 77, and her son-in-law, Larry Waldron, 45, both of Anchorage.
They were avid long-distance runners - Trent held national age-group records - and were believed to have been on a training run on a thickly vegetated park trail at McHugh Creek, in south Anchorage, when the attack occurred Saturday.
Experts also believe it was the first two-victim fatal bear attack in Alaska, and possibly on the continent.
"It was one of the major bear attacks in North America, because I don't know of a situation where two people have been killed by a single bear," said Jerry Lewanski, chief ranger for Chugach State Park, a 25-year-old reserve that surrounds Alaska's largest city.
Details about the attack remained sketchy. There were no witnesses - Trent's grandson was with the victims but then fled for help - and officials had not even formally concluded that it was a bear attack.
The victims' injuries - which produced very little bleeding and only one puncture wound - were not typical for a bear mauling, said Rick Sinnott, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist investigating the case.
There was some speculation that a rampaging moose may have killed the two, he said.
Nonetheless, most signs point to a bear attack, Sinnott said. Biologists and rangers found a fresh moose carcass just off the trail, and indications are that a bear was protecting its buried food supply when the runners encountered it, he said.
In the meantime, state park and fish and game officials amplified their warnings about trail running, an increasingly popular activity in Chugach State Park and elsewhere in Alaska.
"I always tell people trail running's dangerous. They're doing all the things I tell them not to do when they're in bear country. Being quiet and silent is the worst thing to be," Lewanski said.