A tourist has survived the first grizzly bear attack of the season in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. An unidentified 35-year-old man from Massachusetts was hiking in the park on Sunday when he was severely mauled. A spokesman for the park says that this a rare type of attack since the man was mauled by two grizzlies at the same time.
The hiker had a “surprise encounter” with the two bears in the Signal Mountain Area in the park. That area of the park remained closed through Monday as park rangers investigated the attack. The man was severely injured in the attack and had to be airlifted to St. John’s Hospital in Jackson, where he is now listed in stable condition.
Teton County Search and Rescue team members responded to the scene to aid the man. His injuries were severe enough that they called in a helicopter to transport him to a waiting ambulance and then to Jackson.
Grizzly bears tend to be solitary animals, so it’s rare that the man was attacked by a pair of them at the same time. One person was injured in an attack by a grizzly near Dubois, WY, last year. A woman from Kansas was killed by a grizzly in Montana in July 2023 when she had a close encounter with a mama bear and its cub. Hunters in Montana had to kill four grizzlies in self-defense during the fall of 2023.
Bear attacks in Teton County remain fairly rare. The last time a tourist was attacked in Grand Teton National Park was in 2007. Another man was attacked by a grizzly outside his home in Tetonia in 2013. A black bear shoved a camper out of their hammock two years ago in Teton Canyon but didn’t injure the man.
