{"id":12355,"date":"2016-09-18T08:05:53","date_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/after-bear-attack-guide-goes-into-woods-more-prepared\/"},"modified":"2016-09-18T08:05:53","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:05:53","slug":"after-bear-attack-guide-goes-into-woods-more-prepared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/after-bear-attack-guide-goes-into-woods-more-prepared\/","title":{"rendered":"After bear attack, guide goes into woods more prepared"},"content":{"rendered":"

After getting bit on his right leg by a brown bear sow, Michael Justa found himself looking right into the eyes of the animal \u2014 his face a mere several inches away from hers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was knocked down on my back so I kind of curled up my legs in front of me and this mama brown bear was standing over me, just looking down at me in my face,\u201d Justa said during an interview Wednesday. \u201cThen it kind of chuffed, looked up and then meandered away.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the 26-year-old\u2019s first ever encounter with a bear in the wild.<\/p>\n

Justa was one of the two UnCruise Adventures guides who were mauled by the bear on Sitkoh Lake Trail on Aug. 18 while leading a group of 22 guests. Justa was the lesser injured of the two guides. The incident was the second of three dangerous bear-human encounters in the Sitka area that month, as reported by KCAW<\/a>. The other two incidents resulted in the bear getting shot.<\/p>\n

[Sitka area sees 3 human-bear encounters in 1 month<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Justa, originally from upstate New York, was the rear guide on the hike that day; 41-year-old Anna Powers, of Hawaii, was the lead. Justa and the guests called Powers by her middle name, Marika.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw plenty of bear signs on the trail \u2014 lots of poop, lots of dead salmon. The river was really thick with fish, but we were such a big group, making a lot of noise talking,\u201d Justa described of the walk prior to the attacks.<\/p>\n

With 22 guests between them, Justa estimated being about 150 feet behind Powers during the hike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I heard a big roar, a really intense sound and the first connection I made in my brain was that it was a chainsaw \u2014 \u2018Oh, there\u2019s some logging going on. No, that\u2019s not right, it\u2019s a bear,\u2019\u201d he described.<\/p>\n

Justa didn\u2019t react immediately, thinking the situation was under control.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is probably going fine up there. She\u2019s got everybody together looking big, talking to it, and then as I kept meandering forward, people started coming back and one of them said, \u2018Bear\u2019s got Marika,\u2019\u201d Justa recalled.<\/p>\n

As he ran toward the front of the group, Justa un-holstered his bear spray, which he hadn\u2019t used since training, and took the safety off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t actually see the bear on Marika at all because the bear was already charging towards me. It closed the gap really fast, must have been five or 10 seconds,\u201d Justa said. \u201cI stood and I sprayed, and it hit the bear right in the face for a least three or four seconds. Then, it bit me in my right leg and knocked me down and bear spray got flung off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking into the bear\u2019s eyes, which Justa described as \u201cdark, black and small,\u201d he said he doesn\u2019t recall what he was thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really know, to be honest. I mean, I guess I was just kind of braced for impact; whatever was going to happen was going to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Justa said he can\u2019t be sure if the sow felt the threat was neutralized or if the bear spray actually worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I was expecting was some sort of reaction, like you or I would do if we got sprayed in the face with pepper spray, like be taken aback, and that didn\u2019t happen. It just kept coming at me, but it didn\u2019t keep attacking when I was on the ground. It just decided to walk away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As far as pain, Justa said the bite felt \u201ckind of like getting hit by a baseball,\u201d and he was able to walk immediately after so he knew nothing was broken.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went up towards Marika and I saw her and I saw what the bear had done to her,\u201d he said. Justa wouldn\u2019t describe Powers\u2019 injuries, saying it\u2019s her decision whether or not to share that information.<\/p>\n

[‘Then the bear took down the lead guide’: UnCruise owner tells the story behind bear mauling<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s totally conscious and she had done exactly what you\u2019re supposed to do. I saw her face down with her hands over her neck,\u201d Justa said. \u201cShe\u2019s a very energetic person and she\u2019s very lucid and still calling the shots, like saying, \u2018Mike, we got to get out of here. Get my first-aid kit, see if there\u2019s anybody who can help from the guests.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A trauma nurse and a medical doctor were among the group of hikers and Justa said they helped tremendously with splinting, wrapping injuries and taking her vitals, for which he\u2019s grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I have all my certification for emergency wilderness medicine, I\u2019ve never had to draw on them. I haven\u2019t encountered a lot of traumatic incidents, so to be involved in that was more shocking to me than being bitten by a bear,\u201d Justa said.<\/p>\n

He was able to make contact with the UnCruise Adventures boat and its medical team responded within 40 minutes. Shortly after, the U.S. Coast Guard transported Justa and Powers to Sitka by helicopter where they taken to separate medical facilities.<\/p>\n

Powers was medevaced to Harborview Medical Center that same evening and brought to the intensive care unit in serious condition. A few days later, she was moved out of ICU and has since remained at the hospital in satisfactory condition, according to Harborview spokesperson Susan Gregg.<\/p>\n

Justa received 12 stitches in three different parts of his thigh and calf for the one bear bite \u2014 an injury that only left behind a small hole in his XtraTuf boot and another small hole in his hiking pants. Justa was wearing both during an interview at GonZo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good pants,\u201d Justa said lightheartedly. \u201cEddie Bauer.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the mauling, Justa took two weeks off before returning to work for UnCruise. He\u2019s added more big bandages and gauze to his first-aid kit, and he\u2019s more aware of what\u2019s in his pack and where to find everything. While tending to Powers, Justa had to dump everything out of his pack to find what he needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned that you can only prepare for so much and then the world is going to happen to you, but knowing your resources and being familiar with what you have is definitely a better way to go about being prepared,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Justa doesn\u2019t think what happened to him is that big of a deal, though he said he recognizes it potentially could have been.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as bear encounters go, it luckily went really well,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody is dead, including the bear, and we were able to get ourselves out of there. None of our guests got hurt, and we\u2019re all going to be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After getting bit on his right leg by a brown bear sow, Michael Justa found himself looking right into the eyes of the animal \u2014 his face a mere several inches away from hers. \u201cI was knocked down on my back so I kind of curled up my legs in front of me and this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":12356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12355"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}