WEBVTT - Night of the Grizzlies 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.040 Hey everyone, we want to let you know and remind 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.279 you that our first ever Stuff you Should Know episode 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:09.400 on Vinyl a podcast LP is out an available for purchase. 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.120 Yeah, and the episode is vinyl. Our episode on Vinyl 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:15.200 is now available on vinyl. If you can wrap your 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.280 heads around that. 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.160 That's right. And they're beautiful. They look amazing. We partnered 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:21.840 with Born Losers Records and they were great to work 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.880 with and it's just a real feather in our cap 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:27.160 to be able to hold some Stuff you should Know 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:27.960 physical media. 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.840 Finally, Yeah, and they make a great holiday gift for 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:32.440 the stuff you should Know fan in your life, a 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.160 great Halloween gift, a great Canadian Thanksgiving gift, a great 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:40.040 regular Thanksgiving gift. They're appropriate for all those jams. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.720 So just go to syskvinyl dot com and order yours now. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:48.600 They ship out on October twentieth. Welcome to Stuff you 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:55.000 Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.920 Hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.360 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here too, and this 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.760 is Stuff you Should Know. Let's go. How do you 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:08.360 like that one? 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:11.160 I did? I'd also like his title that Livia gave 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:13.959 this one. Yes, it's very fun. Can I read it? 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:14.440 Sure? 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.080 The Night that Transformed Bear human relations. 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.240 It's pretty straightforward and says everything you need to say. 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.280 Yeah, it's actually sadly very accurate. 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.880 Yeah. And yet despite it being that straightforward, there's a 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:33.000 pretty interesting story hidden amid those letters. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.199 Sounds like a crossword clue it does. 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.160 I feel like we should tell that story now or else? Really? 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:41.320 What are we doing here? Chuck? 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:45.039 All right, well, I think this is one of those 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.480 Unfortunately we can't just sort of play out as a 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.320 teaser to reveal what happens. I think we kind of 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.440 need to say what actually happened and then tell that story. Yeah, 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.920 all right, did you want to tease this thing out? 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.160 No, and justult. 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.360 Because what we're talking about is a very sad night 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.480 August of nineteen sixty seven when two young women, two 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:13.160 nineteen year old women were killed by two and here's 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:18.680 the kicker, two different bears in two different places in 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.520 the same National park. If it was one bear that 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.760 just went crazy or something and they were all camping together, 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.600 that would be obviously tragic, but not like, Hey, we 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:31.520 need to really look at what's going on here. And 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.320 that's what happened, because it was two bears in two places. 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:36.639 Yeah, And the reason why it was such a kicker 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.640 is because in the fifty seven years leading up to 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.200 that that Glacier National Park was a national park, only 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.560 three other people had ever been killed by grizzly bears. 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.079 And then all of a sudden, it went from three 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.799 people in fifty seven years to two women in two 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.840 separate incidents in one night. That is crazy, and it 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.720 really did kick off this a national conversation about should 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.960 grizzly bears stay alive as a species because we like 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.320 living in national parks? Do we have the right to 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.040 do that kind of thing. It's a pretty interesting story. 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.200 It's got a lot of facets to it. And I 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:12.959 feel like we should talk a little bit about grizzly 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.200 bears first, because I didn't realize that they were just 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.919 a subspecies of brown bear, although that makes a lot 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:19.440 of sense. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:24.680 Yeah, grizzlies are brown bears. They are generally darker than 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.400 brown bears in coloring. They're generally smaller. They can be 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.120 you know, a couple hundred pounds up to about six hundred, 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.280 but they And it's interesting here because I think it 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:37.080 depends on where you live and here you ask. Like, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:42.440 usually brown bears are called brown bears. When they're more coastal, 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.280 like the ones you see like grabbing that salmon out 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:46.920 of the river, you would call a brown bear. I 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.360 thought that was a grizzly, whereas if you live inland 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:53.440 and you're a bear, a brown bear, you're called a grizzly. 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.040 But then I also saw people talking about coastal grizzlies, 0:03:57.560 --> 0:03:59.360 so it may be one of those names is just 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.280 sort of been tacked onto a lot of kind of 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:02.880 brown bears. 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:06.760 Yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's confusing. 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:08.280 Yeah, but they're brown bears. 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.000 Yeah, they're brown bears, which makes them, you know, and 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.720 they're relatively small brown bear. There's a type of brown 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.040 bear called a kodiak that gets up to ten feet 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.520 tall when it's standing on its hind legs. 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:19.200 No, thank you. 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.120 Grizzlies are not nearly that big, but they're still big enough. 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.320 I mean, the males can get up to about six 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:28.480 hundred pounds, and there used to be a lot more 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.320 of them than there are today. The early nineteenth century, 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.839 I think, I think around the time of Lewis and 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.239 Clark there was an estimated fifty thousand to one hundred 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.320 thousand grizzly bears. They went all the way from Canada 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.839 down to Mexico. They were in every what's now states 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.640 along the West, all the way over to the Great Plains. 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:50.919 There was a ton of them. And then as we 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.520 started to move out there, we meaning white American settlers 0:04:54.520 --> 0:05:00.680 and colonists. Part of what that whole West were expansion 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.200 included was not just wiping out Native Americans, it was 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.400 also wiping out large carnivores too. 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.440 Yeah, like when they talk about taming the West, that's 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:11.640 what they mean. It's like, let's go out there and 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:14.720 kill things. And they did this for a few reasons. 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.880 Sometimes it was because they had cattle that they wanted 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.920 to take care of, or you know, occasionally if they 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.640 thought they were in harm's way, they might kill a bear. 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.760 But a lot of it was just that sort of 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:32.000 I was about to say human nature, but really man's nature, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.039 at least some men, not me or you, to want 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.360 to kill big, beautiful animals because they're big and beautiful, 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.160 and you know, I guess could be considered dangerous. 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:44.279 Yeah, you got to keep an eye on those people 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.760 because they can very quickly become real like most dangerous 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:48.480 game types. 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:49.920 Right, that's right. 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:53.680 So by the time nineteen sixty seven rules around, when 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.680 the two nineteen year old women who died lost their lives, 0:05:58.240 --> 0:05:59.880 and I'll just go ahead and say their names are 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:06.240 Julie Helgeson Man and Michelle Coon's. By the time they 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:10.120 died in August of nineteen sixty seven, grizzly bears had 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.640 been wiped out so thoroughly that they had a territory 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.880 that was about two percent of what it had once been. 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:21.120 Mostly they were in national parks because those were protected areas, 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:24.840 and there was something like under a thousand of them 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.160 in the entire continental United States. 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.679 Yeah, that's two percent is great when you're talking milk. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.120 It's not great when you're talking about animal populations. 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:34.280 Did you write that one down? 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:35.600 I didn't. It just gained. 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:37.040 I mean it still present. 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.360 Here's the weird thing, though, is, and it seems rather counterintuitive, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.719 there were there were more even though there were fewer bears, 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.760 there were more human encounters with these bears for this 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.360 very reason. And as we'll see, this is what part 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.320 of what led to this huge mess. And it's really 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.400 hard to if you're our age and maybe obviously younger. 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.920 You don't realize that National parks weren't always these places 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.920 where they really were smart about everything they did right, 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:12.120 because at the time, they would do some crazy things 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.720 in national parks. They would try and get bears around, 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:18.200 they would leave food out, they would There was one 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.000 story here that Livia found where and luckily a park 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.800 ranger kind of stopped this in the act. But these 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.680 parents brought a bear over with some food with a 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.080 candy bar and then tried to put their eighteen month 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.400 old on this bear's back to take a picture. 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:34.960 Yeah, there's a story in that same article about a 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.240 guy who was trying to lure a bear into his 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.080 car to get a photo of it behind the wheel. Yeah, 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.080 just people interacting with giants. Again, six hundred pound grizzly bears. 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:45.840 They can just take your head clean off if they 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:50.120 want to. But that's the thing. They are really unpredictable, 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.520 and for the most part, they're vegetarians. I think plants 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:55.920 make up something like ninety percent of their diets, and 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.320 a lot of times they're I don't want to say docile. 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:02.040 But the eight month old baby survived, and so did 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.000 the mom. And so did the dad. If that bear 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.200 had acted any differently, they wouldn't have survived. So I 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:12.480 saw that their personalities can best be summed up as unpredictable. 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:14.880 But at the time in the sixties, that is not 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.200 the impression people had of bears. They were kind of 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.320 considered a lot more gentle. There was a park ranger 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.840 who was quoted by Jack Olsen who will meet in 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:27.920 a little while, who said that on a scale of 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.120 a danger scale, where a butterfly is a zero and 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.240 a rattlesnak is a ten, the grizzlies of Glacier Park 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.680 would have to rate somewhere between zero and one. That 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.000 is entirely wrong. He really should have said they rate 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.200 between a zero and a ten. And you have no 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.720 idea which what it's going to be at any given moment. 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.520 If you encounter a bear, yeah, and you know, like 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.480 a lot of large animals like this, when there is 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.480 a you know, their accident. So I'm gonna call it 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.760 an accidental killing. Because bears weren't like, ooh, human, let 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:02.360 me eat them, like you said. They're mostly vegetarian, and 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.520 even when they ate stuff that was non vegetarian, it 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:07.800 wasn't like oh boy, let me go chow down on 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.080 that person. It was let me go chow down on 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.080 that person's steak by the fire or the fish that 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.760 they're cooking, or something like that. And so when there 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.400 is an accident, it's usually one of a couple of things. 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.840 It's either the sort of familiar scenario where you stumble 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:24.400 upon a bear and scare them, or they may have 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:26.400 their cubs around them. I be a mama with some cubs, 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.800 or it is that bear that's like, wait a minute, 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:32.360 that's my food. You're eating that fish out of that river. 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.560 I want it, so let's go. Yeah. 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.840 Apparently they defend their food like it's like with the 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.800 most jealous violence that they need to like, that is 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.280 their food, even if it's your food. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.160 Yeah, exactly, because that bear thinks it's their food because 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.599 it's their territory. And the other thing that Livia was 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.559 keen to point out, which is like it sounds sort 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:57.840 of funny at first, but it really is a thing 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.000 that you need to pay attention to, is the Yoga 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:05.199 Bear cartoon was a big thing, and Yogi and Booboo 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.440 as these sort of friendly bears going after the picanic 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:12.080 basket that came about, because that's what it was like. 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.960 It wasn't like someone said, I got this crazy idea, 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.000 let's take these ferocious animals and make them a hand 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.600 of Barbara and let's make them into a lovable cartoon character. 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:24.320 It was like, No, that's when you went to these 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.720 national parks. Like you said, people are luring bears around. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.320 They're like, ooh, take my picanic basket. If I can 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:35.240 take a picture, pick a picture, pick a picture. Yeah, 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.199 going to make that into a cla picnic thing. Anyway, 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.800 That's how things were. So that's why they made that cartoon, 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.160 and that was just sort of what was going on. 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.120 Like they literally at Glacier at one Oh I'm sorry, 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.080 this is at Yellowstone, but they were doing similar things 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:54.080 in Glacier. At Yellowstone they put bleachers up around the 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.040 open air dumps so people could show up and watch 0:10:57.200 --> 0:10:59.880 the bear show, which was bears wandering in to eat. 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.480 Yeah. So a lot of people rightfully lay a lot 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.480 of the blame for the deaths in nineteen sixty seven 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.160 at the feet of the administrators of national parks at 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.240 the time, because they were using the bears as entertainment 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:14.560 and at the very least even if they weren't in 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.520 some of the parks, they were not instructing the public 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.800 on how to interact with bears and just how dangerous 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.480 bears were. And that was a huge problem because, like 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:25.480 you said, people were treating them like they were just 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.440 these docile, gentle animals that wouldn't do them any harm. 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.520 And then the other factor that kind of gets overlooked 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.240 is that this is right after the national highway system 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:37.760 had really been developed and people were hitting the road. 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.400 So these national parks were suddenly just swamped with tourists 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.839 for the first time in their history. So people were 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.040 there were far fewer bears, but there were a lot 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.040 more people all up in the bear's grills than there 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:50.760 ever had been in human history. 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.400 Yeah, and leading up to this specific incident, and we'll know, 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.480 we'll detail a little bit more of this after I 0:11:57.480 --> 0:11:59.080 guess we'll take a break here in a couple of minutes. 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:02.520 But at Glacier there were sort of in the days 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.080 leading up, there were a lot of alarming incidences where 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:09.560 bears were becoming way more aggressive or if you're watching 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.040 a cartoon, way more friendly than they had been. There 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.199 were fires that came through the park in the summer 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.040 of sixty seven, so that shrank their habitat some and 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.719 kind of squeezed them into a smaller area. And there 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.480 was one bear in particular that had been reported a 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:27.520 few different times. I went back, I'm sure you did too, 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:32.440 and read this great original Sports Illustrated article. Who was 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:33.080 it that wrote that? 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:33.959 Jack Olson? 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:37.600 Yeah, jack Olson is kind of the standard account of 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.520 this horrific event. But this bear was an emaciated female 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:46.000 who is underweight. Had been reported a lot going up 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:50.120 to people being very brazen and you not like typically 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:52.200 when you see a bear, if you ever watch these 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.040 outdoor shows, you start yelling at the bear, like get 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:56.800 out of here, and clanking a pot and the bear 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.440 usually he's gonna leave. Bears are scared and they don't want 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.280 to be around people. But this bear was not taking 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.400 any orders and not doing any of the things that 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.000 a bear would usually do. It would just come into 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.240 a camp and start eating and not leave until they 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.200 wanted to leave. This skinny lady bear right. 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.800 So we have in the Western National Park System a 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:23.520 situation where bears have become acclimated to humans. They're totally 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.720 fine with being really close to humans, kind of not 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.640 scared of us. And then also they had become habituated 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:35.400 on human food and garbage, and they now associated humans 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.840 with food and they were no longer scared of humans. 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.760 There were a huge population of bears in the western 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.360 parks with lots of humans coming to see them. 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.360 All right, well, that sounds like a very natural place 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.760 to stop, thanks and never come back, but we do. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:54.680 We have to tell this bad story, so we'll be 0:13:54.679 --> 0:14:22.520 back right after this, all right, So we're going to 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.280 take this one horrible incident at a time, and we're 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:28.880 going to start with the story of you mentioned earlier, 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:33.880 Julie Helguson. Man, that is really hard. For some reason, 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:35.720 it is I want to say a different word, but 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:41.280 it's Julie Helgason. She was from Minnesota, and she was 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.040 nineteen years old. Along with her friend that we're going 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.320 to meet who also lost her life, Michelle Coons. They 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.960 were both working summer jobs at Glacier. I imagine in the 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.720 late sixties at Glacier it was probably pretty great. I mean, 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.680 Glacier is an amazing place even today, but back then, 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.320 I imagine it was a pretty awesome summer job to have. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.000 Yeah, So I think Julie was working in the laundry 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.960 facility and Michelle was working in a gift shop. And 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.120 that makes the whole thing even more bizarre to me 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.120 because they knew each other. They both set out on 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:17.000 separate hikes on the afternoon of Saturday, August twelfth, nineteen 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.040 sixty seven, and they knew each other well enough that 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.680 Julie and her crew invited Michelle or no vice versa. 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.600 Michelle and her crew of five other friends and a 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:33.880 dog named Squirt invited Julie and her friend I'm getting 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:39.320 boyfriend vibes, Roy duke It to join them. But Michelle 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.280 and her group were going somewhere. I think they were 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:46.000 going to Trout Lake, and Julie and Roy had been 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:47.880 to Trout Lake the weekend before, so they wanted to 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:49.840 go in a different hike to Granite Park. She La 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.360 and they all set out, and these were experienced hikers. 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:55.240 They knew what they were doing, and they were off 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.120 to have a good weekend overnight camping trip out in 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.200 the woods. In the back country is what they call it, 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:04.760 but the back country is another word for wild territory. 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.880 That's right, I imagine they you know, we say they 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.440 knew each other imagine it was a pretty tight knit 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.560 group back then. There are many many more employees now 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.360 at these national parks and there were back then, and 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:18.960 you know these they were the same age, and they 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:23.200 were teens working this like amazing summer job. So we're 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.560 talking about Helgeson and du Kat at this point, they 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.120 hitchhiked to the and if you've ever driven down this road, 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.120 it's amazing. It's called going to the Sun road. The 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:37.200 main roadways it is, but it's really great. Well it's 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:38.960 really not because you don't actually go to the sun 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.360 it we'd be going toward the Sun road would be 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.680 what it should be called. But they went to spend 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.720 the night at this chalet initially, but the chalet was full, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:50.600 and so back in the days where when you could 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:54.040 be surprised by something like that, and when they got there, 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:55.920 they they saw it was full and they said, all right, 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.200 well we'll just go camp about five hundred yards away. 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.280 We'll go camp in the woods sort of the immediate backcountry, 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.600 and they ate dinner, they watched the sunset off that road, 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.639 and they take it. They didn't have tents because they 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:10.280 thought they were going to be the chalet. No, so 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.439 they just bedded down in their sleeping bags on the 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:13.320 ground outside. 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:18.280 I've seen sleeping bag. Oh, that's why I took it 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:19.640 to possibly be her boyfriend. 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:21.960 But you could have zipped them together. That'll move. 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.960 There's one thing that yeah, I guess so I forgot 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.320 you could do that. There's one thing we should say 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.439 about the chalet Granite Park chalet that they hiked to 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.639 and were camping near. That was the site of a 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.880 purposeful feeding area that the managers of the chalet were 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:42.600 throwing out food scraps to attract the bears for the 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:45.800 entertainment of their guests. And just four days before this, 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.359 some rangers had visited Granite Park chalet saw what they 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.960 were doing and we're like, you can't do that, stop 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.160 doing that, And the manager were like, sure, sure, we'll 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.160 definitely stop doing that. So these guys are open air 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:01.400 camping about five football fields away from that very shellet. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.360 That's right. So after they're in their bags at night, 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.000 just after midnight, a bear arrived, grizzly bear to their 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.120 camping spot. And you know, some of this stuff has 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.240 come out later in different forms, whether it was interviews 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.920 with survivors after the fact, or that sports Illustrated story 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:23.360 or them writing about it years later, and they've tried 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.600 to piece it together as best they can. But I 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:27.840 did see some of the details kind of varied here 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.080 and there among the accounts. But what we do know 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:34.240 is that Ducott said later on that Julie had seen 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:36.840 the bear and woke him up and said, hey, there's 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.680 a bear here. And from what I read in Sports Illustrated, 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:42.359 it was about ten feet away, but it was definitely 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:45.840 a bear, and so she's like played dead. The bear 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.040 did not fall for that and began mauling Ducott got 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.399 to his arms, his legs and his back and then 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:58.080 left him alone and then dragged poor Julie Helgeson off. 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.399 Yeah, and so Ducott and there were other people camping nearby, 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.960 and you know, the chalet was five football fields away, 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:07.040 but there was probably help there. So they were screaming there, 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.480 using their flashlights to flash sos and they managed to 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.879 get the attention of some people who called for a helicopter, 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.680 and they came and got Ducat and he said, well, 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.920 don't forget Julie. She's out there somewhere. Apparently a ranger 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:23.840 who would have been in charge of sending out the 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:29.359 search party waited about two hours before he finally said, okay, 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:31.320 let's go out and find her because he was concerned 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.600 about putting other people's lives in danger, additional lives and 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.240 danger searching for her because we might run into that 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:42.040 bear and that I don't know if that caused her death. 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.960 I mean, the bear caused her death, but that might 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.280 have helped seal her fate. Two hours, Yeah, that was 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.720 two hours they finally found her. This happened just after midnight. Remember. 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.000 They finally found her and got her to the chalet 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:58.320 at three forty five am, and she died at four 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.320 to twelve am. She we had puncture wounds to her 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:05.919 throat and lungs, but she probably had died largely of 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:10.280 blood loss and it entered shock and that was it. 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.919 So I don't you can't really say, yes, she definitely 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.320 would have survived, but perhaps her chances of survival would 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:19.680 have been higher had they gone out and searched for 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.560 and founder a couple hours earlier. 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:24.800 Yeah, I think for sure. My initial reaction was to be, 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.200 you know, like, what the heck with this ranger? But again, 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:31.440 this is nineteen sixty seven, it was a different time. 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.080 They didn't have the resources they do now they didn't. 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.200 I'm sure now if there's any kind of bear situation, 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.160 they A they know exactly what to do and exactly 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.440 how to handle it, and B they have I would 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:47.720 imagine they have all kinds of tranquilizers or just more 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:49.840 guns and stuff to deal with this kind of thing 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:52.159 that they didn't have back then. I mean, it sounded 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:54.040 like if they would have gone after this bear, it 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.000 might have been one park ranger who maybe had a pistol, 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:59.399 maybe didn't, and then a bunch of other people with 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.400 you know, baseball bats or something like. They weren't prepared. 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:06.800 So I tried not to judge too harshly that this 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:10.480 guy said, hey, let's wait, because they had never encountered 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:11.359 something like this before. 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:14.560 And I think rightfully so, like people don't usually make 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.160 decisions out of cowardice. It's normally there's some other line 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.960