Trail runner injured by brown bear near Anchorage's Prospect Heights trailhead

A woman running alone on the Wolverine Bowl trail was injured by a brown bear Thursday, Aug. 13, deployed bear spray and walked herself out to the Prospect Heights trailhead, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said.

She was taken to a local hospital for treatment. The department did not release her name or describe the extent of her injuries.

Biologists interviewed her, went to the site of the attack, looked for the bear and other signs of activity, and collected samples. They did not locate the bear during that site investigation.

Warning signs are posted at the trailhead. The department is asking hikers to stay off closed trails and said thick summer foliage blocks sightlines, making surprise encounters more likely.

The attack follows another brown bear injury on Anchorage trails this summer. Alaska News previously covered a July 18 encounter above the Bear Valley neighborhood in south Anchorage, where a brown bear emerged from dense alders and made contact with an adult hiker traveling with another person and three dogs. Nine days earlier, a Kenai woman was seriously injured by a sow with two cubs on her own front deck and airlifted to an Anchorage-area hospital.

State epidemiologists counted 68 hospitalizations from 66 bear attacks in Alaska between 2000 and 2017, an average of 3.8 a year. Seventy percent occurred between June and September. Running or jogging accounted for 13% of non-occupational cases.

Trail users have been asking for better warning of where bears are. In an August post to Reddit, an Anchorage resident wrote that they were "getting pretty tired of unexpectedly running into bears while hiking or cycling on trails in and around town" and asked whether any reliable, near-real-time system exists for reporting sightings on popular trails.

Regional Supervisor Cynthia Wardlow, the department's contact on bear investigations in the Anchorage area, said in an ADF&G release on May 11 that "anyone who sees a brown bear in Anchorage, or any wild animal behaving aggressively or unusually, should report it immediately." ADF&G directs people to make those reports through its online wildlife reporting tool or by calling 911 in an emergency.