Man Recounts His Grizzly Encounter

A California man said last week that he could feel the grizzly bite his head and tear off his scalp -- but his greatest concern was for his 18-year-old daughter.

Johan Otter, a 44-year-old Escondido, Calif., physical therapist, had been hiking with his daughter, Jenna, last month in Glacier National Park in Montana when he was attacked by a grizzly bear trying to protect her cubs.

Otter understood that impulse.

“Don’t get to my daughter. Just stay with me,” he recalls thinking during the Aug. 25 attack. Jenna suffered a bite on the heel, a shoulder injury and facial lacerations.

By the time Otter arrived at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center about 10 hours later, his scalp was gone and his skull exposed.

Among the injuries from the five-minute attack: five fractured vertebrae, three broken ribs, a fractured eye socket, five major bites throughout his body and a broken nose, doctors said.

Still, Otter was upbeat Friday as he talked with reporters from a wheelchair, his head supported by a metal “halo” as part of the treatment for his vertebrae injuries, his right eye red and swollen.

Otter and his daughter were about an hour and a half into an early morning hike when he saw Jenna take two steps back and heard her say, “Oh, no.”

Within half a second, he said, he saw the grizzly.

“This bear is right at me and mouth wide open,” he said. “You see the fangs, you see the huge claws.”

The bear went straight into his thigh and jostled him around, he said.

At least one of the bear’s claws went into his face and his right eye, he said.

After he fell off the trail, Otter said, the bear followed him and continued the attack, climbing on top of him.

He said he curled into a fetal position, trying to protect his head with his arms, but “I could feel the tooth going in” his head.

When the bear finally left, Otter assessed the damage. He could see the tendon in his arm and feel the bone of his skull, he said.

“You’re there but you’re not there, it hurts but it doesn’t hurt,” he said.

After calling out to his daughter and determining that she wasn’t severely injured, they both started yelling for help.

About 45 minutes later, the first of several hikers found them, he said, one even putting her body on top of Otter to keep him warm.

Otter said the numerous trail warnings that they were in bear country -- and instructions to tuck into a fetal position if attacked -- helped save the two of them.

With no neurological damage, Otter said he felt lucky.

Dr. Nicholas Vedder, chief of plastic surgery at Harborview, said that if the bear had bitten Otter’s head with just a little bit more power, she could have penetrated the brain.

Otter arrived at the Seattle hospital conscious and talking, later undergoing reconstructive surgery to replace his scalp. Doctors used a muscle from his right side and a skin graft from his thigh.

Vedder said he expected that Otter, a marathon runner, would make a full recovery and be able to participate in sports again.

After his news conference, Otter was flown to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla to continue his rehabilitation.

Otter says he still sees double from the damage to his eye and expects to be in recovery for another 10 weeks. But he plans to hike again -- even at Glacier.

Otter harbors no ill will toward the bear, noting that both he and the grizzly were trying to protect their own. The bear was not killed after the attack, he said.