A university educator who was mauled by a bear while teaching a mountaineering course to a group of students in southeast Alaska was in critical condition Tuesday.
A sow with two cubs attacked Forest Wagner on Mount Emmerich, where he was leading 11 students and two teaching assistants Monday, University of Alaska Southeast spokeswoman Katie Bausler said. A student hiked down the mountain to get cellphone reception and called for help. No one else was hurt.
A helicopter flew Wagner off the mountain and took him to an Anchorage hospital, where he is in intensive care, a university statement said. The hospital said Wagner, 35, of Juneau, would not give interviews.
Wagner has been coordinating and teaching in the university’s outdoor studies program since 2006, according to his biography. He teaches rock and ice climbing, backcountry navigation, glacier travel and mountaineering.
His teaching schedule says he planned to leave the mountain by Tuesday.
The Haines Police Department alerted Alaska State Troopers to the attack Monday. After flying Wagner to the hospital, authorities took the students down from the mountain, and they spent the night in the town of Haines with another professor.
Students on Tuesday planned to take a ferry back to Juneau, about 90 miles north, Bausler said.
Wagner is the second man attacked by a bear in Alaska within days. A 77-year-old bear hunter is recovering at an Anchorage hospital from injuries he suffered when a grizzly mauled him in interior Alaska on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
And of course now they will track down the bear and kill it. Ironic how the most ardent “nature lovers” seem to have a knack for getting wild animals in trouble.
a bear with cubs? I don’t think so, or they’ll have to kill the cubs too
This must be a spectacular place to go to college. Outdoors in the mountains-could it be any better for the students? Hope the teacher recovers.
Grizzly bears will be bears! I think one of the lessons the students learned from this was to always have bear spray handy and pack significant heat (gun) when hiking in Alaska. I’m surprised that wasn’t used and that no one else got hurt. It indicates that none of the others tried to help.