PARK CITY, Utah — A bear is probably not something anyone expects to see on a daily bike ride, but it's what a Park City mountain biker came face-to-face with while riding Monday afternoon.
"I was doing a little traverse around a switchback and I heard a noise behind me and I thought 'Heck, what is that, maybe it's a sweet little deer?' No, it was a bear, so we were like eyeball to eyeball," Jim Osselaer described.
Osselaer says the bear wasn't aggressive, but the first minute of his mountain encounter was scary.
"He came out of the trees, I almost crashed many times because I was seeing how far he was following, but he stopped on the trail," Osselaer said.
Osselear says there were other bikers and hikers on the popular Jenny Trail where he was biking, and he says he's not the only one who saw the animal,
"I got up to this landing where a lot of people stop for a rest and what not, and sure enough, I saw a couple other bikers come up and we were all chatting about what we saw," he said.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources say bears that live in Utah are black bears, even though their coats can appear from a range of cinnamon to brown to black. Faith Heaton Jolley with DWR says the mountains are their home, so it's important to know what to do if you ever cross paths with one.
"For black bears you stay calm, stand your ground, and give the bear a chance to leave," Heaton Jolley said. "Don't run away, don't climb a tree, they're really fast, they can run up to 35 miles per hour."
Looking back, Osselaer says he did all the wrong things, so immediately after he went home and looked up the right course of action.
"I basically rode off real dramatic like and did not do the proper thing is back up slowly and all that," he admits. "I just completely panicked I didn't do any of those things."
