MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - A Grizzly Demise

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories that all involve terrifying encounters in the wild. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "A Walk In The Woods" -- Two women head into the forest to collect sap, little did they know there was a monster waiting for them (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/S7VtahvTLH4?feature=shared)#2 -- "Grizzly Man" -- Bear expert pushes limits (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/AGjdQlwzbkk?feature=shared)#1 -- "Exposure" -- This story is about a man and his quest to get the perfect photo, he would eventually get it - but it would cost him dearly (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/JXDrZnrjzm0?feature=shared)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories that all involve terrifying encounters in the wild. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called A Walk in the Woods, and it's about two women who head into a forest to walk around and try to collect some sap, but little did they know they were being watched by a monster. The second story you'll hear is called Grizzly Man, and it's about a bear expert that takes too big of a risk. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Exposure, and it's about a bear expert that takes too big of a risk. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Exposure and it's the story of a man and his quest to get the perfect photo and he would eventually get it but it would cost him dearly. But before we get into today's stories

if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to buy the Amazon Music Follow button, a brand new set of AirPods, but just give them regular earbuds with the cords cut off. Let's get into our first story called A Walk in the Woods. From Wondery, this is The Spy Who. This month we open the file on Oleg Lenin, the spy who saved MI5. Lenin's actions changed the course of the Cold War in the 1970s, a Russian who defected to Britain after being caught in a love affair that shook the world. His actions triggered the biggest removal of spies by any government in history. It's a story of an overstretched security service in need of a win and a covert plan to bring catastrophe to Britain's streets. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Saved MI5,

early and ad-free with Wander E+. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts?

Free cocktails? Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right, it's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in

turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wandery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wandery app. On the afternoon of May 11th, 2015, 55-year-old Natalia was gathering sap inside of a Russian forest with her 82-year-old friend, Valya. The two of them had been coming to this grove of birch trees for many years, they enjoyed the peace and solitude of nature, and it was also a good place for Natalia to bring her little dog so he could run around while they collected the sap.

It was a perfect spring day, the weather was very mild, the sun was out, and the two friends had a great time just kind of moving around to the different birch trees using their little drills and hammers to get their taps into the tree and then they'd put their glass bottles underneath each tap to collect their harvest. And then at some point, Natalia felt like she had all the sap she would need and she began gathering up her things to get ready to leave. And as she did that, she looked over at Valia, and she had found this really big birch tree, and she had sat down underneath it, and was working hard to set her tap.

And so as Natalia registered that Valia was over here, kind of doing one more tree before they left, she began looking around for her dog. And she found her dog, and he wasn't too far away from Valia, and he was just kind of moseying around one of the trees, when suddenly, Natalia noticed the dog came to a hard stop, and it turned and looked deeper into the forest, like it had clearly registered something that had put it on alert that was out of view. And so Natalia, her view was obscured from whatever the dog was looking at. And so she put down her equipment and kind of moved between the trees to see what her

dog was looking at. And at some point her view cleared and she saw pretty far off in the forest was something huge, this dark thing kind of moving behind the trees. And suddenly it jumped out from behind the trees and ran towards the dog. It was a huge Russian brown bear. And so totally horrified, Natalia's watching this bear charge her dog. She looks over, she sees Valya, who's pretty hard of hearing, is sitting with her back to this bear and the dog still just working on this tree.

And Natalia's just frozen for a moment having no idea what to do. And then Instinct suddenly took over and Natalia just turned and began running away leaving Valia and leaving the dog. But after only running several paces she stopped and turned around and saw the bear is still trying to attack the dog but the dog is standing its ground and barking at the bear which is kind of causing it to back up and be a little unsure of itself, even though this dog is so much smaller. And still Valia is not reacting at all. She has not heard the bear, the dog, nothing. And Natalia, she's looking back knowing that she needs to do something. She can't just let her

friend and her dog get killed. And so Natalia began walking slowly back in the direction of this bear and she began screaming at Valia to get up and run with her. But the second Natalia began screaming, the bear went from looking at the dog to turning and looking at Natalia and suddenly it was like the dog meant nothing. The bear had decided it was going to go after Natalia. And so Natalia, she's staring at this bear, realizing, oh my God, it's going to charge me. But before she could even turn to run, the bear had ran at full speed and jumped at her.

Natalia turned, she tried to run, but the bear bit down on her thigh. And she felt it crush her leg and pull her to the ground and whip her up against a nearby birch tree. And she's screaming and trying to pull herself away but the bear is ripping at her leg trying to yank her back into the forest. And then Natalia she sees her little drill that she uses to set the tap in the trees and she reaches out and she grabs it and she turns and her leg is being actively eaten by this bear. And she turns on the drill and she's about to jam it into the bear's eye when the bear suddenly stands up to its full

height and then just falls all its weight down onto Natalia's chest. And immediately Natalia dropped the drill and the bear clenched down on her throat. Now at this point Valia, who again is hard of hearing, she didn't know what was going on, she turned around and saw this bear mauling her friend. And so what does she do? She runs over to this bear right behind it and begins pummeling this bear and screaming at it to get off her friend. And the bear who barely registers Valia hitting it, it just lets go of Natalia for a second,

it turns around, and you gotta remember this bear has been eating Natalia, its face is covered in her blood, and it turns and looks at Valia, and Valia she's terrified, she begins stumbling backwards, and the bear is clearly about to jump on Valia when Natalia, who's barely alive, she sees this happening, and she just begins screaming at this bear while she's laying there bleeding out, trying to attract the bear to come back and keep eating her to spare Valia. And it works. The bear, hearing Natalia screaming behind it, forgets about Valia and turns back around

and resumes eating Natalia. And then just seconds later the bear actually lifted up Natalia by her neck and it ran off into the woods carrying her. And so Valia is just left watching this happen. She knows she's not going to be able to stop this bear and so she just begins running back towards the car which was not that far from where they were. And when she got out there she grabbed her phone and she called the authorities. About an hour and a half later hunters sent by the police along with animal control arrived at this parking lot and they found Valya who was totally in shock and she would tell the hunters and animal control where this birch tree grove was, where all this happened. And a moment later, the authorities headed into the woods and after arriving at the birch tree

grove, they actually saw the bear. It was by itself and it turned and looked at them and it began charging them. And they all raised their rifles and they fired at the bear. And they shot it enough times that the bear collapsed right in front of them and then they shot it one more time to make sure the bear was dead. But there was no sign of Natalia anywhere. But then suddenly the authorities turned and saw something move off in the distance and out from behind a tree came Natalia's little dog. It had somehow not sustained any injuries from this bear even though the bear had originally

gone after the dog, and the dog it came up to the authorities and then quickly doubled back behind a tree. And so kind of operating on instinct, the group followed the dog around the tree and they saw the dog was closely guarding this kind of mound that was covered in sticks and leaves and dirt. And so one of the hunters walked over and looked down and they realized there was a person underneath this mound. It was Natalia. They pulled off all of the dirt and the twigs and they found her absolutely destroyed mauled body. But Natalia was actually still alive. Brown bears are notorious for eating their prey while they are still alive, and in many cases they will gravely wound their prey, but not let it die, because then the meat is fresher when they come back and eat it later.

And so bears will wound their prey and then basically bury them, cover them up with sticks and dirt, kind of like putting it in the fridge, and then come back and eat them later on. And so Natalia was earmarked to be eaten later because she was still alive and buried. Natalia was rushed out of the forest to a nearby hospital and she would stay there for several weeks because she had serious, serious injuries from this bear. All over her body were these huge bite marks and a lot of the flesh from her leg had been pulled off. But amazingly she would recover, although the trauma of merely being eaten by a bear has never left her. Our next story is called Grizzly Man. Known as the Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell was above all else a huge bear enthusiast.

His passion for these creatures led to a passion for environmentalism and for documentary filmmaking, the subject of which were the grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska. And so starting in the late 1980s, Treadwell began going to Katmai National Park and setting up a camp there for the whole summer and filming all of his interactions with the grizzly bears. During the first half of the summer, Treadwell would stay in an area that he referred to as the Grizzly Sanctuary. It was this area near Hallow Bay. It was this big, open, green field. And all the grizzly bears seemed to just converge on this one area and kind of mosey around and be lazy. They were not aggressive at all towards Treadwell, and so he could walk up fairly close to them and just shoot great footage of these huge animals.

During the second half of the summer, he would leave the Grizzly Sanctuary and go south to an area called Calflea Bay. It was a much more densely forested area with lots of grizzly bear trails. Treadwell could use vegetation to get right up close to some of these bears without them necessarily seeing him. He referred to this area as the grizzly maze. Treadwell developed a fairly bad reputation amongst the park rangers of Katmai National Park because he was pretty reckless about how he interacted with these animals. I mean they are big wild predators and he would get right up close and in their personal

space and every time he was just rolling the dice because eventually they thought something bad was going to happen to him. Treadwell believed he was taking every precaution and that what he was doing was safe. But Treadwell had become very emotionally connected to the grizzly bears he was seeing at Katmai National Park. He felt so comfortable with them that he would actually walk up sometimes and pet and goof around with the bear cubs. And for whatever reason, the grizzly bear parents would not harm him. And so he felt like he was kind of one of them and they respected him and they welcomed him into their environment. Normally, whenever Treadwell went to Alaska for the summer, he would go alone. It was just him and his camera. But at the end of the summer in October 2003,

when normally Timothy would leave Alaska because October is the time when the Grizzlies become more aggressive because they're trying to eat as much food as they can before going into hibernation, Timothy decides that instead of leaving, he's going to extend his stay one more week and he's going to fly his girlfriend, Amy Huguenuenard into Alaska to spend that week with him. Friends and family did not think this was a good idea but Timothy was like, nope, it's gonna be just fine. I know these animals better than anybody else. They are not going to hurt us. So he flies Amy in and they set up camp along a grizzly

trail inside of the grizzly maze. Neither of them were carrying a weapon or bear repellent spray. A week later when the pilot returned to pick up Timothy and Amy, he looked up the hill and he could clearly see their campsite was not broken down. They had not packed it up yet, they were not down at the shoreline, so he gets out of his plane and he starts walking up the hill towards their campsite thinking maybe they lost track of time, maybe they don't know they're getting picked up today. And as he crests the hill he sees there is a huge grizzly bear pacing around as if guarding its prey in the middle of this campsite. The grizzly sees the pilot and makes a move as if he's going to run towards him. The pilot turns, runs back to his plane and flies out

of there. And he calls park rangers and alerts them to this grizzly bear that's in the middle of Timothy and Amy's campsite. When the Park Rangers finally arrived and made their way up to the campsite, they could tell right away that Timothy and Amy were deceased. Their remains were scattered all around this campsite. It was clear that a grizzly bear or more than one grizzly bear had absolutely ripped them to pieces. However, this wasn't even the most horrifying part of this discovery. As the bodies were being taken away, the park rangers began bundling up their stuff to take with them, and they found inside the tent a camera that had a six-minute tape on it.

At first, when they hit play, they thought it was a blank tape, but it wasn't. It was just inside the tent when it was recording and so it had no visual, but then they started hearing audio. And for six agonizing minutes with a blank screen, they heard crystal clear audio of Timothy and Amy being eaten alive by a grizzly bear. The audio suggests that Treadwell had left their tent because they heard a bear outside and was attacked. And he starts screaming for Amy to come outside.

The bear has Timothy's head in its jaws and Timothy is screaming, it's killing me, it's killing me. And Amy is screaming back, play dead. And at some point it's clear that's not working. They have no way to fight the animal. Then Timothy starts yelling for Amy to run away. She's paralyzed with fear. She's screaming at the top of her lungs. And then Timothy is groaning and screaming and eventually it stops when he drags Timothy away. And then Amy doesn't try to run away. She's just kind of frozen in

terror. And you hear the bear come back and then her screams pick up and then the tape goes quiet. I'm Peter Frankapern. And I'm Afro-Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time,

somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone.

Hey, Mr. Ballin fans, here's some great news. You can now listen to all Ballin Studios shows ad free on Amazon Music. That's right. You can listen to to all Ballin Studio shows ad-free on Amazon Music. That's right. You can listen to shows like Run Fool, Bedtime Stories, and Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries without any ads. What's more, you get access to the Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, one month early and ad-free.

And all this is included with your Prime membership. You also get access to other amazing shows like Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020 Ad Free 2. You know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Immerse yourself in the world of true crime with Amazon Music with the most ad-free top podcasts. And it's all included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to Amazon.com slash ballin. That's Amazon.com slash ballin or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. The next and final story of today's episode is called Exposure. exposure.

Saturday April 25th, 1987 was a beautiful spring day in the mountains of northwest Montana. It was exactly the kind of day that 40-year-old Charles Gibbs and his wife Glenda had been waiting for for months. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the breeze was warm. And so, at around 9am that morning, Charles and Glenda had a quick breakfast inside of their house in the rural city of Libby, and then they started stuffing their backpacks full of their hiking equipment. Charles and Glenda were

going to go to Glacier National Park, which is a 1 million acre wilderness preserve with alpine meadows, forests, rivers, and lakes that are so bright and crystal blue they almost look like they're glowing. The park is ringed by snow-covered mountains and it's dotted with glaciers which are huge masses of pure ice that jut up out of the rock and make you feel like you've stumbled onto some ancient frozen planet. The park is actually so otherworldly that when Hollywood producers were looking for a location to shoot the heaven scene in the big movie What Dreams May Come, they chose Glacier National Park as their location.

And for Charles and Glenda, this place practically was heaven. It was the place they went all the time to go hiking, especially on beautiful sunny spring days. After packing all of their gear, Charles and Glenda made their way out the front door and began heading to their car, when as they were walking, Charles suddenly stopped short, shook his head, turned around, and ran back inside the house. When he came back out again, he was carrying his camera bag, and so he ran over to the car, he sat down in the driver's seat, and he grinned at his wife, and he held up the

bag, and he said, now we're ready. Both Charles and Glenda worked for the public schools in Libby. Glenda was an elementary school teacher and Charles drove a school bus. But like a lot of people who lived in Montana, their real passion was the outdoors. And for Charles specifically, his real passion was wildlife photography. He was actually a pretty accomplished amateur photographer. He'd had a couple of photo exhibits locally and he'd gotten a few of his pictures published in the local newspaper.

But what Charles really wanted to do with his photography was get one of his wildlife pictures published in a weekly publication called the Hungry Horse News. The Hungry Horse News was a tiny publication, but they had won a Pulitzer Prize, which is the highest award for American journalism. And The Hungry Horse News was famous for its nature photography. Charles had been submitting his work for years to The Hungry Horse News, but the editor kept rejecting them, telling Charles that his photos were totally beautiful, but they weren't dynamic enough.

Nothing was happening in these photos. And so that morning on the couple's drive to Glacier National Park, Charles began talking out loud to Glenda about what strategy he was going to use for his photographs during their hike. You know, what route they were going to be on and what was the best angle to take certain pictures. And as Glenda listened to Charles, she just smiled to herself because it was like, no matter how many times Charles got shot down by the Hungry Horse News,

she knew he was never going to give up. And so she loved his determination and just unflappable attitude about his craft. At around 11am, Charles and Glenda pulled off the highway and began heading towards the trailhead where they would start their hike that day, which was located at the base of Elk Mountain on the southern border of the park. The route they had chosen for that day was not one of the most popular at the park, and the reason for that was the trail was really steep and in certain parts of it it was fairly overgrown, and so really only the most

hardcore hikers would go up this trail of which there weren't that many. And so Charles and Glenda were used to being on this trail and seeing no one. But they preferred it that way. They loved being alone out in nature. Finally they reached the gravel parking lot right at the trailhead and Charles parked their car and then he and Glenda hopped out, they grabbed their bags, and then began walking on this trail. The first mile of this trail brought the couple out along an abandoned road, and then over some railroad tracks, and then out into this beautiful field full of white flowers, and then the trail really started to get difficult because it basically went straight up the side of a mountain. And as they walked up this really steep part of the trail,

Charles was non-stop taking pictures of everything he saw. There were deer and mountain goats and at some point the couple reached a clearing on this steep section where they could look down and see a lake and they saw there were beavers hard at work building a dam. And so of course, Charles got a picture of that too. Now, these were the days before digital photography, and so all these pictures that Charles was taking, he couldn't actually see. He needed to go home and develop the film to see if anything he took was worth keeping. But as Charles and Glenda continued their hike up this mountain, Charles was getting more and more excited hike up this mountain, Charles was getting

more and more excited about some of the shots he was getting. He felt like they were going to be really, really good, and Hungry Horse News was going to finally accept his work. The couple made it to the summit of this trail by early afternoon, and from up there, they had this beautiful panoramic view of all these jagged mountain tops that were covered in snow, separated by these huge valleys and prairies, and Charles and Glenda were the only ones up there, and so they had this unbelievable view all to themselves. And so the couple would eat the lunch that they brought with them while sitting on this rocky outcropping, kind of looking out over this stunning view, and then when they were

done they packed up their stuff and began heading back down, because they knew they wanted to get off of this trail and out of the park before sundown. It was just about 5pm when Charles and Glenda had reached the final slope of this steep section of the trail, and they were getting closer and closer to that big open field with the white flowers, and as they're going down this last section of steepness, Charles suddenly grabs Glenda and stops her and puts his fingers to his lips and then turns around and points behind him. Charles was visibly excited about whatever he was pointing at, but when Glenda looked in the direction he was pointing, she couldn't see anything, but she obviously knew that

whatever he was pointing at, Charles wanted to take a picture of it. Now Glenda by this point was really tired from the hiking and just wanted to go back to the car and go home. I mean, after all, Charles had taken dozens and dozens of pictures that day, like we don't need to get one more. And so Glenda would look at Charles impatiently basically suggesting like, come on, we can come back another time. But Charles didn't budge. And he looked at her like, please, I want to get one more photo.

And so Glenda kind of did one of these and was like, okay. And Charles said, thank you, I'll meet you at the car. And so Glenda stood there and watched as her husband got his camera out, turned around and began slowly making his way back up the trail. And again, Glenda's looking, she can't see what he's going to a picture of but she figured you know he had his plan and Glenda she turned around and began heading back down towards the car. It didn't take long for Glenda to get back to the car she got there right around 6pm and when she got there she hopped inside sat in the front passenger seat turned on the

radio and then she expected to have to wait for maybe another 20 minutes or so for Charles to finish up and come join her. But Glenda, after sitting in the car, was so tired that she accidentally fell asleep. And when she woke up again, she was kind of disoriented, and immediately she looked to see if her husband was in the car with her, and he wasn't. And she's looking outside, it's getting pretty dark out, she glanced at her watch, it was 7pm, which means Charles had left her for at least an hour by this point, and she's thinking, there's no way Charles would have been gone for an hour, he would never do that, he would never leave me alone like that. And so Glenda began glancing around her, kind of half expecting to see Charles just outside

of their car, you know, doing doing something but she was all alone there was no other hikers or cars Charles wasn't there and so starting to panic Glenda got out of her car and began hustling back onto the trail to go look for Charles and so she's yelling for Charles she's looking around it's getting darker and darker and there's no sign of Charles he's not calling back to her it's just just totally silent. She walks along the abandoned road. She reaches the railroad tracks. She gets into that meadow with the white flowers and still there's no sign of Charles. And she gets to the base of that steep section of the trail and she's looking up at all these trees and how dark it was getting. And she's thinking to herself, if Charles is in trouble somewhere up there, there's no way I can help him by myself in the dark with no equipment

No one knows I'm here. I mean this is an emergency and I need help And so Glenda would scream a few more times for Charles and after not hearing any response She turned and ran all the way back to her car. She turned it on and she drove to the nearest ranger station. When she got there, she ran inside and immediately told the ranger where her and Charles had been, which trail they were on, and where roughly they were on this trail when she had gone to the car and Charles had turned around and gone uphill to take a picture of something. And as Glenda told the ranger all these details about where they were inside of the park, he really started to look worried.

And when Glenda was done explaining, he told her that yes, we need to go right now and look for your husband, but I can't have you on that trail. It's too dangerous. And so this ranger had Glenda wait at the ranger station and the ranger by himself headed back to the trailhead to go looking for Charles. And so the ranger, he gets to the trailhead, he hops out, he's got a rifle and a flashlight, and he begins walking along this trail, and by now, it's dark out. And so he's looking straight ahead with his flashlight and scanning side to side, he's calling out for Charles, and he's walking this trail, he gets all the way across the train tracks, through the meadow, and he gets to the steep section, and he actually begins going up this part of the trail until roughly the area where Glenda had described Charles going one way and her going back down.

And when he got there, there was no sign of Charles, and so the Ranger just took his rifle and fired three shots into the air, hoping that that might get Charles, if he was in the area, to hear him and call out or do something to indicate where he had gone, but after firing his gun, the ranger heard nothing. By this point, it was approaching midnight, it was totally pitch black outside, and the ranger knew that at this point, Charles was missing, and they really needed to organize a true search party to try to find him, but they would have to do that the next morning when they had light again.

And so the ranger called out a few more times for Charles, and after not hearing anything, he reluctantly turned around and made his way back to his truck and drove back to the ranger station where he would tell Glenda that he could not find her husband and they would now have to wait for sunrise. At sunrise the next morning, 20 searchers arrived at the trailhead where Charles and Glenda had been, and these searchers had dogs, and all the dogs had Charles' scent from some clothes that was in Glenda's car, and so this big search team very slowly and methodically began moving down this trail.

And so they went across the abandoned road, over the train tracks, through the meadow with the white flowers, they got to the steep section of the trail, and they got all the way up to that point where Charles and Glenda had separated and Charles had gone uphill to do whatever he was going to do. And it was at that point on the steep section that one of the searcher's dogs picked up Charles' scent and took off running uphill. And the searcher, whose dog this was, took off running uphill. And the searcher whose dog this was took off running after the dog and the dog it went up for a little while up the steep rocky outcropping and then it

turned and began going down again until it reached a different meadow so not the same one they walked through with the white flowers. This was farther away to the right and in this meadow the dog who still very much had the scent began to slow down and it went straight for this tree It was kind of a standalone tree right at the base of this steep section and this tree had low hanging branches Maybe five feet off the ground and the dog went right up to the tree and then it stopped for a second and the searcher by this point had caught up to the dog and so he's looking at this tree and he sees the ground looks really up to the dog and so he's looking at this tree and he sees the ground looks really disturbed and there's deep gouges in this tree and then the dog went around this tree and sprinted another 50 feet or so and then stopped like it had found something. And when the searcher caught up to his dog he

looked down and he found what they feared the most. It was Charles and he was deceased. His body was totally mangled, his arms and legs were eaten away, there were deep cuts and gouges all over his body, and there was a blood trail from Charles all the way back to this tree. Also, just a few feet from Charles' outstretched hand was a camera, Charles' camera. Now it was obvious that something horrific had happened to Charles, and there were clear signs of a struggle that took place near this tree, and then also over here where he was found, there were clear marks on the ground,

that there was some sort of fight that happened right here. But interestingly, Charles was carrying a gun, but it appeared that he did not unholster it and he didn't fire it. Instead, it almost looked like whatever was happening to Charles, he refused to put his camera down, which is why it was so close to his hand when he finally died. And so it was decided that the only way to determine what happened to Charles would be to develop his camera to figure out what he was taking pictures of before he died. And so authorities would send off Charles' camera roll to be developed, and two weeks

later when they got it back, they couldn't believe what they saw. The photos very clearly told the story of what happened to Charles. This is what happened after Charles left his wife on that trail. When Charles stopped his wife and signaled to her that he wanted to take one more picture up the trail, he had found a photographic opportunity of a lifetime. The warm spring weather that had drawn Charles and Glenda out of their house to Glacier National Park had also woken the grizzly bears in the park from their hibernation. And what Charles had seen up the trail was a mother grizzly bear and her three cubs. The first few

photographs that Charles would take of these bears were shot from a good distance away and it just showed the mother bear and her three babies just kind of sauntering around the rocks, not really paying any attention to Charles. To Charles, grizzly bears were the most majestic creatures in nature. He didn't just love them, he viewed them as if they were sort of magical in some way. He was always going to local town meetings to speak about grizzly bear's beauty beauty and we needed to defend their natural habitat.

As such, anyone who knew Charles knew about his passion for grizzlies. And while of course Charles knew that grizzly bears were dangerous, he also thought that the bears who were very smart and sensitive could sense his own very gentle and protective feelings towards them and so if he was around them, they would never perceive him as a threat. Charles had taken some very good photos of other bears, black bears, but he had never taken what he called the definitive grizzly bear photo. And it was going to be this definitive grizzly photo of the mother and her three cubs that would finally get him a spot in the Hungry Horse News publication.

As Charles took more and more photos of these bears, you could see in the photos that Charles was getting closer and closer and closer to this mother bear and her cubs. It was obvious that he was tracking them, even as the mother bear and the cubs were clearly trying to walk away from him. Finally, when Charles got about 50 feet away from this family of grizzly bears, he must have kicked a rock or stepped on a twig that broke that startled the bears. And so the second to last photo that Charles would take of this family shows the mother bear very clearly turning around to look at Charles and she's making perfect eye contact

with him as is one of her cubs. Charles would take one more photo and in this photo you can see the bears are not just staring at Charles, they are running towards him, they are charging him. And it was likely after taking this photo that Charles realized the danger he was in. At this point Charles tried to make a run for it by running down the side of this mountain. He got down to that tree with the low hanging limbs and he attempted to climb up into it, maybe hoping he could get one more picture of this bear if they would just leave him alone.

But the mother bear and her cubs, they came charging down, they saw him up in the tree, and the mother bear began climbing into the tree and she reached Charles. Now she likely weighed about 400 pounds, and when mother grizzly bears are defending their young they are absolutely merciless. And so she must have grabbed him or bit onto him and yanked him from the tree, and Charles somehow after being pulled to the ground and getting slashed and bit by this bear, he managed to break away from her, as we can tell from the blood trail,

and he made it about 50 feet away from this tree before the bear chased him down again, jumped on top of him, and killed him. When authorities figured out that Charles had managed to briefly get away from this mother grizzly bear and made it 50 feet away from her, they wondered why he hadn't pulled out his gun and shot at the bears to defend himself. But Charles' wife Glenda said it made perfect sense that Charles had not tried to harm this grizzly bear or her cubs. He loved grizzly bears and he would never dream of leaving these three cubs without

their mother. After Charles' death, the rangers did not attempt to track down this bear and her cubs and do anything to the bears, because they felt like the bears were just acting like bears and it was Charles who was in the wrong. And Charles' family and friends would say that is a decision that Charles would definitely support. Charles' photos of the Grizzly Bear family were published in the Hungry Horse News alongside an article about his death. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bollin Podcast.

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