Jon-Kyle Mohr was less than a mile from the end of an epic adventure he had been planning for years: a 50-mile run from his home in June Lake, over the towering Sierra Nevada, and down into the spectacular natural amphitheater of Yosemite Valley.
His long, hot, exhausting day was seconds away from ending in triumph on Sunday night when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a huge black shape charging toward him.
In an instant, he said, he felt “something sharp” on his shoulder followed by a strong push that sent him reeling in the darkness. When he turned around, about 30 metres away there were people shining their headlights on him and shouting: “Bear!”
And then, right in front of him, he saw the big, adult black bear. The collision had caused the animal to take a juicy-looking stolen bag of trash out of its mouth, and it didn't look happy. Before Mohr could fully process what was happening, “it turned to me,” he said.
Mohr, 33, began screaming and pounding the pavement with his running sticks, he said, as people from a nearby camp came to his aid, shouting and banging pots and pans.
Jon-Kyle Mohr encountered a bear in Yosemite Valley as he was finishing a 50-mile run from his home in June Lake.
(Courtesy of Jon-Kyle Mohr)
It worked. The bear disappeared into the darkness. Mohr's clothes were torn and he had a few scratches, but there was no serious damage.
Mohr said he feels lucky. Given the astonishing force of that single blow, “if I really wanted to do some kind of real damage, I could have done it without hesitation.”
Black bear sightings are common in Yosemite; hundreds of them live in the park. But attacks — or accidental collisions, as appears to have happened in this case — are rare. Mohr said one of the rangers who responded to the scene said he had been in the park for decades and had never seen anything like it.
Scott Gediman, a spokesman for Yosemite National Park, said he had not been authorized to discuss what happened to Mohr.
Bad things sometimes happen when people get too close to bears to take selfies or when they surprise the animals rummaging through their cars or tents. But an unprovoked attack on someone walking down the street is almost unheard of, according to park officials.
Mohr said the collision occurred on the highway near Happy Isles, not far from the Vernal Falls trailhead, one of the most populated spots in the park.
As of July 6, there had been eight “incidents” involving bears this year, according to information posted on the park’s website. An incident is considered any encounter with a bear that causes economic damage (for example, when a bear breaks a car window to take the food inside) or when a bear injures someone, which the website describes as “quite rare.”
The number of incidents is down 20 percent from last year, when there were 38 in total, according to the National Park Service.
But bears have become more active in Yosemite Valley lately, as the natural raspberry crop ripens, according to the park service. A sow and her cub have been repeatedly seen on trails, in meadows and near popular campgrounds.
Austin Wall of Napa takes a photo of a bear wearing a tag and transmitter collar near Yosemite's El Capitan Meadow in 2020.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
All of the bears found in Yosemite are black bears; the last known grizzly bear was shot and killed in the early 1920s. According to the website, no one has ever been killed or seriously injured by a black bear in Yosemite.
In an interview Monday afternoon, Mohr was still a little nervous and searching for words to describe what had happened.
The bear tore through his hoodie and the T-shirt he was wearing underneath, Mohr said. It also put some holes in his running shirt. He had two significant scratches with some blood, but nothing too deep or worrisome, he said.
An ambulance arrived and medics bandaged his wounds, but Mohr said he refused transport to a hospital.
Jon-Kyle Mohr on a Sierra Nevada peak near June Lake in 2022. Mohr collided with a bear in Yosemite Valley as he finished a 50-mile run on Sunday.
(Courtesy of Jon-Kyle Mohr)
Rangers used a tracking device to locate a familiar bear and began searching for it, Mohr said. They told him it had been given a tranquilizer and fitted with a tracking collar Sunday morning. They did not explain what prompted that action, Mohr said.
“Looks like the bear and I have equally crazy days,” Mohr joked.
Mohr, a passionate and experienced trail runner, knows there are many more dangers to consider on big backcountry adventures: twisting an ankle, straying off trail, becoming dangerously dehydrated in the heat. Bears rank very low on the list of concerns.
That's why what happened just seven-tenths of a mile from the finish was so strange.
He had started his race 15 hours and 59 minutes earlier, according to his watch.
“It was a very strange and random collision,” he said. “If I had rested my feet for 20 more seconds at any time during the sixteen hours, it wouldn’t have happened.”
