17. Surviving a Grizzly Bear Attack - Johann Harnisch

Today’s guest has experienced something that few can say they have ever experienced. In late June of 2018, Johann Harnisch was on a solo kayaking trip on the Kootenay River in British Columbia when he was attacked and mauled by a grizzly bear with her cubs. After sustaining injuries to his leg, head, and arm he was able to crawl back to his kayak, and after calling 911, he made his way 1.5 miles up the river before getting help. This is a story you don’t want to miss.

Visit our website: www.aarontravelsworld.com

And then I noticed this crispy bear not far away, and she poked her head up out of the grass and behind her three big Cubs. Then she came at me full speed. So I had this a really large Bush knife from Africa that I had brought back. And so I raised it. And just before she hit me, I write down square on her head, but it didn't stop her one bit. She is so big and so fast. She picked me up by the side or by the Lake and then just shook me really hard. And when she did that, her jaw Bay in deeply. And so it made a deep punch her wound. At one point she had my head in her mouth and she was scraping across my skull. And I thought, oh, no, this must be what's like to dive and eaten by a bear. And I could feel this terrible crunching sound as her jaw was breaking into my sinuses and scraping. And I knew if she bit down me harder, it just totally flowed. Hey, what's up, everybody? It's another episode of the Simply Overcoming Podcast. Thank you for coming back. If this is the first episode of the podcast that you're listening to, we hope that we can add value to your life. I have to say that every single episode of this podcast so far has been so unique, and no two episodes have been the same. And ultimately, I think that's because everyone has such a unique story and everybody is unique now, the one thing I have discussed consistently on this podcast is the importance of cultivating a positive mental attitude in your life. So before we jump into this episode, I just want to ask you, what are you thankful for today? Is it the Sunshine outside or is it the people who surround you in your life? I believe everyone has something to be thankful for in life. And I want to encourage you to start writing those things down. Writing down the things you are thankful for has been proven to increase your positivity. It reduces stress, makes you a happier person. It can even help you sleep better. So start to cultivate an attitude of gratitude in your life. And I know you will be thankful for it. I'm sure today's guest has many things to be thankful for in his life. And after you hear today's story, I think you will understand just how true that statement really is. Johann Harnish, thank you for being willing to be on the podcast today. Thank you. Erin. You're in British Columbia? Yes. Yes, I'm in British Columbia. I live just north of Idaho. So it's in the Southern part of the province, the beautiful part of Canada. It is the best place on Earth. Like they say. I love Canada. And I miss coming up there and backpacking since the whole coronavirus thing has happened. Hopefully, we can get back to exploring those mountains soon. So what do you do up there in Canada? I have a construction business as well as a video editing and selling business. And so between the two, I switch back and forth and keep busy summer and winter. You stay busy and you also get to when you get tired of one thing, you can go over to the other. Right? Right. You have a very unique story. And I'm excited personally to hear more about your story because I've only heard bits and pieces of it. So I'm sure I'm going to learn more today. But why don't you just jump into telling us what happened in late June of 2018? Yes. So I've been working on a house project through this summer, and the rest of my family was away that weekend, actually there in Europe. And so I decided that this would be a great opportunity to go and do a kayak camping trip. I had made myself a kayak out of five, so I took this back and packed it all up. It was pouring rain, and I carried it down to the river below the house and launched out into the rain. And it was into the river. It was a Kootenay River, and I paddled for maybe four or 5 hours until evening. And then I searched along the bank for a great place to camp for the night. And I set up my tent and pulled the kayak up on the shore. The night was uneventful, but in the morning it was a bit cool. So I decided to go and collect some firewood and find some dry Tinder to start a fire along the shore of the river. As I was walking along the bank of the river up above the River, I was near some large Poplar trees and I heard these strange noises, really odd noises. And I was wondering, what in the world is that? And then I noticed this crispy bear not far away, and she poked her head up out of the grass and behind her are three big Cubs. And so she looked at me and then she wasn't very happy to see me there. And so she started coming towards me. I yelled at her and she quickly turned around and sent her Cubs away. Then she came at me full speed. And so what I did was I had this really large Bush knife from Africa that I had brought back, and so I raised it. And just before she hit me, I brought right down square on her head. But it didn't stop her one bit. She is so big and so fast the impact totally knocked me down and I was just flattening right out. And so she proceeded to bite me and scratch me. And at one point she had my head in her mouth and she was scraping across my skull. I thought, oh no, this must be what it's like to dive and eaten by a bear, and I could feel this terrible crunching sound as her jaw was breaking into my sinuses and scraping, and I knew if she bit down me harder, it just totally flowed, but she never bit down completely. Instead she just continued to scratch and bite, and then she picked me up by the side and shook me really hard and it dropped me. And after that it was just really quiet for a while, just listening to make sure she wasn't still around it, and I just waited there. I was surprised I'd still be alive. How can you have your head in a Bear's mouth and still be alive after that's? Really a surprise. And after several minutes I still didn't hear any bear or Cubs around. She must have taken them away. And so I decided to look around and I looked around. I still didn't see anything, and so I slowly crawled back to my tent. I couldn't walk at that point very well because there was a lot of pain in my leg. My guess is you've probably run into bears many times before while in the wilderness. Am I assuming that correctly? No. I've seen them on occasion, but not usually up close like this. They've usually been at some distance and never had an encounter quite like this before. How much time did you have from when you realized you were being charged up until the point that she attacked you and you were able to get that stab into her neck or head. You know that it was a very short amount of time, but enough time that you could definitely move quickly. But there was really no way for me to go. And so I just faced her and hoped for the best. I guess the reason why I ask that is there's so many people who go into the wilderness and they might carry some bear spray, they might carry something and it's deep within their backpack. My guess is there's no chance if your knife was in your backpack that you could have gotten to it in time. No, there would be no sense even going for it. Yeah, not that it really helped the situation because she was just so big and thick. But at least you gave it a shot, right? If it was a black bear and it wasn't a mother with Cubs, it might have been very different. I might have scared it off or decided it wasn't worth it. Sure, but there was no stopping it, right. How did she pick you up first? Yeah. She picked me up by the thigh or by the leg and then just shook me really hard. And when she did that, her job, it in deeply. And so it made a deep puncher wound which kind of injured the muscle enough that I couldn't walk properly. And so I ended up having to crawl back to the shore, and I wrapped my sleeping bag around my head to try to slow down the blood flow, and after a while I could see that, or I could feel rather that it was not flowing as much. And I had called nine one one and asked them if they could send out someone to get me or something, but they told me to try to leave the area. I wasn't sure I could, but I decided to give it a try. After laying there for a while, I figured it'd be painful to lay there, might as well be moving. And so somehow or another, I managed to drag my kayak into the river and get into it, and it's kind of a muddy bank, but I managed to climb in with my sleeping bag and my paddle and start paddling up the river because I figured I was just a little away from a boat launch, and that would be an easy access for ambulance. Come get me. But it turned out after paddling for a while that I had gone farther than I figured, and so I was debating, should I just stop and rest, or should I keep paddling? And I figured I didn't want to float back down the river, so I might as well just keep paddling. And so I paddled ended up being for about a mile and a half, and I finally came to the boat launch and I pulled up to the boat launch there, and I was exhausted at that point and dehydrated and also from the lack of blood, and so I couldn't do much. But I was able to call again. They sent an ambulance down to get me, and when the paramedics got out, they had this really shocked look on their face and they're hesitant to even come and help me out of the water. I finally convinced them to pull my kayak out at least so I can get out. But I was wondering, how in the world am I going to get out of this kayak? Because my leg is kind of messed up with the muscles all torn. So I feel, how am I supposed to stand up? Right. But finally they brought down a stretcher and I was able to somehow or another managed to climb onto it. And then they sent me to the closest hospital there and put me on a bunch of IVs and trying to bring my fluid level back up before sending me out to another hospital by air. Unbelievable. My guess is that mile and a half was probably pretty quick. My guess is you were probably moving. Yeah, I was. It ended up being I believe it was 40 minutes. Okay, around 40 minutes. This is about 06:00 in the morning. I mean, it's just amazing. It's a miracle that no major arteries were punctured, because if that would have happened, you would have been in a much more serious situation than you already were, right. She didn't get the main artery in my leg, and she just scraped across my eye, but it never hit the eyeball, just the top and bottom of it. To be in an area where you actually had cell coverage was a big blessing, too. I mean, my goodness, if you would have been out somewhere where you didn't have cell coverage, it could have been a lot longer. You would have had to get somewhere where you did have coverage and then call somebody. So when you showed up after Kayaking, that mile and a half, once you got there, did they show up around the same time that you showed up? I guess they had already been in that area waiting. When I got there, they told me that the search and rescue is still 3 hours out, so I don't know if they're sending a helicopter or what for you to be able to get out of there under your own strength was ideal for your survival, I'm sure, because it would have been there a long time. And there was, of course, other animals out there, too, like there's large Wolf tracks in the mud where I was lying later that day, the game warden when he went out to get my stuff, he saw the Wolf out there in that same spot. So you're taken to the closest hospital. So there's this little hospital here in Preston. And while I was there, they started cleaning the wounds and scheduled a flight for me to go to Kolona. But while I was there, I think most of the cops in town came to see me and they were taking pictures and they were just really surprised to see someone that had got involved by there. Let's have that conversation for a minute, Johan, because if you go online and you start looking up statistics on bear attacks, it's pretty incredible how rare it really is for something like this to happen. They say that there's only been four fatal bear attacks in Ontario, specifically in the last 100 years. There's been eleven in North America every year bear attacks in all of North America, I've heard something similar. There's something like ten a year in Canada, but not generally fatal. With the exception, you were one of these rare statistics being attacked by this bear. What happened after being in that first hospital, you were flown to a different hospital. I saw another hospital where later that night or actually early the next morning, around 02:00, they put me into surgery and did a bunch of plastic surgery on my face. To put that back together, they sewed up my side where it had scratched me deeply and then also the bite, my leg. It stole that back shut and then my arm a little bit too. And then after that, they waited several days and then did another surgery on my ear to put that back together. And I was there for about a week on antibiotics. Of course, I think I was on about five different antibiotics, which isn't a very great experience because it's one thing to be in pain, but it's another thing to feel really miserable because that stuff makes one feel really nauseous. And so it's enough to be in pain with them to feel terrible. It's kind of not the greatest. But eventually they sent me to another hospital that was closer to where I live. They sent me to Cranbrook, and I spent most of a week there. How long in total were you in the hospital? It was just under two weeks, and then they sent me home, and then I would just go to the hospital, maybe every other day for changing the bandages for a while. And then it became less and less as it started to heal. It was less and less frequent, although I did have to go back to Clona for more work on my job because it was fractured in three places. So they had to ban that shut and eventually take the screws out. And my eye. They had to stitch shut because the nerve damage in the eyelid was preventing it from working properly. So they didn't want it to dry out. And so after some months, so they eventually eventually that healed up. How miserable is it to have your jaw bandaged shut? Yeah, that's got to be one of the worst, actually. And it wasn't even the worst of the worst because you can have it wired shut, which is the next level if it's actually broken. And that's where you can't even move it at all. And I can't imagine what that would be like. It's bad enough with heavy rubber bands. So they put screws on above the jaw and blow it and then they band it shut so you can open it up. But it takes a lot of effort. But what it also does is it puts a lot of pressure on the teeth and that constant pressure eventually becomes very painful. Did you deal with any major lows during this time? No, I wouldn't say I was particularly low. I spent months of just resting. I'd sleep a long time while the healing was going on, and pretty much all I would do is sleep and eat. I was really weak that way, and I was hungry after I finally was able to eat again. After a traumatic experience like that, your body had probably lost a fair amount of weight, I would imagine. Yeah, I ate very little in those several weeks afterwards. I wasn't that I was really hungry during that time. It's just that it's difficult eating in the first place, and I wasn't hungry at all, actually, on the antibiotics. It's kind of a kind of thing when you don't eat for a while, eventually you don't get hungry anymore, man. And those antibiotics and painkillers, too, are just nasty. They can really mess with your body that's miserable. Fortunately, I didn't have any serious infections, and so my head swollen way up. It did go down eventually, and there was no fever or high temperatures. We talked yesterday and you were out camping. I guess my question is, after an experience like that, is there a little bit of PTSD going on when you're out in the Woods? Are you a little more careful? What are you doing differently? Or maybe you do nothing differently. You just look at it as a freak thing that happened that just very rarely happens to anyone. Yeah. I kind of figured this would probably never happen to me, even though I know there was a chance before and then when it did, I was like, Well, I guess it can happen, but I'm still at that point where it's like the chance of it happening a second time is even slimmer yet. And so I'm kind of not too concerned. If you take bear spray with me, I have it with me during times when I think I might be in a place where I could have an encounter, a close encounter, but not even all the time. But yeah, I'm definitely more cautious as far as listening, especially at night in the dark. Right. Sure. And also, I suppose being aware of your surroundings, it seems like this happens quite often next to Rivers specifically. Yeah. That's where they go to, I guess, drink water or fish or something. An incredible story, Johanne. It's so funny because like you said before it happened, you just felt like there's no way that this would actually happen to me because it's so rare. But then it happened to you and it's like, wow, this can really happen. I think we all feel that way when we go into the Woods, at least us who spend a lot of time in the wilderness. I always say, oh, I'm just not paranoid about it. I just am not worried whatsoever. But it is a reality when you're in the Woods that something like this could happen. Most people will never experience having a bear up that close to them. Right. And yeah, it's interesting because if I was in a car accident or something, I'd have friends talking to whatever and sorry about what happened. But to see the reaction of my friends after having been in a fight with a bear, it's quite interesting because it's so unusual. And I think a lot of people are quite scared afterwards, scared to even go out. And I don't want to bring that kind of impression because the reality is your chance of injury or even death is much higher just driving on a road than it is walking alone in the wilderness. Right. Even if you do encounter wild animals, that's so funny. There's probably more people who are concerned about it than you are just from hearing your story. Yeah. I suppose it would be that way you get out into the Woods quite often, go backpacking, that sort of thing. Are you an ultralight fanatic? Not quite there. I'll still take my sufficient food and yeah, a lot of food, my hammock, my sleeping bag. So I like to be warm. And I like that food. Let's shift away from your bear story and talk to me a little bit about some of your passions in life. I know that you've done a fair amount of traveling. You spent a month or two or maybe more in Nepal doing some video work there. So just talk to me about some of the things that you're passionate about. Yeah. I was able to go with some friends to Nepal. We were doing some they were doing some health training, and I was helping out with some of their projects there. And that was a good experience. And then before we left, there was this major earthquake. And it just so happened that I was staying at a friend's place on compound where there was a large hospital not far from the town. And so during this earthquake, the whole country was just shaken. And of course, there's many people injured, and they build with kind of a clay, brick and stone in the mountains. And so when the earthquake came, it just shook their houses apart and injured and killed thousands and thousands of people. And so that was exciting to be able to help with the disaster relief after that, of course, immediately was with the hospital helping people through all that. But then after that was to be able to go and take food out into the villages. And that was the good part is being able to be there already because it's one thing to come in a week later. But it's those first three days after a catastrophe where people really need food and they need water, they need shelter because it's pouring rain and lightning storms during this whole time. So we're able to organize trucks to go out into the villages and take food to these remote villages where their whole village is just destroyed and just all their seed and all their food is just mass and rained on. Yeah. So that was quite the experience. Do you remember what year that happened? 2013. Okay. That was 2013. So you have a passion for helping people, helping people with their physical needs, their spiritual needs. Yeah. That's been important to me. And so I've kind of been inspired to do that even more. And that's kind of why I got into the video geographicy business as well and filming as well to be able to help people in whatever ways I can, both in the spiritual and physical. And another opportunity I had more recently was to help set up agriculture business in some remoter areas of Tanzania. And it gives the people in the village an opportunity to work on a farm and to have an income and help their own families and their village. Well, boy, I really appreciate you coming onto the podcast, Johan. Is there anything that you would like to share one last thing that you want to share with the listeners. Maybe a bit of advice when they're going into the wilderness. Or maybe it's completely unrelated to that. Yeah. First, I would say definitely go out into the wilderness. That is the place to be to connect with God and to also have a time of quiet and time of meditation. Also time to enjoy nature and the natural world. You're not going to get that in the city. Very true. Listen to what Johan got to say. Don't let this story deter you from the wilderness. All right. Well, hey, if you made it to the end of this episode, thank you once again for listening. And there's just so many great stories packed into this podcast so far, and we're only on episode 17. So get out there and listen tomorrow these episodes. And we're looking forward to talking to you next time. Bye bye.