Early in July 2021, Leah Lokan awoke to a grizzly bear a few feet from her tent, so close that she heard when the bear \u0022huffed\u0022 at her head.
“Bear! Bear!” Lokan yelled, causing Joe and Kim Cole – two other cyclists camping in the small town of Ovando as they trekked across Montana – to spring from their nearby tent, armed with bear spray and clamoring as much as possible, according to a 26-page report addressed by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s executive body earlier this month.After scaring it off, Lokan, a 65-year-old visiting from Chico, Calif., moved food out of her tent to a nearby building.
“While foraging under the cover of darkness in Ovando, perhaps due to a simple movement made by the sleeping victim, or a certain sound made by the victim, the bear reacted,” the committee’s board of review wrote in their Jan. 4 report, which was discussed earlier this month during the executive body’s summer meeting. The 11-member review board included officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the U.S. Forest Service.
While Lokan’s sister and friend chose to hole up in a hotel the night of July 5, Lokan opted to camp behind the Brand Bar Museum with the Coles, whom they’d met during their travels. She set up her tent around 7 p.m. Lokan tried to make her camp more bear-safe, the report said. Although she moved her snacks and lentils out of the tent into a nearby building, the bags in which she kept her toiletries still smelled of the dried blueberries they’d once contained, investigators said. Moreover, she still had food – beef jerky, trail mix, granola bars, a baked potato – in the saddle bags draped over her bike, which was about 10 feet from her tent.
Although officials credited Cole’s “aggressive response and action” with once again scaring off the bear, the damage was done. Emergency workers found “no obvious signs of life” while treating Lokan. Officials would later determine that her death was “instantaneous” after the bear broke her neck and severed her spinal cord. The medical examiner noted that she also had severe cuts to her head, neck, shoulders and back.
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