Brad Martyn and his friends got more than their usual adrenaline rush when a bear chased them for well over a kilometre as they cruised the biking trails in Mount Seymour.
Martyn captured the long, terrifying chase on a camera mounted on his helmet, and later posted the video on YouTube.
What made the ride more thrilling, or scarier, was the fact that it was their first ride on a technical trail.
“This is our first time on the trail. Like I said we have never been on it. We don’t know where the drops are, where the 45 is, and we have the pressure of the bear behind us,” he says in a voice-over in the video.
Martyn decided to record when his friend noticed a bear following them. The group decide to ride away and the panic in the voice is palpable as they wonder if the bear is still following them.
“I want to take a look, but I don’t want to look back and have a bear right on top of me. I am just going to look forward and keep on pedalling and try not to fall,” Martyn says as he speeds on with the group.
They stopped after some time, hoping the bear has gone away. To their utter shock, the bear shows up just after a few seconds. He wasn’t far behind them. They estimated he had been following them for over a kilometre.
“I didn’t see the bear, and it gave me a little bit of relief. All right, I think we lost him. As we are coming down the corner here and go down this rock face and stop. When I stop, you can see that the bear showed up a few seconds later. He wasn’t far behind us the whole way down the trail,” Martyn says in the video.
The group tried to shoo away with panicked, “Get out of here” screams until he slowly walked away but only to follow them for a little while again. The group finally biked away from the bear. Martyn said he thought it might be a good idea to drop the food, but decided against it.
Finally, the trail smoothed out and they noticed the bear was gone.
“It was a good story, a little scary. And after we got to the bottom, we decided to call it a day and get some drinks.”
Martyn now jokingly calls TNT trail the bear trail. If he gets back, he plans to come with a bear spray.
Meanwhile, the North Shore Mountain Bike Association is urging mountain bikers to avoid the area.
“Given the repeated sightings of a black bear on the western flank of Mount Seymour, and his interest in mountain bikers, we’re asking people to choose a different spot to ride for a bit here,” the association said.
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