Two hikers who were exploring Yellowstone National Park are now in an eastern Idaho hospital with injuries after a run-in with at least one bear, and possibly multiple bears, on Tuesday. The attack took place on the Mystic Falls Trail near Old Faithful, according to the park’s public affairs office, and it is the first recorded bear attack to occur in Yellowstone this year.
The office did not specify what species of bear was involved, and it says the attack remains under investigation. NPS personnel responded quickly to the incident. By that point, another hiker who arrived in the wake of the encounter had assumed the role of rescue coordinator.
“I saw bear prints in the mud. I kept walking a little further and saw a bloody hat with a watch torn off,” Craig Lerman, a hiker from Maryland, told Cowboy State Daily. “He heard me coming and started saying, ‘Help. Help me.’ At first I thought it was a prank or joke. Kids playing games. But when I got close to him, I knew this was a serious matter.”
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Lerman found a 28-year-old male with cuts on his face, back, legs, and stomach. There was also flesh on the ground. The injured man had called 911 with his bloodied phone. Lerman also called 911 and turned the man on his side so he didn’t choke on his own blood.
“I was scared the bear was going to come back around,” Lerman said. “I just kept my head on a swivel.”
Both injured hikers were evacuated by helicopter. The other hiker was 14, and Lerman believes it was the 28-year-old’s brother. Their mother was in the park but not on the trail with them, according to Lerman, who saw at least two sets of bear tracks leading to the scene of the attack.
“There were two sets from a bigger and smaller bear,” he said.
While officials did not specify the number of bears or the species involved, the injuries seem consistent with a grizzly attack. Grizzlies typically come out of hibernation in early March, according to the NPS, and the first recorded sighting of a grizzly in the park was on March 9. The last time someone was injured by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone was in September 2025, and the last fatal attack by a grizzly was in 2015.
The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee estimates that the odds of being injured by a grizzly in Yellowstone are 1 in 91 in the park’s backcountry. Those odds are even lower in the front country, which includes the trail where the May 4 attack occurred. The most recent instance of a bear injuring someone in the park’s front country was back in 2003.
The Park Service has closed the area around Mystic Falls Trail indefinitely while it continues its investigation. These closures are common in Yellowstone and other national parks when an attack or repeated bear activity is documented in a specific spot.
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