Content note: includes graphic descriptions of wildlife attacks and injury.
Granite Park
All day on the Highline Trail, hikers were buzzing. Everyone was talking about the bears. One couple said they were nervous. Julie Helgeson and Roy Ducat laughed, shrugged, kept moving. It was August in Glacier — bears felt like part of the scenery.
They had planned to stay inside Granite Park Chalet, but the lodge was already packed. Too many hikers. Too much noise. Every bed taken. Nineteen years old, they made a choice: hike down in the dark, or unroll their bags in the meadow below. Sleeping under the stars felt wide open, safe — safer, they thought, than the crowded lodge.
Roy didn’t know about the garbage feeding pits the park had used for years. He figured the meadow — away from the dumps — would be fine.
No warning. Just weight and claws.
After midnight, a grizzly hit Roy first — arm and side torn open. He panicked until Julie whispered, “Play dead.” Somehow, he listened. He went limp. The bear walked off.
Then it turned on her.
Screams cut through the timber. Campers burst from the chalet with flashlights and rocks. They found Roy bloodied and in shock. He could only say: “Go find the girl. The bear got the girl.”
They followed her voice down the slope. Julie called for her mother. When they reached her, she was torn, bleeding, barely conscious. A sleeping bag became a stretcher — hands under fabric, boots sliding on gravel. Every few steps she begged them not to drop her. Among the guests were surgeons, nurses, even a priest. They did everything they could.
By dawn, Julie was gone.
Trout Lake
Twenty miles away, Trout Lake was quiet. Thin tents. Cold water. Friends settling after dinner. Michele Koons zipped her tent shut — her first backcountry night in Glacier. Laughter still drifted through the trees when canvas ripped like paper.
Another bear. Another scream.
“My zipper is stuck — he’s tearing my arm off!” her friends heard. They yelled for her to run. She cried back, “Oh my God, I’m dead!” One scrambled into a tree and watched as the bear dragged her — sleeping bag and all — into the timber. The others hurled rocks, broke branches, screamed her name.
Later one said, “We could hear her… and then suddenly, we couldn’t.”
By morning, Michele was gone too.
One Night
Two girls. Both nineteen. Two corners of Glacier. Two female grizzlies.
In fifty-seven years, Glacier hadn’t seen a single fatal bear attack. That night, it saw two.
And when the sun came up, the horror didn’t end. It shifted — from the victims, to the bears.
Continue to the finale: the reckoning, the dumps, and how this night changed wildlife management forever.
The Wilds Project. 
Leave a comment