VANCOUVER — Organs exposed, Colin Dowler managed to cycle seven kilometres for help after a harrowing grizzly bear attack in the remote backcountry north of Powell River.
The Campbell River man was exploring hiking routes on Mount Doogie Dowler, named after his grandfather, on Monday, a day before his 45th birthday.
He was biking down when he came across a large bear about 30 metres away, lumbering up the road. Comfortable in the outdoors, but more a fisherman than a hiker, Dowler stopped, unsure of what to do.
He banged a hiking pole on his bike to try to scare the bear away, then used it to gently poke it on the head. He even tried negotiating with the bear, saying: “We don’t have to have a problem here. Everything’s OK.”
But the bear was relentless. It pushed Dowler’s bike and ignored his backpack, which Dowler had thrown on the ground. When the 350-pound adult male bear came for him, it wasn’t in wild, sudden lunges, but with “methodical” and “powerful swats.” It swiped at his abdomen, exposing internal organs. It then dragged Dowler to a ditch about 15 metres away, then started tearing and gnawing on his legs and feet.
Dowler tried to pry the bear’s mouth off his leg and gouge its eye out. He even tried to play dead, but the bear wasn’t falling for it. “It kept chewing so the dead thing wasn’t going to work.”
Dowler remembers the bear’s saliva dripping onto his hand. He also remembers hearing what sounded like bone being grated. That, said the doctor, was the sound of the bear’s teeth sinking so deep into Dowler’s leg that it hit bone.
Somehow, Dowler managed to retrieve a pocket knife — given to him by his father two weeks before — from his right pocket. He plunged the two-inch blade into the bear’s neck.
The animal let go.
Dowler crawled back to his bike. He used the same knife to cut off a sleeve to make a tourniquet for his leg. He got on the bike and pedalled to the nearest logging camp.
“I was thinking I wasn’t going to make it,” Dowler said.
At the camp, five loggers performed crucial first aid on Dowler. He was taken by air ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital, where he was treated for puncture wounds and deep cuts, and required surgery for damage to his femoral artery.
The B.C. Conservation Office doesn’t know what triggered the bear’s attack. Officers who went to the site Tuesday killed a bear, which had started stalking them from behind. It had a neck injury, indicating it was the same bear that attacked Dowler.
In the hospital on Thursday, holding wife Jenifer’s hand, Dowler was in good spirits.
Both expressed their gratitude to the loggers who saved Dowler’s life. “You guys rock,” Dowler said. “Dinner’s on me when I get better.”
Grizzly bear attacks are rare, with the hospital seeing about one or two cases a year, said Dr. Naisan Garraway, head of trauma at Vancouver General.
Garraway credited Dowler’s quick wits for his “incredible” story of survival.
“He was able to control some of the hemorrhaging himself, which is super important,” he said. “Anytime along the way [on his bike], if he’d lost consciousness, he might not have made it.”
Dowler, a maintenance manager for Island Health, said his survival instincts kicked in.
“It was just a practical set of decisions to get there,” he said. “It really was: ‘What do I need to do next?’ ”
