Alaska trail runner Klaire Rhodes reported that she was attacked by a brown bear on Thursday morning while running alone on her home state’s Chugach trails.

In an Instagram post, Rhodes wrote that she came away with what she described as “relatively minor injuries, with the most severe being a deep puncture wound to my left hip and claw and teeth marks on my body.” The North Face athlete used bear spray during the encounter and was able to make it back to the trailhead.

“A nightmare come to life”

Rhodes didn’t share the full sequence of events, saying she wanted to avoid the “unsolicited opinions” that tend to follow a story like this online. “The moment felt like a nightmare come to life,” she wrote.

The Chugach trails are a major part of Rhodes’s life and training. “Running in the Chugach is where I feel most at home,” she wrote, while acknowledging that the area is also the bear’s home. “Despite all the precautions in the world, it’s just a risk that a lot of us choose to take to live life in the way we love.”

Runner injured in bear attack in Squamish, B.C.

A disrupted lead-up to Europe

The timing is difficult for Rhodes, who says she had been preparing to race in Europe in less than two weeks. Her website lists the CCC in Chamonix, France, among her upcoming races, though she said she was unsure whether the attack would affect those plans. “I’m bummed to not be finishing out my training block in the way I wanted,” Rhodes wrote.

Rhodes is one of Alaska’s top trail and mountain runners, and signed with The North Face in 2024. She took second in the 50K race at Speedgoat Mountain Races in July, and first at The Big Alta in March; she has also won the iconic Mount Marathon Race in Seward, Alaska, for the past three years.

For now, she said, the training week has turned into “a big weekend of couch time.” But she also made clear that she expects to be back on the trails before long. “I’m really lucky that I’ll be back to doing my thing relatively soon,” she wrote.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game confirmed that on Aug. 13, a woman running alone was injured in a brown bear encounter on the Wolverine Bowl trail near Anchorage’s Prospect Heights. The department said the runner used bear spray, self-rescued and was taken to the hospital for treatment. Biologists later searched the area and collected samples, but did not locate the bear.