{"id":627550,"date":"2026-09-17T14:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627550\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T14:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:16:12","slug":"camper-bitten-by-bear-in-southern-colorado-recalls-moment-it-came-crashing-into-tent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627550\/","title":{"rendered":"Camper bitten by bear in southern Colorado recalls moment it “came crashing” into tent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathleen Baran will be fine, thanks very much for asking, despite a black bear chomping down on her arm through her tent wall near South Fork, and having to unclamp the marauder\u2019s jaws by punching it in the face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But there are a couple of things Baran wants inquiring minds to know. First, no, she absolutely did not have food in her tent that might have attracted the bear, despite what she says Colorado and Arizona health officials said about her while exchanging information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And second, a bear bite described in news releases as a bland \u201cpuncture wound\u201d actually hurts like a mother \u2026 elephant sitting on your arm. She thought she had broken a bone. Or two.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That said, Baran, an experienced international solo hiker and camper, feels lucky today, after Friday\u2019s early-morning attack at a campground she\u2019d pulled into to get a few hours rest while on a road trip. Lucky the blind attack wasn\u2019t from a wolf, as she first suspected when startled awake by the grip of sharp teeth through tent fabric. And fortunate it was her arm and not something else.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very lucky because he could have easily just chomped down on my head and not my arm if I had not put my arm up,\u201d said Baran, speaking by phone from the remote area of Arizona she calls home. \u201cI mean, it could have kept on attacking. I didn\u2019t know what he was doing because I was stuck inside my tent. That was the worst part of it. I couldn\u2019t see where he was, what his next move was going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prepared for (almost) anything<\/p>\n

Baran, who does not like to give her exact age beyond \u201colder Gen X,\u201d has traveled and camped around the world. She\u2019s walked out of a tent to find grizzly bear paw prints in the mud. She\u2019s had close encounters with moose. A black jaguar once sat down next to her in the Guatemalan jungle. She knows to hang food high in a remote tree when backcountry camping.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She knew Colorado and other states were seeing extra bear confrontations this year because of habitat loss to drought. She was pulled over at Park Creek campground in Rio Grande National Forest<\/a> near South Fork for some quick road rest and wasn\u2019t setting up a full-kitchen camp spread, but she also knew keeping all food and alluring smells out of her tent was best bear practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not an idiot,\u201d Baran likes to point out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baran allows that perhaps her one mistake was leaving a phone on low volume playing a sleep program. The light noise could have made animals curious.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before going to sleep, she heard a crackle she now believes was the bear \u201ctesting\u201d the other side of the tent with a swipe, but she thought at the time it was a branch falling or a skunk snorting around the fire ring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She used her key fob to \u201cflash the car on and off to make noise and to flash lights, and then I went to bed. And then next thing you know, I\u2019m woken up by the tent crashing in on me, and I don\u2019t know what it is, but it\u2019s him jumping on the tent.\u201d A weak light from her phone illuminated the chaos just a bit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s claw marks on the tent there, which helps wake me up, from a dead sleep. What the hell? And this feeling of absolute dread because I know something\u2019s going down. And then I wonder, is it a human? Is it an animal? And what\u2019s my next move? What\u2019s theirs?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a brief pause. Then \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so quick. He was on the other side of the tent, and he comes crashing down on me. So I put my arm up to protect my face. I still don\u2019t know what the hell is going on. What\u2019s after me? So I put my arm up to protect my face and he grabs hold of it. Now, he growled at some point. This is why I originally thought it was a wolf because I didn\u2019t know bears growl. But my arm was in his mouth. It felt like a big mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the jaws clamped on her right arm through the fabric, she flailed with her left arm at the still-unseen attacker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s when he growled and let go,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t pull my arm out of his mouth. He just let go of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One good arm, and on the run\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baran said the next moments were a blur, as the tent collapsed and she flailed around for her phone, her car keys and fob and her handgun. She managed to pull open the zipper and chamber a round in the gun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Kathleen Baran shows the injuries to her arm, including puncture wounds, from the emergency room. (Provided by Kathleen Baran)<\/p>\n

\u201cI never did fire it, because I couldn\u2019t see him, and he was no longer attacking by that time, and he didn\u2019t come back while I was there. I was told by the rangers that he came back after I had left,\u201d Baran said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then the pain started to break through the disorder. The jolts were overwhelming Baran\u2019s experience as a medic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he had crushed my arm. The pain was out of proportion to what I saw,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve got a trauma bag in my car, but I have only one hand working, and I think my arm is broken, and the tissues are just smashed. That\u2019s how bad it feels. And when I saw just three puncture wounds in my arm, I\u2019m like, oh, this is way out of proportion, man, and I don\u2019t know why it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally oriented enough to get behind the wheel and drive, she got to a nearby hotel around 6:30 a.m. and stumbled into the lobby. \u201cI think I just said, \u2018I need a hospital. I got attacked by a wolf I think,\u2019 and you know they can tell I\u2019m kind of in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

People in the hotel called authorities, and she was treated for the puncture wounds and a rabies assessment at the emergency room. A scan found no broken bones. A wildlife officer met her back at the campground and showed her claw marks on both sides of the tent as well as footprints, and declared it a bear visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baran found herself compiled into Colorado bear statistics rising<\/a> at an alarming rate in 2026. There have been thousands of human-bear encounters<\/a> driven by lack of backcountry food, and a record 10 dangerous attacks where a human was injured<\/a> or killed. Wildlife officers and deputies had euthanized\u00a0 nearly 300 bears by the end of August, and caught and transported many more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colorado Parks and Wildlife said it will not chase or capture Baran\u2019s bear, because it has not shown a pattern of human confrontation and may have acted out of surprise when exploring the tent. The bear and the human never actually saw each other, leaving some of the interaction a mystery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What bothers Baran most about the whole incident is how humans acted, not the animals. As she was semi-lost and driving erratically out of the dark campground in search of help, she saw two people standing outside the only other tent in the campground. Baran had been screaming bloody murder just yards away, and they hadn\u2019t reacted at all, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had no idea if that bear killed me. When you hear someone screaming for reality, it\u2019s a different sound than someone screwing around or someone angry,\u201d Baran said. She notes that she keeps a gun with her on solo trips out of fear of what humans might do, not what animals are born to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know animals can attack. I treat encounters with alertness and with a lot of respect for that animal and its ability to harm. You won\u2019t see me petting bison or moose in Yellowstone,\u201d Baran texted Wednesday, in a followup message to the phone interview she did from town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t stop backpacking by myself. But I might buy some bear spray. Until this bear the only wildlife that has ever bit me was a squirrel at the Grand Canyon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Type of Story: News<\/p>\n

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kathleen Baran will be fine, thanks very much for asking, despite a black bear chomping down on her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2386,160135,158795,61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-627550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-outdoors","tag-bear-attack","tag-colorado-parks-and-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}