Hey, Prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballon podcast one month early, and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories that all involve terrifying encounters in the wild. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called A Walk in the Woods, and it's It's about two women who head into a forest to walk around and try to collect some sap, but little did they know they were being watched by a monster. The second story you'll hear is called Grizzly Man, and it's about a bear expert that takes too big of a risk. And the Third and final story you'll hear is called Exposure, and it's the story of a man and his quest to get the perfect photo, and he would eventually get it, but it would cost him dearly. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So if that's of interest to you, please offer to buy the Amazon Music Follow button, a brand new set of Airpods, but just give them regular ear buds with the cords cut off. Okay, let's get into our first story called A Walk in the Woods.

From WNDYRI, this is the Spy Who. This month, we open the file on Oleg Lelen, the spy who saved MI5. Lelen's actions changed the course of the Cold War in the 1970s, a Russian who defected to after being caught in a love affair that shook the world. His actions triggered the biggest removal of spies by any government in history. It's a story of an overstretched security service in need of a win and a covert plan to bring catastrophe to Britain's streets. Follow the Spy Who on the WNDY app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Saved MI5 early and ad-free with WNDYRI Plus.

Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terrible Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made Badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecox, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short Shorts? Free Cockalties? Careless Whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgeley. Yeah, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon, George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terrible Famous wherever you listen to your podcast or listen early and ad-free on WNDRI Plus on Apple Podcasts or the WNDRI app.

On the afternoon of May 11th, 2015, 55-year-old Natalia was gathering sap inside of a Russian forest with her 82-year-old friend, Falia. The two of them had been coming to this grove of birch trees for many years. They enjoyed the peace and solitude of nature, and it was also a good place for Natalia to her little dog so he could run around while they collected the sap. It was a perfect spring day. The weather was very mild, the sun was out, and the two friends had a great time just moving around to the different birch trees using their little drills and hammers to get their taps into the tree, and then they'd put their glass bottles underneath each tap to collect their harvest. And then at some point, Natalia felt like she had all the saps she would need, and she began gathering up her things to get ready to leave. And as she did that, she looked over at Valya, and she had found this this really big birch tree, and she had sat down underneath it and was working hard to set her tap. And so as Natalia registered that Valia was over here doing one more tree before they left, she began looking around for her dog.

And she found her dog, and he wasn't too far away from Valia, and he was just moseying around one of the trees when suddenly Natalia noticed the dog came to a hard stop, and it turned and looked deeper into the forest like it had clearly registered something that had put it on alert that was out of view. And so Natalia, her view was obscured from whatever the dog was looking at. And so she put down her equipment and moved between the trees to see what her dog was looking at. And at some point, her view cleared and she saw pretty far off in the forest was something huge, this dark thing moving behind the trees. And suddenly it jumped out from behind the trees and ran towards the dog. It was a huge Russian brown bear. And so totally horrified, Natalia is watching this bear charge her dog. She looks over, she sees Valia, who's pretty hard of hearing, is sitting with her back to this bear and the dog still just working on this tree. And Natalia is just frozen for a moment, having no idea what to do. And then Instinct suddenly took over, and Natalia just turned and began running away, leaving Valia and leaving the dog.

But after only running several paces, she stopped and turned around and saw the bear is still trying to attack react the dog, but the dog is standing its ground and barking at the bear, which is causing it to back up and be a little unsure of itself, even though this dog is so much smaller. And still, Valia is not reacting at all. She has not heard the bear, the dog, nothing. And Natalia, she's looking back knowing that she needs to do something. She can't just let her friend and her dog get killed. And so Natalia began walking slowly back in the direction of this bear, and she began screaming at Valia to get up and run with her. But And the second Natalia began screaming, the bear went from looking at the dog to turning and looking at Natalia. And suddenly it was like the dog meant nothing. The bear had decided it was going to go after Natalia. And so Natalia, she's staring at this bear realizing, Oh, my God, it's going to charge me. But before she could even turn to run, the bear had ran at full speed and jumped at her.

Natalia turned and she tried to run, but the bear bit down on her thigh eye, and she felt it crush her leg and pull her to the ground and whip her up against a nearby birch tree, and she's screaming and trying to pull herself away, but the bear is ripping at her leg, trying to yank her back into the forest. And then Natalia, she sees her little drill that she uses to set the tap in the trees, and she reaches out and she grabs it, and she turns, and her leg is being actively eaten by this bear, and she turns on the drill, and she's about to jam it into the bear's eye when the bear suddenly stands up to its full height, and and then just falls all its weight down onto Natalia's chest. And immediately Natalia dropped the drill and the bear clenched down on her throat. Now, at this point, Valia, who again is hard of hearing, she didn't know what was going on, she turned around and saw this bear mauling her friend. And so what does she do? She runs over to this bear right behind it, and begins pummeling this bear and screaming at it to get off her friend.

And the bear who barely registers Valia hitting it, it just lets go of Natalia for a second. It turns around. And you got to remember, this bear has been eating Natalia. Its face is covered in her blood. And it turns and looks at Valia. And Valia, she's terrified. She begins stumbling backwards. And the bear is clearly about to jump on Valia when Natalia, who's barely alive, she sees this happening, and she just begins screaming at this bear while she's laying there bleeding out, trying attract the bear to come back and keep eating her to spare Valia. And it works. The bear, hearing Natalia screaming behind it, forgets about Valia and turns back around and resumes eating Natalia. And then just seconds later, the bear actually lifted up Natalia by her neck, and it ran off into the woods carrying her. And so Valia is just left watching this happen. She knows she's not going to be able to stop this bear. And so she begins running back towards the car, which was not that far from where they were. And when she got out there, she grabbed her phone and she called the authorities. About an hour and a half later, hunters sent by the police, along with animal control, arrived at this parking lot, and they found Valya, who was totally in shock, and she would tell the hunters and animal control where this birch tree grove was, where all this happened.

And a moment later, the authorities headed into the woods. And after arriving arriving at the birch tree grove, they actually saw the bear. It was by itself, and it turned and looked at them, and it began charging them, and they all raised their rifles, and they fired at the bear. And they shot it enough times that the bear collapsed right in front of them, and then they shot it one more time to make sure the bear was dead. But there was no sign of Natalia anywhere. But then suddenly, the authorities turned and saw something move off in the distance, and out from behind a tree came Natalia's little dog. It had somehow not sustained any injuries from this bear, even though the bear had originally gone after the dog. And the dog, it came up to the authorities and then quickly doubled back behind a tree. And so operating on instinct, the group followed the dog around the tree, and they saw the dog was closely guarding this mound that was covered in sticks and leaves and dirt. One of the hunters walked over and looked down, and they realized there was a person underneath this mound.

It was Natalia. They pulled off all of the dirt and the twigs, and they found her absolutely destroyed, mauled body. But Natalia was actually still alive. Brown bears are notorious for eating their prey while they are still alive. And in many cases, they will gravely wound their prey, but not let it die, because then the meat is fresher when they come back and eat it later. And so bears will wound their prey and then basically bury them, cover them up with sticks and dirt, putting it in the fridge and then come back and eat them later on. And so Natalia was earmarked to be eaten later because she was still alive and buried. Natalia was rushed out of the forest to a nearby hospital, and she would stay there for several weeks because she had serious, serious injuries from this bear. All over her body were these huge bite marks, and a lot of the flesh from her leg had been pulled off. But amazingly, she would recover, although the trauma of merely being eaten by a bear has never left her.

Our next story is called Grizzly Man.

Known as the Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell was above all else a huge bear enthusiast. His passion for these creatures led to a passion for environmentalism and for documentary filmmaking, the subject of which were the grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska. And so starting in the late 1980s, Treadwell began going to Cap and My National Park and setting up a camp there for the whole summer and filming all of his interactions with the grizzly bears. During the first half of the summer, Treadwell would stay in an area that he referred to as the grizzly sanctuary. It was this area near Hallow Bay. It was this big, open, green field. And all the grizzly bears seemed to just converge on this one area and mosey around and be lazy. They were not aggressive at all towards Treadwell. And so he could walk up fairly close to them and just shoot great footage of these huge animals. During the second half of the summer, he would leave the grizzly sanctuary and go south to an area called Caffelea Bay. It was a much more densely forested area with lots of grizzly bear trails. Treadwell could use vegetation to get right close to some of these bears without them necessarily seeing him.

He referred to this area as the grizzly maze. Treadwell developed a fairly bad reputation amongst the Park rangers of Capmine National Park because he was pretty reckless about how he interacted with these animals. I mean, they are big wild predators, and he would get right up close and in their personal space. And every time, he was just rolling the dice because eventually, they thought something bad was going to happen to him. Treadwell believed he was taking every precaution in that what he was doing was safe. But Treadwell had become very emotionally connected to the grizzly bears he was seeing at Cap Mine National Park. He felt so comfortable with them that he would actually walk up sometimes and pet and goof around with the bear cubs. And for whatever reason, the grizzly bear parents would not harm him. And so he felt like he was one of them, and they respected him, and they welcomed him into their environment. Normally, whenever Treadwell went to Alaska for the summer, he would go alone. It was just him and his camera. But at the end of the summer, in October 2003, when normally, Timothy would leave Alaska, because October is the time when the grizzlies become more aggressive because they're trying to eat as much food as they can before going into hibernation, Timothy decides that instead of leaving, he's going to extend his stay one more week, and he's going to fly his girlfriend, Amy Huguenard, into Alaska to spend that week with him.

Friends and family did not think this was a good idea, but Timothy was like, No, it's going to be just fine. I know these animals better than anybody else. They are not going to hurt us. So he flies Amy in, and they set up camp along a grizzly trail inside of the grizzly maze. Neither of them were carrying a weapon or bear repellent spray. A week later, when the pilot returned to pick up Timothy and Amy, he looked up the hill and he could clearly see their campsite was not broken down. They had not packed it up yet. They were not down at the shoreline. So he gets out of his plane and he starts walking up the hill towards their campsite thinking maybe they lost track of time, maybe they don't know they're getting picked up today. And as he crest the hill, he sees there is a huge grizzly bear pacing around as if guarding its prey in the middle of this campsite. The grizzly sees the pilot and makes a move as if he's going to run towards him. The pilot turns, runs back to his plane, and flies out of there.

And he calls Park Rangers and alerts them to this grizzly bear that's in the middle of Timothy and Amy's campsite. When the Park rangers finally arrived and made their way up to the campsite, they could tell right away that Timothy and Amy were deceased. Their remains were scattered all around this campsite. It was clear that a grizzly bear or more than one grizzly bear had absolutely ripped them to pieces. However, this wasn't even the most horrifying part of this discovery. As the bodies were being taken away, the Park rangers began bundling up their stuff to take with them, and they found inside the tent a camera that had a six-minute tape on it. At first, when they hit play, they thought it was a blank tape, but it wasn't. It was just inside the tent when it was recording, and so it had no visual, but then they started hearing audio. And for six agonizing minutes with a blank screen, they heard crystal clear audio of Timothy and Amy being eaten alive by a grizzly bear. The audio suggests that Treadwell had left their tent because they heard a bear outside and was attacked. And he starts screaming for Amy to come outside.

The bear has Timothy's head in its jaws, and Timothy is screaming, It's killing me. It's killing me. And Amy is screaming back, Play dead. And at some point, it's clear that's not working. They have no way to fight the animal. And Timothy starts yelling for Amy to run away. She's paralyzed with fear. She's screaming at the top of her lungs. And then, Timothy is groaning and screaming, and eventually it stops when he drags Timothy away. And then, Amy doesn't try to run away. She's just frozen in terror. And you hear the bear come back, and then her screams pick up, and then the tape goes quiet.

I'm Peter Frankerpern. And I'm Afwa Hersch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is big one for me, Nina Simone, one of my favorite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured Richard in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. You think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is.

So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone.

What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere and inhabiting people around you, including your son. What would you do? I'm Whit Misseldeine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, you'll hear even more intimate first-person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life, to a close friend of the infamous scam artist, Amanda Reilly. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Follow thisisactuallyhappening on the WNDYRI app or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can listen to thisisactuallyhappening ad-free on WNDYRI Plus.

The next and final story of today's episode is called Exposure.

Saturday, April 25th, 1987, was a beautiful spring day in the mountains of Northwest Montana. It was exactly the day that 40-year-old Charles Gibbs and his wife Glenda had been waiting for for months. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the breeze was warm. And so, at around 9:00 AM that morning, Charles and Glenda had a quick breakfast inside of their house in the rural city of Libby, and then they started stuffing their backpacks full of their hiking equipment. Charles and Glenda were going to go to Glacier National Park, which is a one million acre wilderness preserve with alpine meadows, forests, rivers, and lakes that are so bright and crystal blue, they almost look like they're glowing. The park is wringed by snow-covered mountains, and it's dotted with glaciers, which are huge masses of pure ice that jut up out of the rock and make you feel like you've stumbled onto some ancient frozen planet. The park is actually so otherworldly that when Hollywood producers were looking for a location to shoot the Heaven scene in the big movie, What Dreams May Come, they chose Glacier National Park as their location. And for Charles and Glenda, this place practically was heaven.

It was the place they went all the time to go hiking, especially on beautiful sunny spring days. After packing all of their gear, Charles and Glenda made their way out the front door and began heading to their car when as they were walking, Charles suddenly stopped short, shook his head, turned around, and ran back inside the house. When he came back out again, he was carrying his camera bag, and so he ran over to the car, he sat down in the driver's seat, and he grinned at his wife, and he held up the bag, and he said, Now we're ready. Both Charles and Glenda worked for the public schools in Libby. Glenda was an elementary school teacher, and Charles drove a school bus. But like a lot of people who lived in Montana, their real passion was the outdoors. And for Charles, specifically, his real passion was wildlife photography. He was actually a pretty accomplished amateur photographer. He'd had a couple of photo exhibits locally, and he'd gotten a few of his pictures published in the local newspaper. But what Charles really wanted to do with his photography was get one of his wildlife pictures published in a weekly publication called the Hungary Horse News.

The Hungary Horse News was a tiny publication, but they had won a Pulitzer Prize, which is the highest award for American journalism. And the Hungary Horse News was famous for its nature photography. Charles had been submitting his work for years to the Hungary Horse News, but the editor kept rejecting them, telling Charles that his photos were totally beautiful, but they weren't dynamic enough. Nothing was happening in these photos. And so that morning, on the couple's drive to Glacier National Park, Charles began talking out loud to Glenda about what strategy he was going to use for his photographs during their hike, what route they were going to be on, and what was the best angle to take certain pictures. And as Glenda listened to Charles, she just smiled to herself because it was like, no matter how many times Charles got shot down by the hungry horse news, she knew he was never going to give up. And so she loved his determination and just flappable attitude about his craft. At around 11:00 AM, Charles and Glenda pulled off the highway and began heading towards the trailhead where they would start their hike that day, which was located at the base of Elk Mountain on the Southern border of the park.

The route they had chosen for that day was not one of the most popular at the park.

And the reason for that was the trail was really steep, and in certain parts of it, it was fairly overgrown.

And so really, only the most hard core hikers would go up this trail, of which there weren't that many. And so Charles and Glenda were used to being on this trail and seeing no one. But they preferred it that way. They loved being alone out in nature. Finally, they reached the gravel parking lot right at the trailhead, and Charles parked their car, and then he and Glenda hopped out. They grabbed their bags and then began walking on this trail. The first mile of this trail brought the couple out along an abandoned road, and then over some railroad tracks and then out into this beautiful field full of white flowers. And then the trail really started to get difficult because it basically went straight up the side of a mountain. And as they walked up this really steep part of the trail, Charles was non stopped taking pictures of everything he saw. There were deer and mountain goats, and at some point, the couple reached a clearing on this steep section where they could look down and see a lake, and they saw there were beavers hard at work building a dam. And so, of course, Charles got a picture of that, too.

Now, these were the days before digital photography, and so all these pictures that Charles was taking, he couldn't actually see. He needed to go home and develop the film to see if anything he took was worth keeping. But as Charles and Glenda continued their hike up this mountain, Charles was getting more and more excited about some of the shots he was getting. He felt like they were going to be really, really good, and hungry horse news was going to finally accept his work. The couple made it the summit of this trail by early afternoon, and from up there, they had this beautiful panoramic view of all these jagged mountaintops that were covered in snow, separated by these huge valleys and prairies. And Charles and Glenda were the only ones up there. And so they had this unbelievable view all to themselves. And so the couple would eat the lunch that they brought with them while sitting on this rocky outcropping, looking out over this stunning view. And then when they were done, they packed up their stuff and began heading back down. Because they knew they wanted to get off of this trail and out of the park before sundown.

It was just about 5:00 PM when Charles and Glenda had reached the final slope of this steep section of the trail, and they were getting closer and closer to that big open field with the white flowers. And as they're going down this last section of steepness, Charles suddenly grabs Glenda and stops her and puts his fingers to his lips and then turns around and points behind him. Charles was visibly excited about whatever he was pointing at, but when Glenda looked in the direction he was pointing, she couldn't see anything, but she obviously knew that whatever he was pointing at, Charles wanted to take a picture of it. Now, Glenda, by this point, was really tired from the hiking and just wanted to go back to the car and go home. I mean, after all, Charles had taken dozens and dozens of pictures that day. We don't need to get one more. And so Glenda would look at Charles impatiently, basically suggesting, Come on, we can come back another time. But Charles didn't budge. And he looked at her like, Please, I want to get one more photo. And so Glenda did one of these and was like, Okay.

And Charles said, Thank you. I'll meet you at the car. And so Glenda stood there and watched as her husband got his camera out, turned around, and began slowly making his way back up the trail. And again, Glenda's looking. She can't see what he's going to take a picture of, but she figured he had his plan. And Glenda, she turned around and began heading back down towards the car. It didn't take long for Glenda to get back to the car. She got there right 6:00 PM. And when she got there, she hopped inside, sat in the front passenger seat, turned on the radio, and then she expected to have to wait for maybe another 20 minutes or so for Charles to finish up and come join her. But Glenda, after sitting in the car, was so tired that she accidentally fell asleep. And when she woke up again, she was disoriented, and immediately she looked to see if her husband was in the car with her, and he wasn't. And she's looking outside. It's getting pretty dark out. She glanced at her watch, it was seven PM, which means Charles had left her for at least an hour by this point.

And she's thinking, there's no way Charles would have been gone for an hour. He would never do that. He would never leave me alone like that. And so Glenda began glancing around her, half expecting to see Charles just outside of their car doing something, but she was all alone. There was no other hikers or cars. Charles wasn't there. And so starting to panic, Glenda got out of her car and began hustling back onto the trail to go look for Charles. And so she's yelling for Charles. She's looking around. It's getting darker and darker, and there's no sign of Charles. He's not calling back to her. It's just totally silent. She walks along the abandoned road. She reaches the railroad tracks. She gets into that meadow with the white flowers, and still there's no sign of Charles, and she gets to the base of that steep section of the trail, and she's looking up at all these trees and how dark it was getting. And she's thinking to herself, If Charles is in trouble somewhere up there, there's no way I can help him by myself in the dark with no equipment. No one knows I'm here.

I mean, this is an emergency, and I need help. And so Glenda would scream a few more times for Charles, and after not hearing any response, she turned and ran all the way back to her car. She turned it on, and she drove to the nearest ranger station. When she got there, she ran inside and immediately told the ranger where her and Charles had been, which trail they were on, and where roughly they were on this trail when she had gone to the car and Charles had turned around and gone uphill to take a picture of something. And as Glenda told the ranger all these details about where they were inside of the park, he really started to look worried. And when Glenda was done explaining, he told her that, Yes, we need to go right now and look for your husband, but I can't have you on that trail. It's too dangerous. And so this ranger had Glenda wait at the ranger station, and the ranger, by himself, headed back to the trailhead to go looking for Charles. And so the ranger, he gets to the trailhead, he hops out, he's got a rifle and a flashlight, and he begins walking along this trail, and by now, it's dark out.

And so he's looking straight ahead with his flashlight and scanning side to side. He's calling out for Charles, and he's walking this trail. He gets all the way across the train tracks through the Meadow, and he gets to the steep section, and he actually begins going up this part of the trail until roughly the area where Glenda had described Charles going one way and her going back down. And when he got there, there was no sign of Charles, and so the ranger just took his rifle and fired three shots into the air, hoping that that might get Charles, if he was in the area, to hear him and call out or do something to indicate where he had gone. But after firing his gun, When the ranger heard nothing. By this point, it was approaching midnight. It was totally pitch black outside, and the ranger knew that at this point, Charles was missing, and they really needed to organize a true search party to try to find him. But they would have to do that the next morning when they had light again. And so the ranger called out a few more times for Charles, and after not hearing anything, he reluctantly turned around and made his way back to his truck and drove back to the ranger station, where he would tell Glenda that he could not find her husband, and they would now have to wait for sunrise.

At sunrise the next morning, 20 searchers arrived at the trailhead where Charles and Glenda had been, and these searchers had dogs, and all the dogs had Charles' scent from some clothes that was in Glenda's car. And so this big search team, very slowly and methodically, began moving down this trail. And so they went across the abandoned road, over the train tracks, through the Meadow with the white flowers. They got to the steep section of the trail, and they got all the way up to that point where Charles and Glenda had separated, and Charles had gone uphill to do whatever he was going to do. And it was at that point on the steep section that one of the searcher's dogs picked up Charles' sent and took off running uphill. And the searcher, whose dog this was, took off running after the dog. And the dog, it went up for a little while, up the steep rocky outcropping, and then it turned and began going down again until it reached a different meadow, so not the same one they walked through with the white flowers. This was farther away to the right. And in this Meadow, the dog, who still very much had the scent, began to slow down, and it went straight for this tree.

It was a stand-alone tree right at the base of this steep section. And this tree had low hanging branches, maybe 5 feet off the ground, and the dog went right up to the tree, and then it stopped for a second, and the searcher, by this point, had caught up to the dog. And so he's looking at this tree, and he sees the ground looks really disturbed, and there's deep gouges in this tree, and then the dog went around this tree and sprinted another 50 feet or so and then stopped like it had found something. And when the searcher caught up to his dog, he looked down and he found what they feared the most. It was Charles, and he was deceased. His body was totally mangled. His arms and legs were eaten away. There were deep cuts and gouges all over his body, and there was a blood trail from Charles all the way back to this tree. Also, So just a few feet from Charles' outstretched hand was a camera, Charles' camera. Now, it was obvious that something horrific had happened to Charles, and there were clear signs of a struggle that took place near this tree, and then also over here where he was found.

There were clear marks on the ground, that there was some fight that happened right here. But interestingly, Charles was carrying a gun, but it appeared that he did not unholster it and he didn't fire it. Instead, it almost looked like whatever was happening to Charles, he refused to put his camera down, which is why it was so close to his hand when he finally died. And so it was decided that the only way to determine what happened to Charles would be to develop his camera, to figure out what he was taking pictures of before he died. And so authorities would send off Charles' camera roll to be developed. And two weeks later, when they got it back, they couldn't believe what they saw. The photos very clearly told the story of what happened to Charles. This is what happened after Charles left his wife on that trail. When Charles stopped his wife and signaled to her that he wanted to take one more picture up the trail, he had found a photographic opportunity of a lifetime. The warm spring weather that had drawn Charles and Glenda out of their house to Glacier National Park had also woken the grizzly bears in park from their hibernation.

And what Charles had seen up the trail was a mother grizzly bear and her three cubs. The first few photographs that Charles would take of these bears were shot from a good distance away And it just showed the mother bear and her three babies just sauntering around the rocks, not really paying any attention to Charles. To Charles, grizzly bears were the most majestic creatures in nature. He didn't just love them, he viewed them as if they were magical in some way. He was always going to local town meetings to speak about grizzly bear's beauty, and we needed to defend their natural habitat. As such, anyone who knew Charles knew about his passion for grizzlies. And while, of course, Charles knew that grizzly bears were dangerous, he also thought that the bears who were very smart and sensitive, could sense his own very gentle and protective feelings towards them. And so if he was around them, they would never perceive him as a threat. Charles had taken some very good photos of other bears, black bears, but he had never taken what he called the Definitive Grizzly Bear photo. And it was going to be this Definitive Grizzly photo of the mother and her three cubs that would finally get him a spot in the Hungary Horse news publication.

As Charles took more and more photos of these bears, you could see in the photos that Charles was getting closer and closer and closer to this mother bear and her cubs. It was obvious that he was tracking them, even as the mother bear and the cubs were clearly trying to walk away from him. Finally, when Charles got about 50 feet away from this family of grizzly bears, he must have kicked a rock or stepped on a twig that broke that startled the bears. And so the second to last photo that Charles would take of this family shows the mother bear very clearly turning around to look at Charles, and she's making perfect eye contact with him, as is one of her cubs. Charles would take one more photo. In this photo, you can see the bears are not just staring at Charles, they are running towards him. They are charging him. And it was likely after taking this photo that Charles realized the danger he was in. At this point, Charles tried to make a run for it by running down the side of this mountain. He got down to that tree with the low hanging limbs, and he attempted to climb up into it, maybe hoping he could get one more picture of this bear if they would just leave him alone.

But the mother bear and her cubs, they came charging down. They saw him up in the tree, and the mother bear began climbing into the tree, and she reached Charles. Now, she likely weighed about 400 pounds. And when mother grizzly bears are defending their young. They are absolutely merciless. And so she must have grabbed him or bit onto him and yanked him from the tree. And Charles, somehow, after being pulled to the ground and getting slashed and bit by this bear, he managed to break away from her, as we can tell from the blood trail, and he made it about 50 feet away from this tree before the bear chased him down again, jumped on top of him, and killed him. When authorities figured out that Charles had managed to briefly get away from this mother grizzly bear and made it 50 feet away from her, they wondered why he hadn't pulled out his gun and shot at the bears to defend himself. But Charles' wife, Glenda, said it made perfect sense that Charles had not tried to harm this grizzly bear or her cubs. He loved grizzly bears, and he would never dream of leaving these three cubs without their mother.

After Charles' death, the rangers did not attempt to track down this bear and her cubs and do anything to the bears because they felt like the bears were just acting like bears, and it was Charles who was in the wrong. And Charles' family and friends would say that is a decision that Charles would definitely support. Charles' photos of the grizzly bear family were published in the Hungary Horse news alongside an article about his death.

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