Teen thought he'd die in bear attack

As the grizzly furiously thrashed him about in the Alaska wilderness, all Sam Gottsegen could think about was what he would miss: college, traveling, life.

"I thought: 'I'm going to die,' " the 17-year-old Denver resident said. "I thought, 'This just can't be happening to me.' "

Then the bear left, only to return a moment later to continue mauling him and his other teenage friends. When the minute or so attack ended, four teens, including Gottsegen, were injured. Three others were unhurt.

The attack Saturday night in the Talkeetna Mountains north of Anchorage came as the group neared the end of a 30-day course to learn how to survive in the backcountry. The teens were at the stage of the course where they could try out their skills without adults around.

Authorities think the bear was aggressive because it was with its cub. Gottsegen said no one ever saw a cub.

The youths were hiking through bushes that got so thick they decided to wade through a river, walking in single file. Around a bend in the river, Joshua Berg, 17, of New City, N.Y., began yelling "Bear! Bear!"

The bear took him down first. The animal made angry, snarling noises as it attacked, Gottsegen said from his hospital bed in Anchorage.

It was sudden. There was no time to pull out bear deterrent spray, and no one had a gun. Berg, badly wounded, called for someone to set off the personal locator beacon they carried for emergencies.

Gottsegen said everyone scattered and he ran, even though the students had been told to play dead.

His instincts wouldn't let him, though.

"When I heard that bear, when I saw it, it was all just like natural instincts," he said.

The bear bit him on the head and lashed out at the teen's arms and chest, puncturing a lung and breaking two ribs.

The attack on the group probably lasted less than a minute, he said.

After it was over, it started raining.

The teens set up a camp and tended to the injured, making good use of their survival skills. They plugged a deep wound in Gottsegen's torso with a plastic trash bag secured with an Ace bandage.

They also activated the beacon.

Patricia Allaire, the mother of another injured student, Noah Allaire, 16, of Albuquerque, N.M., said her son initially tried to activate the beacon, thinking the bear was gone, but then it struck again.

The bear thrashed the teen's head and back, slightly puncturing a lung. He was listed in good condition Monday at a hospital.