In this video still, emergency responders load a patient into a helicopter after the person and their companion fell victim to a bear attack Monday on the Mystic Falls Trail in Yellowstone National Park.
As Craig Lerman approached Mystic Falls on Monday afternoon he started seeing bear paw prints in the mud and snow. Then he saw a bloody hat. And a watch.
“I was very alert after that,” Lerman said. “I knew that something was going on.”
Lerman continued up the trail, which is about a mile from the Biscuit Basin Trailhead in Yellowstone National Park, and encountered an injured hiker lying in a pool of blood, with his face and body “torn up.”
The hiker was one of two brothers attacked by at least one bear on Monday afternoon, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s first bear attack of the season. The two brothers were airlifted to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, where one is in critical condition and the other is in serious condition.
The News&Guide pieced together the brothers’ names through social media posts and obtained a status report from the hospital, but is not reporting their names until they are released by family members or officials.
The park has been scant on details thus far. Officials have not released the ages of the victims or the subspecies of bear involved. Yellowstone press officials declined to answer questions about the attack.
The incident is the first bear attack in Yellowstone since September 2025, when a bearinjureda 29-year-old man on the Turbid Lake Trail. That was the first attack sinceMay 2021.
In Grand Teton National Park, a man wasattacked by a grizzlyon Signal Mountain in 2024. All of those people survived.
Lerman happened upon one of the brothers around 4 p.m. Monday. The man yelled for help when he heard Lerman approaching.
Source: Drudge Report
