VIDEO: Couple Shouts As Bear Takes Off Toward Unsuspecting Hikers

A grizzly bear in Glacier National Park rushed a group of hikers in a very dramatic video taken last summer.  

Dulé Krivdich and his wife were hiking near Hidden Lake when they looked down from a ridge and saw a large grizzly bear emerge from the tree line and begin loping down the trail.  The excitement of seeing a grizzly from a safe vantage turned to fear when they realized that there was a group of hikers coming up the trail a few hundred yards away from the bear and neither the bear nor the hikers were aware of one another. 

Krivdich and his wife began yelling at the group, trying to warn them of the approaching bear.  They get the group's attention, but they're unprepared.  The bear picks up speed.  One of them shouts back "what do we do?" Krivdich and his wife knew that grizzlies generally do not want conflict with humans but can get panicked when surprised, so they shout back to the group to make noise and, above all, don't run. 

But when the group sees the quarter-ton of bear-flesh tearing down the trail at them they do what their instincts incorrectly tell them to do: run like hell. 

Krivdich says they were "booking it like we've never ever seen before in our lives."

Bears, closely related to canids, like to chase running critters, being hardwired to do so.  Which is why we theorize that someone up there must like these hikers, because the bear decides it's not worth it and does not give chase, allowing the hikers the chance to escape.