A Grizzly Encounter

On a trail near a mountain named for his grandfather, a lone hiker crosses paths with a bear three times his size—and with one enormous appetite

- By Omar Mouallem

Ever since he was a kid growing up on Quadra Island in western Canada, Colin Dowler had pushed himself to do more, go faster, and scale bigger heights, despite having a small physique and a nagging congenital knee disease. When he skied, he raced the double-black diamonds. When he rode his mountain bike, it was on the bumpiest terrain. If he wasn’t a little scared doing something, he didn’t think he was doing it right. Jenifer Dowler, his wife of 16 years, often found herself telling him to slow down.

To celebrate his 45th birthday in July 2019, Colin took a week off from his job as manager at a health-care facility in Campbell River, a small town on Vancouver Island’s east coast, where he lived with Jenifer and their youngest daughter, Sadie. He planned to spend two days on his own, scouting a route he planned to use later to summit Mount Doogie Dowler with his older brother, Paul. The peak, which rises to about 6,500 feet in the Coast Mountains of southwest British Columbia, was named after Colin’s late grandfather. It had always been a point of pride for their family that Grandpa Doogie, a prominent community member who once owned the Heriot Bay Store, a local hub, was immortalized in nature. But none of the Dow lers had ever climbed to its summit. Colin had tried once in his 20s and made it within a thousand feet of the peak before getting rained out.

Jenifer didn’t like the sound of her husband’s latest plan. She was used to Colin going on solo adventures, but this time he’d be boating to an obscure bay, biking an unpopulated road, hiking through grizzly country, and camping overnight alone. There was too much room for disaster.