It was beautifully silent on the mountain when Trevor Janz and Patricia Van Tighem arrived at Waterton Lakes National Park for a weekend of hiking in September 1983.

But by the next morning, the weather had turned. The young couple began their long hike down through the fresh snow, in order to catch the 11:30 a.m. ferry that would take them back across the lake to town.

"I set out first because I was freezing and I was grumpy. Trevor was irritatingly cheerful... He was singing 'Blue Skies' quite loud. 'Blue skies smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see'," says Patricia.

"And I heard quite unexpectedly crashing to my left in the trees," says Trevor.

"From the left side of Trevor came a grizzly bear... It was going so fast. It was like a brown blur and it sent him flying," says Patricia.

"The bear had me by the leg, then by the arm, and eventually by the head. [She] was just flipping me back and forth over its head. I was a rag doll; I was nothing," says Trevor.

"I took off my pack... looked around, found a tree, and climbed it. I didn't think I could climb a tree, but the branches I was climbing on were little," says Patricia.

"There was no awareness of the pain, no great sadness or suffering. It was exciting. Part of me was really happy to think, I'm going to find out within these next three minutes about going towards the golden light and heaven ... The bear dropped me. I was lying there on the ground. I heard snort, snort. And then the bear left," says Trevor.

"I looked down to see what was going on. They told me later that this was a mistake. I shouldn't have looked the bear in the eye, that's apparently considered confrontational... And she came up the tree like a pole climber. She didn't use the branches; she came up with her front and her back legs, and sent the branches flying. She reached up and swatted me on the leg," says Patricia.

"My ears were all chewed off and dangling. They were full of blood and my jaw was broken and messed up... Then I heard a scream and then I thought, 'Oh, the bear's got Trish too. We were both going to die'," says Trevor.

"Trevor said he heard me scream twice, which I don't remember doing... The next thing that I was aware of was being on the ground with this bear on top of me and chewing on the side of my head," says Patricia.

"I was face down in the snow and I really couldn't hear much of anything. And then, the good medical student that I was, I was listening for my pulse and trying to estimate the amount of blood loss that I had, trying to figure out whether I had lost enough blood that I was going to die," says Trevor.

"What I did was pull these fingers out because I could see her nose right here, and it was like big dog's nose. I just tweaked it and she backed off... Then I held still. I thought, now's the time to play dead," says Patricia.

"The bear came at me again, knocked me down and started chewing on my head. This time, there was none of the shock or disbelief that had protected me the first time... Then it just stopped. I was left there, clumped on the ground and then I didn't hear anything at all," says Trevor.

Hiking buddies Ted Pedersen and Tom Hegi were the only other hikers on the Crypt Lake Trail that day. As they headed down the mountain, they had no idea what was ahead.

"I could see somebody laying down on the ground, and I realized, something's wrong here," says Ted.

"Pretty much the whole side of [Patricia's] face from her eye down was gone," says Tom.

"At that point she murmured something. I didn't catch it, but Tom did. He says, 'Ted, there's a bear here'," says Ted.

Immediately, the shock hit. They were confused, panicking, yelling at each other.
Amid the panic, all of Trevor's years of medical training kicked in.

"I went into emerg physician mode and started shouting orders," says Trevor.

It was a desperate race against fear and time to get down the mountain, away from the bear and down to the lake in time to catch the ferry.

Tom and Ted carried Trish piggyback. She was practically blind, and still far from the bottom. Somehow Trish found the strength to start walking.

"Eventually what we finally did was put a coat over my head and just wrap it around because pieces of my scalp were all over the place and I couldn't stand the feeling of the floppiness," says Patricia.

Time was going more quickly than they could. So Trevor decided to go down ahead to catch the boat.

"I sort of held my pants and my leg together with one hand, and scooped my jaw up and held it together with the other, and jogged down the trail the last little bit. "

Trevor made it to the boat with just minutes to spare. Trevor and Patricia were soon rushed to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary.

This was the very hospital where Trish and Trevor worked, caring for others. Now they were the patients and the recovery would take longer than either of them could have imagined.