A tragedy happened last Friday whilst I was out of all news contact. A polar bear had attacked the same expedition group i was with up in the Arctic circle and killed a member of the 12 man group and left two of the leaders in serious life changing conditions.
I'm deeply saddened and troubled by this as I not long ago just come back from the same trip. I fully trust that BSES did everything they could in order to prevent such a tragedy...
The training we received prior to and during our expedition were drilled into us. Bear flares, tripwires, rifles everything was taken seriously and we all were fluent in what we had to do should we encounter a polar bear. No one should run, and sure enough in the case of this group the only people that ran were the people that were injured. What would you do though if you were the leader of a group and the only way to save anyone was to get your rifle, you had to go really... credit to Michael for managing to get the rifle and shooting the bear whilst severely injured, I can only imagine what must have gone through his mind ro any one of their minds really...
I'm troubled and angered by some of the Norwegian authroities claiming that BSES did not do enough to prevent this from happening...in my opinion the whole trip was excellently organised and the leaders of our expeidtion and all expeditions as far as I was aware took every precaution to ensure bear safety.
I will back BSES all the way on this one.
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