You’re not seeing double. Two months after a bear chased a skier down the hill at Predeal in Romania, another video — this one up close and personal — shows the same thing happening again.
Consider canceling any travel plans you have to Romania’s Predeal ski resort. On the heels (literally) of a terrifying bear chase at that resort in January, another video has surfaced of a grizzly tearing after a skier earlier this month at the very same resort.
But where the last video was shot from a chairlift, hundreds of feet away, this video is straight from the perspective of the skier. And in it, the bear appears to close within just a few feet. This looks more like curiosity — and possibly a warning — than an attack.
Grizzly Bear Chases Ski Instructor in Romania
According to ABC News, the video was shot from the perspective of 50-year-old ski instructor Adrian Stoica, who was about to conduct a class on March 9. It first shows the bear casually investigating Stoica and a group of skiers, the class he was about to teach, the report said.
“I was just checking the ski slope condition before I take my students for a ski lesson,” Stoica told ABC. “As I was skiing down the mountain, a bear suddenly appeared on the slope and a group of at least 15 skiers was trapped on the spot. I told them to try to chase the bear away by making noise and shouting. It did not work.”
At first, the bear looks lackadaisical, almost comical as it lies down and plops its snout in the snow. But when Stoica tries to draw the bear away from the group, it pops up and immediately begins trotting after him.
“I slowly waved my arms, slowly moved out of the group and made the bear come after me as he was really close to the group,” he told ABC. “I was just hoping that the bear would get tired and would go back to the forest.”
But the bear continued after the instructor, dramatically increasing its pace to keep up with the skier. Soon after, Stoica notices more skiers ahead on the slope. Audio picks up other skiers screaming and shouting as they see the bear. But remarkably, Stoica remains calm the entire time, never taking the camera off the bear — even at times chuckling as it continues to chase him down the hill.
After a minutes-long chase, the bear eventually loses interest and walks off into the woods. According to Ion Zaharia, a spokesperson for the Brasov County Police Department in Transylvania, this bear is the brother of the bear previously seen chasing a skier at Predeal. And Zaharia told ABCV there’s at least one more bear in the woods around the ski resort.
