A black bear startled a mountain biker — and the biker startled the bear right back on a Colorado mountain trail, officials said. The encounter took place Saturday, June 21, on Emerald Mountain, just outside of Steamboat Springs, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said. “It appears that both the bear and the biker startled each other, which caused the biker to lose control of the bike and crash,” a spokesperson told McClatchy News in an email. “The bear did not make contact with the person or with their bike.” The encounter was not considered an attack, but the biker’s wrist was injured in the crash, officials said. Someone identified themselves as the biker and recounted the incident in a comment on Steamboat Radio’s Facebook post.

“I was climbing up the first half mile of Abby’s (trail) when I heard crashing through the underbrush back and to my left. Looked over my left shoulder and a black bear was charging towards me,” James Wirta said. “It (she??) got to within about 8-10 feet from me when she pulled up and stood.” Wirta said he glanced back toward the trail and realized he had drifted off to the right — then his front tire “dug in” and he ended up going backward down an embankment and breaking and dislocating his wrist when he landed. “I now had to decide to climb back up toward the bear or try to bushwhack down. I gathered my bike and went up,” Wirta said. “When I got up to the trail the bear was still there and staring at me. I said out loud ‘hey I’m going to walk this way (uphill) so you just stay there.’” Wirta said he walked up to another trail until he ran into a biker who helped him walk out to a road where search and rescue could get to him. As the adrenaline wore off Wirta, the biker he encountered shared his own injury stories to distract Wirta from the pain in his wrist, he said. Search and rescue wrapped up his wrist and drove him to a waiting ambulance, but he declined the ride and instead had his wife take him to the emergency room, he said. Wirta said he will likely have surgery this week. Emerald Mountain is about a 160-mile drive northwest from Denver.