About this ebook
That ended on the night of August 12, 1967.
In the dark hours before dawn, in two separate locations miles apart, two grizzly bears attacked two young women sleeping at backcountry campsites. Julie Helgeson, nineteen, a seasonal park employee from Minnesota, was dragged from her sleeping bag near Granite Park Chalet and mauled while her companion survived. Michele Koons, also nineteen, was attacked at Trout Lake. She couldn't escape. Her sleeping bag zipper was stuck. The bear carried her into the night.
It was no coincidence that this happened in 1967. For years, the National Park Service had allowed garbage to accumulate at backcountry campsites and near tourist areas. Bears had grown accustomed to human food and lost their natural wariness of people. The park service was aware of the problem. The warnings had gone unheeded. Jack Olsen documented how years of mismanagement and institutional complacency created the conditions for tragedy and made that terrible night all but inevitable.
The attacks were a lightning bolt to the entire National Park Service. Every rule that exists today about food storage, bear canisters, and campsite management traces its origins to that August night. Night of the Grizzlies is the book that changed how America thinks about sharing wild land with wild animals.
Originally published in 1969 and never out of print, Night of the Grizzlies has introduced generations of readers to one of the most haunting true stories ever told about the American wilderness.
In 2024, New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday named it the second-best book he read all year, writing: "your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. This book deserves to be much more well-known."
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About the author
Jack Olsen is the award-winning author of thirty-three books, which have been published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen’s journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as “an American treasure.”
Olsen was described as “the dean of true crime authors” by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and “the master of true crime” by the Detroit Free Press and Newsday. Publishers Weekly called him “the best true crime writer around.” His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as “a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike.”
Olsen is a two-time winner in the Best Fact Crime category of the Mystery Writers of America, Edgar award.
