The Life of Timothy Treadwell (3)

A Gruesome Discovery　　When pilot willy fulton landed on Upper Kaflia Lake at the hour he and Treadwell had arranged —— 2 p.m. on October 6, 2003 —— things didn't seem right. He was expecting the usual neat pile of gear down by the water's edge, ready for a quick load and fly-out, but no equipment was visible. And Treadwell had not made his customary contact with his handheld VHF radio as the plane approached.　　Fulton tied up the plane and headed through the brush to the camp, calling Treadwell's and Huguenard's names. Silence. “About halfway up, I got kind of an odd feeling,” he says, “and decided to go back to the plane.” He wanted to take off, look things over from the air.　　Pausing to untie his plane, Fulton glanced over his shoulder. Behind him was a bear, coming fast and low, eerily silent, 20 feet away. As the pilot leapt to his floats and pushed off, the bear was a body length behind. Fulton scrambled into the cockpit and slammed the door. The bear, a big, dark male, skidded to a stop at the water's edge, eyes still fixed on him. Huffing, the animal paced the bank as the plane drifted out into the lake.　　“I've been charged by a few bears, but this was different,” Fulton says. “He wasn't acting big and bad. He was crouched down, sneaking up on me. That look in his eye was different too. Right then I felt like he was out to kill me and eat me.” Fulton's heart was thumping. The Beaver's engine rattled to life, and the bear disappeared.　　Circling the camp, Fulton could see the tents, still staked out but mashed flat. And in front of one he saw a large bear, the same one, he figured, feeding on something. It looked, chillingly, like a human rib cage.　　Fulton contacted his operations manager, who alerted the state troopers in the town of Kodiak on the island of the same name. The manager also contacted the park service in King Salmon, which is on the mainland, about 75 miles west of Kaflia on the far side of the Alaska Peninsula. The park service rangers advised Fulton to wait where he was. Soon two planes were airborne, one carrying two rangers and a pilot, the other with two troopers.　　By the time the park service plane arrived, Willy Fulton had been anxiously waiting for three hours. He jumped into the park service's Cessna and they taxied the mile east toward the campsite. District ranger Joel Ellis recalls, “We got out of the plane in a combat-ready situation, yelling for the people.” The shouting was also to drive away any bears in the area.　　The four men moved forward, hands clenched around guns, along the steep, narrow trail rising through the alders. Suddenly Allen Gilliland, the park service pilot, shouted, “Bear！” It was less than 20 feet away, head low, moving silently toward them. Everyone yelled repeatedly, throwing all their pent-up emotion into it, trying to haze the big male away. But instead of retreating —— as almost any bear would from a tightly packed, aggressive, loud group of humans —— he stared straight at them and stepped forward.　　“He had that same look in his eye,” Willy Fulton recalls. “I think he meant to kill all of us.”　　Ellis remembers, “We didn't confer. We just started shooting.” Fulton, who was between the other men and the bear, dived to the ground as the fusillade exploded overhead. The big bear dropped in his tracks, twitched, let out one last breath, and was dead.　　State Troopers Alan Jones and Chris Hill had just landed and were tying their plane down by the lake when they heard the volley. They hurried toward the noise. In the meantime, the park service team and Fulton made their way to Treadwell's campsite. The two tents were crushed down but intact. In front of one tent was a large mound of mud, grass and sticks. There in the muck was what Ranger Ellis later called, his voice tight, “fresh flesh” —— fingers and an arm protruding from the pile.　　With unmistakable evidence of at least one fatality, the investigation was officially handed over to the Alaska State Troopers, who had just arrived at the campsite. Trooper Hill was in charge. A perimeter check around the campsite turned up what was left of Timothy Treadwell. The face, recognizable and uncrushed, was caught in a grimace. Meanwhile, searchers excavating the bear's cache back in camp had discovered Amie Huguenard's remains. Her face was also intact； she might have seemed peacefully asleep except that her body, like Treadwell's, had been mostly eaten.　　As the men put the remains into body bags and packed up Treadwell and Huguenard's gear, Trooper Hill yelled, “Bear！” It was a much smaller animal. As it continued toward them, the men had all had enough. Hill and Ellis opened fire. Allen Gilliland also shot twice, then moved in and made a killing shot to the base of the animal's skull.　　It was now after 6 p.m. One by one, the three planes took off in the dusk. Six men rode the currents of the sky, rising away from the darkness and death. But Kaflia would follow them the rest of their lives.