"Huge jolt on impact": North Vancouver cyclist crashes into a bear

Sepahdar Montazeri | Kevin Milner

A North Vancouver cyclist crashed into a bear as he hurtled down a mountain and was so injured he couldn’t swat the mosquitoes away or flee as the bear lurked nearby.

Daily Hive spoke with Kevin Milner about his terrifying ordeal and the injuries he sustained because of it.

“I was pretty much just stuck to the ground [following the crash],” Milner said.

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Kevin Milner

Milner cycles in an area by Lynn Valley Road’s Demonstration Forest. He bikes a 9 km path before turning back, but on Monday, he only made it to just before the 8 km mark.

The problem for Milner was that he barely had time to react to the bear he was about to crash into because it appeared after a turn.

“From the time that I saw him to the time that he took off to run across the road was just fractions of a second. There was no time to react.”

Milner added that the bear chose to run the exact path that he was in. He believes he was travelling around 40 km/h at this point. The last thing he remembers is his tire closing in on the bear.

“I just remember hitting it behind the shoulder blades. The next thing I know, there’s this huge jolt on impact.”

The next thing he knew, he was on his back, feeling stuck to the ground.

“It was like half my body had been charley horsed.”

To make matters worse, he couldn’t lift his head, shoulder, or leg.

Mosquitoes began swarming Milner, and he couldn’t lift his arms to swat the mosquitoes away. Another cyclist riding on an e-bike, Sepahdar Montazeri, arrived on the scene. Unfortunately, the area lacks phone service, so they couldn’t call 911. SOS didn’t work either.

Two other passerby’s appeared, and they said they would head up to an area where there was service to call for help.

As all this was going on, the bear was still sniffing around. That’s when the adrenaline kicked in, and he said, “I needed to get out of here.”

Kevin Milner

Montazeri helped Milner to the e-bike and made it to an ambulance that almost left because as Milner was biking, he passed the two people that were going to call for help. Once they saw him on the e-bike pass by, they figured he was okay. Thankfully, he got to the hospital with a whole suite of injuries.

Kevin Milner

Aside from a cardiac contusion, or bruising of the heart muscle, his whole left side is bruised “like you wouldn’t believe.”

This cyclist likely won’t be riding in that area again, and when asked if he had ever encountered a bear here before, Milner told us he always thought if he hit any animal, it would’ve been a deer.

At the end of it all, Milner said that cycling can be a dangerous sport but that “you gotta pay if you wanna play.”

Milner is now recovering at home.