You're Not Getting The Full Alaska College Experience Unless Your Professor Is Attacked By A Bear

WTOP - Students and teaching assistants have arrived back in Juneau from a remote mountaineering class that was cut short when one of their professors was mauled by a brown bear.

They said Tuesday night that they were tired and not yet ready to talk about Forest Wagner, 35, who was teaching the class on Mount Emmerich near Haines when he was attacked by the brown bear sow on Monday. The mountain is near Kicking Horse River in Alaska’s panhandle.

A student hiked into cellphone range on the mountain and called Haines police, who reported it to the Alaska State Troopers. Haines police would not comment on the incident.

Wagner has been coordinating and teaching in the university’s outdoor studies program since 2006, according to his biography. He teaches rock and ice climbing, backcountry navigation, glacier travel and mountaineering.Troopers coordinated a helicopter rescue into Haines on Monday. None of the students were injured. They were, however, evacuated from the mountain. The bear, which had cubs, was spotted about 200 yards from the helicopter, and a trooper had to hike back in to provide security, according to the report shared with the Post. Bear sows can become aggressive if they think their cubs are in danger, experts say.

Through a university spokeswoman, Krein told the Post that he was proud of the students and that they had applied their medical and wilderness training during the situation.

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Hats off to that professor. I tip my hap and nod my head. Well done. All these students flock to the University of Alaska Southeast for a true college experience. And boy did they get one. You can go to some lame college where you sit in a classroom and the professor is up there talking about Borophyl and god knows what else, or you can get your ass out of the University of Alaska Southeast and have the most hands on college experience possible. These kids just saved their professor from dying after he was attacked by a fucking bear. Is that hands on experience useful anywhere besides Alaska? Probably not. But it doesn’t get any more real that that. Wouldn’t even be surprised if he planned the attack with the bear as a way to really test the students. You don’t go to school and take an ice climbing and glacier travel class to study a text book. You go to school and take an ice climbing and glacier travel class to fend off bear attacks and save your professor’s life when he gets mauled.

And I need to say this about the blog I just did about how college for the most part is a scam and meaningless. I said unless you’re a lawyer or doctor or astronaut you likely don’t need college. What I didn’t keep in mind though was there are people who go to college in Alaska. Can you imagine the college experience in ALASKA? We see videos of SEC schools on football Saturdays, meanwhile there are college students climbing mountains and dodging bear attacks as well. And yet they both fall under the same umbrella as “college”. It’s actually mind blowing because I’d say the college experience at the University of Alaska Southeast could not be more different than the college experience at Alabama if it tried. I need a TV show where they send some SEC Smokes up to Alaska and put them on the bear mountain trails. Take some of the Alaska eskimos and throw them in SEC Country. Completely different worlds. It’s like a study abroad program but somehow both as in the United States.