GRAND LAKE - Eleven middle school students have quite a story for their parents about their class field trip after they escaped a bear that broke into their school bus.
The seventh and eighth graders from the Odyssey School in Denver started a three-day camping trip at the Green Ridge Campground in Arapaho National Forest on Monday night. Then a bear came into their campground - twice.
The idea behind the field trip was that instead of learning about how a canoe floats on water in a classroom, the students got to take their canoes onto the water of Grand Lake.
"We're really focusing on their leadership qualities," Jessica Schwarz, one of the teachers, said.
The teachers had to demonstrate those leadership qualities just a few hours after arriving.
"It was our first night," Schwarz said. "I think it was like 10:30."
The teachers told everyone to put all their food and trash on the school bus that had brought them to the campground.
"Nothing even smelly - no lotions, no lip glosses, anything in the tent. If you had spilled food on yourself, change out of your shirt - that goes on the bus," Schwarz said.
Not even an hour after everything was locked and sealed, the trouble began.
"We hear a pop and that was the seal of the bus door coming off," Allannah Reed, one of the students, said.
"I had zonked out and I woke up to just - bang, bang bang on the bus," Schwarz said.
It turns out a black bear was hungry and trying to get at the food in the bus.
"We hear it running and jumping on the bus to get to the food," Allannah said.
It brought the food right back outside to eat.
"Then after it was done with the grapes, it was sniffing by the corner of this tent where I was at," Allannah said.
She says her teacher, Jackie Wells, got out of the tent to scare the bear away, but the teachers told the students they were done camping in tents.
"We all loaded them up in the gear van," Schwarz said. "We just didn't' want to take any risks."
That turned out to be a good idea because at about 5 a.m., the bear came back.
"It did come back to the van again," Schwarz said.
So Wells came out and scared the bear away again.
"You have to have a lot of respect and awareness of the risks that are involved," Schwarz said.
After that encounter, all the students and teachers got up and went to a lodge at Grand Lake where the owners of the North Shore Lodge offered to let them stay for free.
"The lesson is that all these things that we've been teaching them over the years about being really hyper aware and careful while you're camping, it's just reinforced, by having the bear actually visit," Schwarz said.
It was a lesson and a story for the students that they could not have gotten in a classroom.
"Try to stay calm and cool, just breathe, basically," Allannah said.
The Department of Parks and Wildlife has set a trap to capture the bear and move it to another location. They say at no time did the bear did not threaten any humans.
The class plans to return to Denver on Thursday.
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