Was a recent CNN article and video about a hiker's encounter with a bear at a "remote lake" in Yellowstone Park staged with help from National Park Service officials?
CNN begins by saying Erin Prophet spent "about an hour" hiking when she heard the noise in the brush and saw a bear emerge from the forest. Video shows a cinnamon colored black bear eating vegetation along the shore of a lake.
The CNN article says the bear advanced toward Prophet. Video never shows Prophet and the bear in the same frame.
Yellowstone Park officials urge hikers to travel in groups of four or more, but just days after a hiker in Yellowstone was killed by a grizzly, Prophet was hiking alone and did not have bear spray.
CNN was at the lake as events unfolded. A ranger appears in the video and yells at some kayakers on the lake to "let the hiker know." We don't see the ranger's face: all we see is the back of the ranger's head for a moment.
We don't hear the kayakers warn Prophet, but she must have got the message somehow because CNN reports that Prophet discarded a pack with food in it, removed her shoes, and started backing into the lake. CNN doesn't say what the bear was doing while Prophet was getting ready for a swim in the lake.
Thirty-seven-year old Dave Beecham, his young son, and his father in law are in the right place at the right time with their kayak. It's a kleeper folding kayak, which can be broken down and packed anywhere, but kleppers are heavy. It must have been a grueling walk to the lake. They paddle up to Prophet, she grabs on, and they backpaddle to deep water. The bear is never in a single video frame with them.
After the daring rescue, the unconcerned bear eats more vegetation, scrambles around on a snag, and takes a dip in the lake.
CNN is right there at the scene because they interview a very wet Erin Prophet. But CNN does not put the mysterious ranger on camera. CNN reports that after Prophet's unexpected swim, she's "shaking from the cold lake water and adrenaline."
The ranger does not go back and get Prophet's pack and shoes. Is she going to walk back to the road barefoot?
Later, how much later we don't know, Yellowstone Park bear specialist Kerry Gunther arrives on the scene. Gunther and CNN reporter Patrick Oppmann get in Beecham's kayak and paddle across the lake to retrieve Prophet's pack and shoes. Then they talk about bear safety, and the video ends.
Real life drama or a Hollywood production by CNN and Yellowstone National Park officials?
A CNN news crew an hour's walk from the road in Yellowstone? At the exact moment a bear approached a hiker? And there just happened to be a ranger on scene? And people in a kayak on the lake? But no video of the hiker and the bear together?
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