Grim Details About Amie Huguenard's Relationship With The Grizzly Man

Amie Huguenard was an intelligent, educated woman who knew that she was potentially putting her life in danger when she spent summers with Timothy Treadwell living among grizzly bears in the wild. Yet she took the risk, likely due to a combination of her trusting nature, her love of animals and the outdoors, and her romantic interest in Treadwell, often referred to as the "Grizzly Man." That risk resulted in tragedy when a grizzly bear killed the couple at their campsite in Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska in October 2003. 

Before the pair's grim end, they were involved in a friendship built on mutual affection which blossomed into a romantic relationship. Huguenard knew of Treadwell and was the one to reach out to him in 2000 in a letter after hearing him speak in a lecture. According to Vanity Fair, as they became more involved, she accepted him as he was, telling friends that Treadwell's mission to study and protect Kodiak grizzlies was his priority in life. "Tim's not [a family] guy." she said. "He is who he is." 

In Huguenard's obituary, it quotes her as once saying, "Because of obstacles and logistics most people are too afraid to follow their heart, however, people who do are courageous and inspiring." She seems to have been taken with Treadwell's passion for the animals he loved and his willingness to dedicate his life to them. Treadwell had a high regard for Huguenard as well. Next to where he'd scribbled Huguenard's number, he'd written, "great person," and "a good heart," per Vanity Fair.

Though Timothy Treadwell and Aimee Huguenard struck up a relationship in 2000, they initially met in 1996 in Boulder, Colorado, where Huguenard had just graduated with a B.S. in Molecular Cellular Developmental Biology, according to her obituary. She went to Alabama from there to earn a post-graduate degree in medicine, then she took a job in LA as a Physician's Assistant for Head Trauma Neurosurgery.

Treadwell, according to his 1997 book, "Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska," had ambitions of being an actor, but struggled with drug and alcohol abuse in his late teens and early 20s, overdosing on heroin at one point. It was after that near-death experience that he developed a plan to forge a new path among the bears of Southern Alaska. 

By the time Huguenard contacted him, Treadwell had spent 10 summers there, up close and personal with some of the most dangerous bears in the world. She then began joining him for weeks at a time for the last three summers of her life. For Treadwell, the experience was as intense as any drug. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1994, "When you are with a grizzly bear, up close, and you hear them breathe and you feel them move and you hear the gurgles in their stomach, you feel as if you are in the presence of a God and you must turn your life over."

Treadwell's complete dedication to grizzly bears may have intrigued Huguenard, whose obituary read, in part, that her "passion and love for all animals was intrinsic with her spirit and concern for their protection led her to follow her heart and be active towards that goal." Yet, according to the findings in a case incident report made public by the National Park Service, her journal, which was found at the campsite where the couple was killed, showed that the 37-year-old had some hesitation about what they were doing. Per the report, "Some journal entries suggest that she was not as comfortable with the situations as he was."

Still, she wanted to be with Treadwell and must have believed in his mission to protect bears from humanity by educating the public about them. Over the previous seasons, Treadwell had given her reassurance and safety tips. Besides, by the time of their deaths, Treadwell, 46, had survived 12 summers communing with grizzly bears, which she may have taken into account in moments when fear of some of the largest bears in the world crept in. 

According to an email from a former boyfriend written to ESPN in the months after her death, he explained, "Amie had a kind of naivete about her that added a real sweetness to her entire persona. At times it was easy to convince her of things that were not entirely true ... Sometimes I found this quality frustrating because I would watch her 'swallow the hook, line, and sinker' in situations where it was obvious what was going on ..." 

However, Treadwell wasn't trying to trick Huguenard. He seemed to really believe he had a relationship with the bears, many of whom they had names for, some he'd "known" since they were cubs. While many times he said he was willing to, and maybe even expected to, die from a bear attack, he told the LA Times in 1994 it was unlikely because "They love me too much." Still, per Vanity Fair, he had a strategy in the event of a bear confrontation. Treadwell said you had to quickly decide whether to "pull up, back away, or do nothing. Just feel as if there's ice in your veins and be fearless. He'll hate that."

Huguenard defaulted to Treadwell's experience, much like she let him do most of the talking when they were out in public together. By 2003, Treadwell was excited for Huguenard to join him for a late-season camping trip to be among the bears, writing in his journal on September 14, "Amie's coming in today. She's my girlfriend. She's wonderful" (via Vanity Fair). According to Anchorage Daily News, by then, the couple had planned for Huguenard to move to California to live with Treadwell.

They spent a week or so camping and studying grizzlies, safely leaving on September 26, but they hadn't seen a bear they'd been hoping to see. The rain forecast was lending itself to filling the creeks which would create a fish run that would be sure to attract the bears who needed to fatten up before winter. At the airport, Treadwell proposed staying. Huguenard said, "I wanna do whatever you wanna do" (via Vanity Fair). 

From their last journal entries after they went back, nothing seemed unusual but the couple had been arguing a bit, per Alaska's Public Safety Report (via NPS). Details like that along with many others are known about Timothy Treadwell's bear experiment because he documented his work for 13 seasons on film and in journals, though Amie Huguenard was camera shy and didn't feature greatly in the videos.  Documentarian Werner Herzon used much of Treadwell's footage to make the film "Grizzly Man" which was released in 2005, bringing wide awareness to Treadwell's work and the couple's grisly demise. 

In a ghastly turn of events, even the audio of his mauling was recorded as the camera was turned on at some point after a bear had been stalking around the campsite and Treadwell went outside of the tent to confront it, but the lens cap was never removed.

In the late afternoon of October 5, in the recordings, as Treadwell is being mauled he calls out for Huguenard to help him. She can be heard yelling first for him to "play dead!" then she screams, "Fight back!" Finally, she tries to muster what Treadwell had taught her about how to scare bears away. Alaska's Public Safety Report (via NPS) describes hearing her "making repeated, high pitch screams of 'Get away!'" The recording lasted six minutes and 21 seconds before the camera ran out of film. What was left of the couple's remains were found the following day by the pilot who was scheduled to pick them up.