Occurred on June 1, 2023 / Estes Park, Colorado, USA
Info from Licensor: "My friends and I were walking home down the lakeside bike path in Estes Park in June 2023. This area is known for aggressive elk because they mate here and there are signs everywhere warning you to keep your distance. For that reason we were going very slowly and giving any elk we saw a lot of space.
We spotted 5 female elk with several babies around a corner, so we started to back off and we were going to turn around completely and find another way home. At this point the woman in the video walked past our group, we tried to call to her to get her attention but she had headphones in and maybe also just ignored us. She walked straight for the group of elk and proceeded to take pictures, I am not sure if she realized there was a whole group or not, but she was way too close. We called and called to try to warn her that she was near the babies and that she needed to back up, but she never responded.
After a minute the elk started to round the corner and come after her, 5 large elk started to chase her down, and she decided to run towards us, leading the elk our way. This is where the video ends, but not the story. We ended us being cornered against a fence by that group of elk, they were literally 3 feet away and giving off very aggressive postures and body language. My friend accidentally dropped her dog's leash and it ran towards the elk who tried to stomp it multiple times. Luckily my friend grabbed the dog and 2 of them were able to run away, but my husband, myself, and the lady who started it all were still stuck between the angry elk and the fence.
I realized that we could climb through the fence to at least get something between us and them because the elk weren't backing off. On the other side of the fence was a small patch of land, lots of trees, and then a river, so we were pretty stuck. We stayed there for 5-10 minutes but the elk didn't leave, they stood their ground.
Eventually, my other friends (the ones who got away) saw us from across the river and told us that if we climb along the riverbank (in the trees) for a while then we could cross the river by climbing along a fence that went over it. We literally had to climb along a wood fence over a river to get to safety. We actually have this part in a separate video.
The entire time the woman who caused it all wouldn't talk to us. When we got to the other side she put her headphones back in and started walking straight towards another group. We made her stay with us until we were back on the main road because she was clearly a liability to herself and others."
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