Emergency rescue workers dispatched a helicopter to retrieve four terrified hikers after a chance encounter with a brown bear left them stranded 7,000 feet up a mountain. The incident took place on Saturday on a hiking trail near Hokkaido in Japan. The first of the hikers, reported to be a man in his 60s, came across the bear, thought to have measured almost five feet long, at around 2.30 p.m. local time. He was then joined by three others, and an emergency call for help was placed about two and a half hours later. The group was then forced to wait a nail-biting further hour before the helicopter crews arrived to airlift them to safety. It is the first time the trail has been open to hikers since last August, when the routes were closed following a fatal bear attack on a 26-year-old climber. Such incidents are reportedly at a record high in Japan, which documented 238 encounters and 13 deaths throughout last year.
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