The grizzly bear that slapped Anchorage cyclist Sean Berkey around on Tuesday apparently hadn't read the signs once used to close Rover's Run Trail to people. If the bear had read the signs, it would have known that it was supposed to be downstream on Campbell Creek, leaving the safe area near the Hillside Park Multi-Use Trail to the 45-year-old pharmacist on his way to work.

It wasn't, though, and Berkey became the third person injured by grizzlies at Hillside in the past three years. Anchorage area wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said he isn't quite sure what to think of the latest encounter. Fish and Game has been lobbying the city to close Rover's Run -- where Petra Davis was nearly mauled to death by a bear during a 24-hour mountain bike race in 2008 -- but, he noted, "people have to cross the creek."

Berkey was headed to one of two bridges across the creek when he ran into a sow grizzly with a cub at about 5:30 a.m. She did what sow grizzlies with cubs often do when confronted by humans at close range: She attacked the threat. Berkey, who is not talking publicly about his encounter, told Sinnott he tried to use his bike to defend himself against the bear, but she knocked him down and bit him.

As is wise when attacked by a sow grizzly -- although never when attacked by a black bear -- Berkey played dead, and the bear retreated. She attacked again when he first tried to get up, but he resumed making like a dead bicyclist until he was sure the bears were out of the area. He then got up and rode to his job at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

He is expected to fully recover from his injuries, as did Davis and another woman attacked along Rover's Run in 2008. Those attacks eventually led to the trail being closed, but Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan has since lifted the closure.

Open or closed wouldn't have made any difference for Berkey. The area in which he was attacked has been something of a running joke among mountain bikers for a couple of summers. It is a large, open area near the valves on a major Anchorage natural gas line near the south end of the Rover's Run Trail. When the signs were up closing Rover's Run, it was not common to find large piles of bear scat in the open area or along a short trail that connects the opening to the nearby multi-use trail connecting the trails in Hillside Park to a trailhead along the Stuckagain Heights Road to the north.

To reach the Stuckagain trailhead from Hillside Park, a bicyclist -- or a pedestrian -- can drop straight down a big hill toward near Campbell Creek, or take a right at the top of the hill and sidehill along a trail paralleling the winter-popular Spencer Loop cross-country ski trial. A cyclist is as likely to meet a bear on one trail as on the other. Berkey got unlucky with his choice Tuesday.

"If he would have gone the other way, he would have missed the bear," Sinnott said, but there was no way for Berkey to know that. Sinnott said Berkey was making a lot of noise when he came down the big hill, hoping that would scare off any bears in the area. But that didn't help. The noise of the creek or the sound of the wind in the trees might have covered the sounds of Berkey's approach, Sinnott said, or the sow might simply have let her attention slip.

Biologists saw no sign the bear was in any way looking for trouble. It did not try to eat Berkey. It eliminated him as a threat to her cub and left as soon as she concluded the cub was safe. Biologists say the attack is, however, a reminder people in Anchorage should know how to act around bears and they should be alert in wild, wooded areas. Radio-tracking studies have documented grizzly and black bear use of just about every patch of woods in the city.

Sinnott said it might also help if the city did some more clearing around and along the multi-use trail between Hillside Park and Stuckagain Heights Road. That would make the area less comfortable for bears, who really don't like to be seen by people, and better for people, who can avoid bears if they see them soon enough.

"It would help to see around the corners," Sinnott said. No one knows that better than Berkey now.

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com.