A brown bear strolled within an estimated 20 feet of Maya Higa, FaZe Adapt, and the rest of their group during a livestreamed bear-viewing excursion in Alaska. Nobody was hurt.
The clip shows the group standing in the open as the bear moves across their path. Their guide keeps his eyes locked on the animal, quietly tells the group how to behave, and at one point can be heard saying, “Hey, buddy,” as it walks by.
Nobody ran. Nobody scattered. The group stayed packed together and let the bear pick its own route. It passed them and carried on toward the water to fish.
Adapt clearly didn’t enjoy the experience and avoided looking directly at the bear for chunks of the encounter. Maya, who runs the Alveus Sanctuary in Texas and has years of wildlife handling experience, held her ground.
This was an organized, guided trip in a protected salmon-rich area, not two streamers wandering into a bear on a trail. Alaska has several established viewing sites, including Katmai National Park and Preserve, Lake Clark, and McNeil River, where brown bears see supervised human groups every single season.
During the salmon run, bears pile into rivers and creeks to load up on calories before denning. With thousands of fish in the water, the animals are usually far more interested in dinner than in the people standing nearby.
That doesn’t make them tame. Bears at these sites are habituated to humans, which simply means they have stopped reacting to a familiar sight. They remain wild animals that can act unpredictably around cubs, competition, or a blocked path.
The group reportedly had bear spray on hand as an emergency deterrent but never used it. No firearm was present.
Other bears appear in the surrounding footage, with viewers pointing out what looked like a female with a cub. A later clip from the same trip shows another bear running past the party, though its direction and focus aren’t clear from the footage alone.
The identity of the star of the show is still up for debate. It was described as a large male grizzly, but plenty of viewers thought it looked young and lean. Wet fur lies flat and can make a brown bear look far smaller than it actually is, so size guesses from a single clip are shaky at best.
For anyone getting ideas: The guide reportedly told the group this only works at that location, with a guide, and shouldn’t be copied anywhere else. Official National Park Service and Alaska Department of Fish and Game guidance says the same thing in less friendly language.
