Video shows black bear charging at a hiker on Mt. Wilson

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Video captured on Mt.Wilson in the Angeles National Forest showed a black bear charging at a hiker.

The video, which was posted on Instagram on Monday by Eric Chiu, shows a hiker walking toward a black bear (that appears brown) and making noise with bells to try to get the bear to go away.Instead, the bear charges right at the hiker before the video stops.

The hiker and person recording apparently made it out unscathed.“I was thinking this guy is crazy and I hope nothing happens to him,” Chiu told NBC Los Angeles.“I’m not sure what was going through his mind to be honest, because the last thing you would think about is somebody would actually walk toward a bear.

And at that point, I was a little bit concerned for his safety.” California Wildlife officials estimate there are now 60,000 black bears in California, roughly triple the figure from 1998.With human-bear encounters on the rise, some rural areas want more leeway to hunt bears down.The video was recorded by Chiu’s stepmother, who witnessed the bear from a distance, he wrote in the caption.No one was injured by the bear and it was a “false charge,” Chiu wrote.The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.

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Follow UsSummer Lin is a breaking news reporter at the Los Angeles Times.She previously covered breaking news for the Mercury News and national politics and California courts for McClatchy’s publications.

An East Coast native, Lin moved to California after graduating from Boston College and Columbia University’s Graduate Sc...