Hunted

Book excerpt: 'From the first moment I stepped off the highway and entered the wilderness, I knew that something was watching me. It was the most primitive hatred imaginable reaching out towards me, seeking to burn me from the face of the earth.' When British climber David Fletcher decided to explore the remote Hayes group of mountains in Alaska he was wamed about soloing so far from rescue. Never could he have imagined that he was about to enter into a battle as fierce as Captain Ahab's with the great whale. But this is real life, not fiction, and Fletcher's adversary is the most feared creature in the Alaskan wildemess, a grizzly - a 10-foot high, 3-ton, furious mother bear whose cub he has accidentally killed in a moment of panic. Fletcher is appalled at his own mistake and full of sorrow for the bear, but he knows that unless he can kill her, she will certainly destroy him. Hunted is the true story of how the vengeful bear, each of her paws wider than a man's chest, with talons five inches long, stalks her human quarry over the rugged Alaskan terrain, cutting him off from his food supply, nearly comering him time and again, her claws raking his climbing boots as he hangs from a rope inches a