Intense standoff between notorious bears ‘Split Lip’ and ‘The Boss’ captured on camera

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — An encounter between two notorious locals in Banff National Park was caught on camera by a Canmore-based photographer.

John Marriott was with his wife and 18-month-old son Porter in the Protection Mountain campground on July 3, when the first mammoth grizzly, Split Lip, appeared.

“You got this huge male bear about 550 pounds and almost a 20-year-old grizzly bear walking across the road right towards myself and Porter while we were down dropping off some cans at the recycling bin in the campground,” Marriott said.

“We managed to get back to our campsite and I yelled out for my wife to get the bear spray.”

Marriott and his family jumped into their vehicle and watched Split Lip eat dandelions in the campsite when Split Lip’s behemoth of a rival–The Boss–arrived. Cue the showdown.

“To have The Boss suddenly show up on scene and chase down Split Lip was really quite remarkable,” he said.

Marriott said he never felt any sense of danger even when Split Lip walked out of the bushes because he has photographed these two bears in the past.

To have two dominant grizzlies in the same area at the same time and to see the aggression between them was a rare experience according to Marriott.

“Their territories are so huge that they don’t necessarily always run into each other very often in a year, maybe when they are courting a female. But a lot of it just happened away from our prying eyes,” he said.

“I definitely did think there was a really good chance it was going to end with a physical altercation.”