Video: Snowboarder Crashes Into Bear in Unbelievable Collision

Heavenly Mountain Resort at Lake Tahoe attracts one million guests annually, though that doesn't account for any animals that might pay a visit to the slopes. 

On Dec. 8, snowboarder Ekalak Lakshana was filming his friend going down a trail dotted with boarders and skiers moving quickly down the mountain. At one point, a bear appears seemingly out of nowhere and begins bounding across the mountainside, leaving Lakshana and his friend Hunter Martinez little time to get out of the way of the collision course. Martinez ended up crashing into the animal, producing a giant cloud of powder. 

Lakshana described the harrowing incident over the weekend in an interview with Snowboarder, detailing the scary moment when he saw the animal heading straight for a collision with his friend Hunter Martinez. 

"When I saw the bear coming at me, all I could think was, 'Today is not the day—you’re not catching me!'" Lakshana said. "I’ve seen bears near the slopes before, but never one running right in the middle like this." When Martinez crashed into the bear, the animal didn't stick around to pick a fight, instead taking off escaping from the action. Martinez, for his part, was unfazed. "He gave me a fist bump before cruising down the slope, so all ended well," Lakshana recounted. 

Bear sightings at Heavenly aren't that uncommon. Earlier this year, a bear was seen on one of the trails, per Powder. And in January of this year, a skier at Heavenly filmed another bear similarly running across a busy trail packed with skiers and snowboarders. 

Regardless of where you're hitting the slopes, it might not be a bad idea to look both ways at all times.