Tahoe Is Bear Territory. Exhibit A: This Video of 1 Crashing Into a Snowboarder

A recent video that went viral shows a bear and a snowboarder colliding on the snowy slopes of Heavenly Mountain Resort in South Lake Tahoe. It’s a reminder that in a place like Tahoe — with warm winters, plentiful food and crowds of visitors — run-ins between humans and bears are always a possibility.

The whole event captured by Ekalak Lakshana starts as a recording of him snowboarding with his friends, only to be interrupted by a large furry animal.

A few seconds into the video, a black bear emerges on Lakshana’s left as he’s snowboarding down the hill, and then the bear gallops across the slope before running into another snowboarder, Lakshana’s friend Hunter Martinez.

Thankfully, no one was injured during the whole ordeal. “When I saw the bear coming at me, all I could think was, ‘Today is not the day—you’re not catching me,” Lakshana told Snowboarder magazine. “I’ve seen bears near the slopes before, but never one running right in the middle like this.”

In a statement, a representative for Heavenly noted that wildlife sightings are possible because the resort is on national forest land, but it said such “interactions between our guests and bears are infrequent, as these animals usually move along quickly.”

Winter bear sightings at Heavenly — and throughout the region — are common, with similar videos recorded just a year ago and another earlier this year. And it’s no mystery as to why that is.

Lake Tahoe is home to one of the densest concentrations of black bears anywhere in the world. “It’s the best black bear habitat in North America,” said Peter Tira, public information officer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

With more people moving into the area and tourists visiting throughout the year, sightings of black bears and human-bear interactions have also become more common, even in the winter when black bears are assumed to hibernate.

Luckily for Lake Tahoe’s black bears, the warmer winter climate and an abundance of food from the human population have made it so that they don’t really hibernate.

“Hibernation is nature’s response to a lack of food resources,” Tira said. “In places with warmer climates like California and other places, bears will kind of come in and out of hibernation,” he added, saying that some black bears in Lake Tahoe don’t have a biological need to hibernate due to their access to food all year round.

During the beginning of winter, when food is scarce and seasonal patterns change, black bears have an interrupted hibernation, or torpor, said Catherine Mendez, executive director at Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care. “So it causes them to go seek out food during warmer spells,” she said.

People also tend to bring snacks on the slopes that could attract bears to those areas, especially in the winter. “It’s really easy to forget what you have in your pockets if you accidentally trash on the mountain,” Mendez said.

In addition to the growing human population, food attractants and a warming climate, increased building and development in bear territory is also likely to cause more human-bear interactions. “Habitat encroachment within the basin is a really big issue as we develop more. We are taking up more territory for the bears,” Mendez said.

Black bears aren’t aggressive animals and aren’t known to be dangerous to humans. “They rarely do anything to harm a person. You’re much more likely to be killed by your neighbor’s dog,” said Ann Bryant, executive director at BEAR League, a community-based nonprofit in the Lake Tahoe Basin and Truckee areas that focuses on educating the public on how to coexist with bears.

“The world has become too small for every species to have its own private corner to exist. And where we’re having to now share the land, the animals have to share it with us, and we have to share it with them,” Bryant said. “And in a typical landscape like the Tahoe National Forest, where bears belong, this is where they’ve always been. We have to honor that. We have to respect that.”

A few tips on trying to avoid bear encounters in Tahoe are: lock your cars, don’t leave food in them, and make sure to secure your trash. You’ll want to avoid attracting them to any food or smells. Tira also advised the public to do their part to keep bears safe by driving slowly and responsibly in areas where bears might live.