Call it a daddy-daughter bonding experience extraordinaire.

While other fathers may spend family time this summer taking their daughters to the waterslides or out for ice cream, a Northern Illinois man and his 10-year-old daughter have forged a special relationship after surviving not one, but two close encounters with grizzly bears in Glacier National Park.

Bob Zurek and his daughter Rebecca had a very close call with a bear a year ago when they were confronted by a tagged female grizzly on a sheer switchback along the Swiftcurrent Trail.

That harrowing ordeal later was recounted by another hiker who wrote about the experience in a letter to the Hungry Horse News.

The encounter didn’t deter the Zureks, though.

Almost a year to the day after their first grizzly encounter, the father-daughter duo was headed down the Loop Trail last week after spending a few days at Granite Park Chalet when they found themselves in a similar situation as they neared the end of the trail.

As they rounded the bend to approach a bridge, they heard screams from other hikers below. About 25 yards in front of them, they saw a young grizzly lollygagging on the bridge, cleaning its face and fur with its paws.

Bob moved in front of Rebecca and they got out their bear spray. They looked for possible escape routes and began to shout at the bear, hoping the grizzly would retreat up the waterfall bed.

The bear wasn’t going anywhere soon. In fact, the grizzly perched its head on its paws, letting out what sounded like a sigh. Rebecca later said it looked “like a stuffed animal plopping down on my bed.”

With last year’s encounter still fresh in his mind, Bob continued to assess the situation.

“This one, because it looked like a juvenile, my first thought is, ‘Where’s Mom?’” Bob recounted. “I’m looking around and the bear was scratching away no matter what we were yelling.”

He speculated the bear recently had been “kicked out” by its mother to live on its own and wasn’t sure yet how to respond around humans.

A game of “grizzly bear gruff” commenced, with the bear lingering on the bridge, not allowing anyone to cross.

“We were yelling at him for about six minutes,” Bob estimated; then the bear leisurely lumbered off the bridge and up the waterfall bed. The Zureks quickly crossed the bridge and reached the end of the Loop Trail. They arrived to other hikers cheering and clapping that they’d moved out of harm’s way.

Rebecca’s mother, Kim, who on that day was spending one-on-one time with the couple’s other daughter, 15-year-old Amanda — pursuing Amanda’s love of the fine arts — said it was frightening to hear about yet another bear adventure.

“I hope to stop this tradition because it’s not a good one,” she said with a laugh. “One close grizzly bear experience is enough for a lifetime, but two before you’re out of elementary school is something extraordinary.”

They all agreed last year’s bear encounter on the Swiftcurrent Trail switchback was much more harrowing. Bob and Rebecca came within 15 yards of the bear and there was nowhere to go.

Hiker Jonathan Spatz of Pittsburgh, Penn., was with his nephew Zack Brewer of New York last year on the same stretch of trail when they realized what a precarious position the Zureks were in.

“Zack’s memorable quote was, ‘I’m not sure what we can do to help them’ even as he bounded up the trail much faster than I did,” Spatz said in his letter to the editor in the Hungry Horse News last August. “We were perhaps a few hundred yards from the rock [the Zureks were behind], with the bear ahead of us, when the man and his daughter appeared to be coming down. Despite our shouts of ‘BEAR’ they kept on coming. Apparently they missed seeing the bear in the little bends of the trail.”

Bob recalled that they couldn’t immediately see the bear on the switchback, then saw it loping up the trail. Once the bear came into sight, they backed up and high-tailed it to the switchback, but the bear was gaining on them. Rebecca remained calm, pulling out her bear spray and asking her father what she needed to do.

Afterwards, though, she confided that she remembered thinking, “I didn’t want to die.”

 Bob, an engineer with the Motorola division of Google, said last year’s close encounter “was a heck of a lot scarier” than this year’s adventure.

The escapade capped an eventful summer up the North Fork for the Zureks, who built a cabin and have been spending summers there for 20 years. They arrived this summer to find pack rats had extensively damaged the interior of their cabin. Several flat tires over the course of the summer added to their aggravation.

“It was a tough summer,” Kim said. “It was one thing after the other, but as bad as things get ... people here are so helpful and nice, and we very much appreciate that.”

Rebecca, who starts the fifth grade on Monday, said she surely will have one of the best stories to tell about what she did during her summer vacation.

“It’s sort of unusual that this is a yearly thing now,” she said. “I’ve been taught what to do, though” in case of a bear encounter.

An outdoors enthusiast who’s into horseback riding, soccer, archery, shooting and ballet, Rebecca said hiking in Glacier with her father is one of her favorite things to do. She’s already planning next year’s hike back to Granite Park Chalet.

“The bears are not going to scare us off,” she said.

Bob joked about their newfound status as bear magnets.

“If I ever got a bear tag, I’d bring Becky along with some honey,” he said with a chuckle.

On a more serious note, he’s profoundly thankful neither he nor his daughter were harmed during their too-close-for-comfort encounters with grizzlies.

Added Kim: “Bob said it was just another adventure in one of their favorite places. Bob’s definition of adventure is ‘a terrifying experience that you survive.’ And once again, they did, with yet another page to add in their adventure journal.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.