SEATTLE – Six months after a cougar attack left 61-year-old Keri Bergere with a broken jaw and her face swollen beyond recognition, the cyclist from Kenmore, Washington, is still on the road to recovery.

Bergere’s friends and his cycling team know him as optimistic, forward-thinking and hopeful. He describes himself as someone who “sees the glass half full.” Especially in the weeks following the attack in February, when it took five men and about an hour to ward off the attack.

Details of the struggle were widely reported in February: A cougar, riding for miles on a gravel trail in the Cascade foothills, attacked a group of five cyclists in their 50s or 60s and sank its teeth into Bergere’s jaw. The cyclists worked together to free Bergere from the cougar, hitting him in the head with a large rock and pulling his legs until he released his claws. His teammates pinned the animal to the ground with a bicycle until it was killed by a Fish and Wildlife Department officer who responded to their call for help. In response, the community came together. A fundraiser for Bergere raised more than $80,000 in a few weeks.

But less is known about what happened after the traumatic encounter. Bergere was taken to Harborview Medical Center with serious injuries and spent nine hours in surgery. He was hospitalized for five days. He couldn’t eat for months. He couldn’t feel his face. He couldn’t blink his eyes in sync.

Bergere struggled through it all. The memories of the attack were hard to shake — the blood running down his throat, the suffocating feeling of his face being pressed into the ground by the puma. At times, he recalled the moment he was ready to “just let go.”

Berger is not alone.

That day, the four Recycled Cycles teammates who were riding with Bergere near Fall City — Erica Wolf, Annie Bilotta, Tisch Schmidt-Williams and Aune Tietz — contributed in different ways but worked together.

“It was like we were all on the same page,” Wolf recalls.

In the weeks and months after the attack, as the physical wounds healed and the media attention waned, each of the cyclists struggled to adapt to a new normal.

Bergere and one of his teammates turned to giving minute-by-minute accounts to eager reporters on local and national news channels. A few chose to stay in the background, processing their experiences largely on their own. They struggled to find a sense of normalcy, isolating themselves from the rest of the group.

All have made an impact in their own way by telling their stories, leading efforts to promote wildlife safety and inspiring the broader community — most recently as recipients of the Carnegie Medal, a global award for heroism. But even six months later, their mental and emotional struggles continue.

“We weren’t planning on having group trauma that day,” Schmidt-Williams said.

“I’ll get there, I’m just not ready yet”

Bergere was taken to hospital after the attack and underwent successful nine-hour surgery the next day.

The other four women were not far from danger. Sipping electrolyte drinks, they wrote statements for the Fish and Wildlife Department, answered officers’ questions and turned in their bloody, torn clothing for the agency to temporarily preserve as evidence. Exhausted survivors of a wild animal attack, they even showed their passes to the land management organization they boarded.

Finally, hours after the attack, the foursome arrived at Schmidt-Williams’ North Bend home around 5 p.m. In shock, they ate warm bread and sipped tea.

The incident itself came as a shock. Cougars can be found throughout Washington state, but attacks are rare. The 2018 attack that killed a cyclist near Snoqualmie was the state’s first fatal encounter since 1924. There have been fewer than two dozen attacks statewide in the past century.

Bilotta, Bergere’s cycling partner, remembers that feeling of shock, which stayed with her for two days until she and three other women visited Bergere in Harborview, then gave way to a feeling of enveloping adrenaline.

The furor fueled Bilotta as he went on a media frenzy for the next month. Radio, newspapers, national television; Bilotta appeared on all of them, often alongside Bergere. Bilotta didn’t care that he talked about it; in fact, he believes that retelling the story helped him get over the trauma.

In interview after interview, he said the incident felt “ordinary.” Sometimes he thinks about what it must have felt like to be on the trail, picking up a rock and bringing it down on a puma’s head with as much force as possible.

But as the media turned to survivors, some withdrew from the spotlight. Wolf recalls taking time to reflect on the incident and began seeing a trauma therapist. With gradual progress, she adjusted her outlook on life.

“I know what it’s like to be afraid of dying, and I’m not afraid of dying anymore,” Wolf said. “I’m afraid of not living, so I’m going to live life to the fullest.”

Wolf leaned on what he loved: cycling. In July, Wolf became the first person in his group to complete the route where the cougars attacked them. Oh, and he completed the route in record time, dedicating it to his four friends.

Schmidt-Williams also began seeing a therapist after the attack. She also continued to cycle as much as possible. But her journey to recovery was difficult, she said openly: “(The attack) completely changed my life, my relationships, everything. It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

Schmidt-Williams soon distanced herself from the cameras and the cycling group, believing her voice was not being heard. She focused on spending time with her family, keeping a journal and keeping up with work, which she said has been harder to focus on since the attack.

This is a far cry from the strategy of Bilotta and Bergere, who still cycle together frequently.

“I have to protect myself and my boundaries because I am so vulnerable right now,” Schmidt-Williams said. “Everyone’s timeline is so different in terms of how they need to heal and what that looks like.”

Over the past month, Schmidt-Williams has been making progress. After the horror of that February morning seeped into her dreams for days, nightmares eventually prompting her to call the 988 suicide and crisis helpline, she has worked hard to process the feelings.

After a few months, he began riding regularly and these disturbing thoughts were minimized.

But in July, while biking on a trail in Oregon, Schmidt-Williams felt like he was on that fateful day on the Cascade foothills trail. Paralyzed, he was convinced that if he looked back, he would see his friend being torn apart by a wild animal again.

He fell and could not recover.

Schmidt-Williams knows that after a year, she will be further along the road to recovery, but that will require more concrete changes.

“She’ll probably move to Arkansas to be closer to her daughter. Something needs to change, she said.”

Bergere also had a setback. In April, during his first attempt to get physically fit again and eventually hit the trail, he fell while biking on paved roads near Rattlesnake Lake.

The woman, who suffered a concussion as a result of the accident, is still recovering.

She has big goals, like cycling a cross-state race from the Olympic Peninsula to the Spokane area, a marathon she and Bilotta have completed twice. While she’s stubbornly optimistic, she’s realistic about how much time and effort it will take and the physical and emotional recovery it will require. “I’ll get there, I’m just not ready yet,” she said.

Community assistance, community recognition

Caryn Sengupta, a board member of Seattle-based women’s cycling group Recycled Cycles, said the attack was a wake-up call for the broader cycling community.

Cycling on trails has long been an escape from busy city roads, where cyclists must always watch out for cars: “The outdoors is a place where we go to de-stress and have fun,” Sengupta said. The puma attack “kind of put a dark cloud over that.”

In response, the group teamed up with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to co-sponsor a workshop on bear and cougar safety, where they discussed their experiences with the team and demonstrated how to use bear spray safely.

And as news of the attack reverberated through the Northwest cycling community, each of the women used their platforms to post best practices for biking in the wilderness. They posted on online forums, asking others on the trails to carry bear spray and knives — two tools they wish they had brought back in February. And they made those changes themselves, riding in groups and riding with defensive and first-aid equipment. Schmidt-Williams even considered bringing a firearm on her rides.

“Having this happen to us once, I don’t think we’re immune to the possibility of it happening again,” Bilotta said.

While the six months since the attack have taken the women in different directions, what unites them are the near-constant reminders of the harrowing experience. “Just when you think you’ve calmed down,” Bilotta said, something always happens to bring that day back into the spotlight.

Most recently, it was announced in July that Bergere’s teammates had been awarded the Carnegie Medal, recognizing “extraordinary acts of heroism.” The women will be presented with their medals at a ceremony locally this fall, according to a Carnegie Foundation spokeswoman, but details have yet to be finalized.

The award is an honor for the cyclists, but they have mixed feelings. “It just seems to me like we’re getting an award for something we were supposed to do,” Wolf said. “The award is that we all live.”

The ceremony will give women and their families a chance to enjoy a truly celebratory moment. A chance to be together, even as some still struggle to celebrate and find their place within the group.