For the Russian State Duma deputy Nikolai Valuyev the incident in the Armenian mountains remains the greatest extreme of his life.

Responding to the question of a social network user on what extreme he experienced in his life, Valuyev noted: ''During one of my morning runs in the Armenian mountains, my coach and I encountered a huge bear.  It was the size of a bull. I stood still, my coach jumped to the slope. Meanwhile, the bear headed for the other side.''

Nikolai joked that it was unclear then who ran faster, Bryansktoday reports. 

However, this story impressed the sportsman deputy so much that several months ago he told in a greater detail about his enounter with the bear. ''When once again storming the peak of Alibek one morning, we encountered a huge bear. We saw it previously as well, peacefully grazing off in the meadwos near the forest border. Legends were told about it on the base. He had for many times escaped the hunters, and the local bull-calves had not once become the prey of the experienced Bruin. In a nutshell,  an old hand, literally and figuratively.

So, while climbing up the woody slope, I suddenly heard a sound resembling someone's rattle. I turned my head to the left and stopped dead from surprise. Literally at twenty meters from me, above the slope, stuck out the displeased shaggy neb of the local forest's owner, woken up by our unexpected intrusion.  

It felt both cold and hot inside. The bear most likely didn't expect to see us that early—it was seven o'clock—and that meeting apparently didn't inspire him to hospitality.  

My brain worked feverishly, going over all the options of rescue.  But one thing was crystal clear: there was no point in trying to escape. I looked at the coach: he had petrified exactly like me. I was so strained that could finding nothing smarter to say than: '''Manvel, look, a bear!''

The sound of human speech in the morning silence was perhaps a bolt from the blue for the bear. The next second it turned by 180 degrees and swept up the slope.  I will most likely never forget how the ground shook under my feet from the bear's spurt.  By the way, my coach started running simultaneously with the bear. I never saw people running so fast. Both of them disappeared from site literally in a second.

This case could have ended not so comically had we approached the bear closer. Generally speaking, we were pretty lucky then. Heaven for small favors! The bear was indeed enormous. During our next visits we heard many times the stories of local residents about its 'feats.' Since then my coach always took an iron cane with him to the mountains, and every time we crossed the forest—now hunters will laugh their heads off—we tried to make as much noise as possible.''