By Tracy Vedder

SEATTLE - A grizzly bear attacked a man, ripped off his scalp, broke his neck and back -- and the man's only thoughts were to keep his daughter safe.

Friday, that man, Johan Otter was well enough to talk about his incredible story.

From the moment Otter wheeled in the interview room at Harborview Medical Center, he started cracking jokes. In spite of the scars criss-crossing his skull, the metal contraption holding his broken neck and back straight, the injuries you can't see, it was obvious what kept Otter alive. "You have to be positive; I'm a positive person period."

Good thing. Two weeks ago, he and his daughter Jenna, 18, were hiking in Montana's Glacier National Park. While coming up on a blind switchback, the pair surprised a grizzly bear with two cubs just feet away.

"This bear is right at me," Otter describes the bear charging him, "and mouth wide open, you see the fangs and you see the huge claws."

An instinctual reaction, the bear was trying to protect her cubs. Otter, also acting instinctually, protected his.

"The main thing going through my mind at that point is like, 'don't get to my daughter, just stay with me.'"

The grizzly bit Otter to the bone in his right arm, his left arm and thigh, stomped up and down on his back.

"I think at that point I actually grabbed it by the throat," says Otter, "I mean I was holding onto the bear itself, yeah because I want to hold it with me, I didn't want it to go to my daughter."

And then, the bear bit Otter's head. "I could feel at one point my scalp was in its mouth and I could feel a tooth going into my scalp, I thought, ooohhh, that's not good." Otter knew he and the grizzly were just millimeters away from a fatal encounter. "At that point I thought, 'hmmmm you can die from that,' and I did not expect to die, that did not come into my mind that that was going to be an option that day."

Otter and the bear had tumbled partially down the steep hillside. He was wedged into the corner of a seasonal stream.

After a five-minute battle, bitten and broken, Otter finally played dead. He hoped his daughter had had time to find a safe place to hide.

Briefly, the grizzly turned her attention to Jenna. The grizzly bit her in the cheek, on the left shoulder, but Jenna played dead and the bear eventually left. Speaking of his daughter remaining still through the attack Otter says, "Now that's courage."

Within an hour, other hikers discovered the pair, but it took several hours and the help of a helicopter to bring father and daughter off the mountain trail.

Otter was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. He broke seven vertebrae in his neck and back, three ribs, had numerous puncture wounds and his right eye socket was crushed.

But one of the most difficult injuries was his scalp. The bear completely tore off most of Otter's scalp down to the bone. Dr. Nicholas Vedder, Chief of Plastic Surgery at Harborview oversaw an unusual transplant procedure, using a layer of muscle from Otter's side and a skin graft from his thigh. The surgical team is essence gave Otter an entirely new scalp.

"So he'll wind up having a thin layer of skin, a layer of muscle and then the skull," says Dr. Vedder. "So it essentially reconstructs his scalp. The one thing it doesn't reconstruct is the hair."

As bad as Otter looks now, he expects a full recovery, and he figures the only thing that matters, is his daughter is okay and ready to start her first year of college.

"I am so lucky," he says.

Otter flew back to his home in southern California Friday.