[pct-l] anyone have bear or mountain lion stories?

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

On Feb 25, 2009, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> anyone have bear or mountain lion stories?
I never saw any mountain lion prints on the PCT, but I saw plenty of  
bear prints. I saw two bears. One on the trail in the early morning  
near Golden Oak Spring. Another on the trail in Northern California  
around the Ash Camp area. Both ran away from me. I never saw any  
evidence of bears in the High Sierra, except for the bear that lived  
in the Tuolumne Meadows campground.

In the wilderness area near Santa Barbara, where I live, I frequently  
see mountain lion tracks. Their prints have no claws. They are cats.  
(And as such will retract their claws and not eat potato chips. The  
one time an animal ate my chips, it was a mean little tiny horse that  
then tried to charge at me!)

I saw a mountain lion near Santa Barbara once taking a walk along a  
road in the local mountains above town. It was sitting majestically  
on a rock outcrop with the Pacific Ocean and the sunset in the  
distance behind. It looked like the Lion King. So beautiful. I was  
far enough away not to be scared.

A few times I've been out hiking near Gaviota where there are warning  
signs for lions. Every now and then I've had a really creepy, tingly  
feeling on the back of my neck. I've looked around the rocks and  
trees to see if a lion is watching me. I have never seen one. I had  
the same feeling on the PCT in the first few days. If I were going to  
see a mountain lion on the PCT, I'm pretty sure it would be somewhere  
in the first couple of weeks of the trail.

Diane