[pct-l] Fwd: Re: Mountain Lion Encounter

[ralvek088-hiking at yahoo.com]

Dan Jacobs <youroldpaldan at gmail.com> wrote:


> Mountain lions and cougars are solitary animals, and normally avoid humans.
> When I was working in the woods, we assumed that all cougar sightings or
> encounters were nearly all fake. Folks I know that have truly seen a cougar
> worked or recreated in the woods for decades and maybe saw one or two,
> which ran away at top speed as soon as they realized humans could see them.

That may be your experience which BTW  has also been mine; the only time I came almost within 50-100 yards of a lion, it quietly disappeared down hill upon
sensing my presence.

However, please read the following for a completely different and terrorizing mountain lion encounter along the Wonderland trail:

http://alpine-works.com/2011/09/a-day-in-wonderland/


I have no comment on the summoning of SAR upon encountering a lion in the back country. I do think that there needs to be better
education of the hiking public that carry these devices. One thought is to make SPOT (or other similar vendor) responsible for each of these
SAR calls - let the market work itself out.