[pct-l] Couger attacks.....

[magicalnexus at yahoo.com (Magical Nexus)]

I agree entirely with Steel Eye but here are some personal anecdotes to keep you awake at night.
 
In the boulder field above Chariot Canyon I set up a stealth camp about 50 yds off the trail. I was tired, maybe a little sick, and so I set up quickly and quietly. About an hour later I heard a group of Mexicans pass by, I suspect they were hooking up for a ride into Julian...
Anyway it was very late and I didn't cook. I was trying to stay fairly quite when I heard a distinct cough like those I had heard in Montana while hunting deer. The sound that a couger makes is similar to an African lion, it is a cough. I have never heard the screeching howl that are often associated with cougars when they are threatened, like when they are tree'd.
The sound was very close so I froze, thinking that I might get a look if I was very lucky. To see such a beast in the wild is a rare and wonderful thing (unless you are a small human in the territory of a hungry cougar). I couldn't see much as I was in waist high crapperal.
So I sat very still and just listened. 
At one point I really thought I could see it about 15 ft from the end of my sleeping bag in a small clearing. I never found a way to confirm it but when I got on the trail the next am there was a huge pile of scat covered in fresh, wet piss and surrounded by large, clawless cat tracks...
Perhaps my quiet rustling attracted his attention for a few moments.
 
Another time I was camping with my son on the ridge between Rodriquez Spur and the descent to the Anzo-Borrego floor. My son had walked away from camp and came running back to declare that there was a bush that was frightening him and he wasn't sure why. I picked up a flashlight and walked with him back to look at it and, sure enough there were big cat tracks behind it.
 
I am told that a mountain lion frequents the stream bank at Scissors Crossing as well.
 
I have certainly seen tracks on many segments of the PCT....
 
Every year there are one or two attacks in California by mountain lions. Mostly they involve people of small stature like children and women though one happened last year involving an attack on a bicyclist...
 
They used to close my school to recess out of doors when there were lions suspected to be in the vicinity. We watched one chase a deer across the playground once... in Kalispell, Mt....
 
So they are there, but rare. They are dangerous but so is lightening. They bite but so does every other damn thing out there from the bushes to the butterflies.... or at least it seems that way. 
 
Look big and dangerous yourself if you encounter one. Look above you when passing highpoints in the trail because they like to attack from above.. keep your camera ready because, like rattlesnakes and most other critters, they make a pretty neat photo opportunity...
 
Ted

		
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