[pct-l] Mountain Lions

[chelin at teleport.com (Sharon & Chuck Chelin)]

Good evening, Marmot,

Thanks for the great cougar story.  Your story, and all of the other reports
of cougar sightings, makes me green with envy.  I have been tromping around
the mountain West for more years than I care to admit ... actually since the
Eisenhower Administration ... and I have yet to see a wild cougar.   I have
seen kills in various stages being consumed. I have heard what believe could
only have been a cougar screaming. Once I even crawled into a cave of sorts
formed under a gigantic slab of rock beneath a cliff where I found a bed
that held what looked like pieces of hair from a yellow Labrador retriever.
I have seen many tracks, mostly in the snow, but after all of that I still
have never seen where the tracks end.

When I watch Squatch's excellent documentary DVD, WALK, I am reminded of
when I probably was the closest to seeing one of the big cats.  In WALK, one
of the hikers ... maybe it was SoFar ... said he liked to try to identify
other hikers by their footprints in the trail.  26 Aug. 2000 I was PCT NoBo
and had just crossed highway at Chinook Pass on the funny little footbridge
that forms the entrance portal to the Mt. Rainer NP.  Mid-morning, and about
three miles upgrade north of the highway, I stopped at Sourdough Gap to
frisk my pack for some peanut M&Ms when a through-hiker, who's name I do not
remember, came chugging up the trail behind me.  After greetings he said,
"You must be Mr. Brooks."  When I said my name isn't Brooks, he pointed to
my tracks where we could see the very clear and sharp half-inch high word
"Brooks", the name of the running shoes that I was wearing at the time. The
dust in that area keeps a very sharp image.  He said he amused himself by
trying to determine characteristics of other hikers by their tracks; such
things as size, weight, speed, gender, load, hiking experience, etc.

Soon he continued up the trail and I started behind him not more than 10
minutes later.  As I watched his footprints I began to try to rationalize
what I saw with what I knew about him.  Within less than a quarter mile,
however, I quickly lost interest in that game when his footprints were
covered by a sizable set of cougar tracks.  I quickly looked up the trail
but could not see either the hiker or the cat.  I compared the cougar tracks
to the span of my fully open hand and judged that they were about 5 inches
across, and being very fresh the detail was superb.  I followed them out
that relatively flat, sharp, ridge, for 300-400 yards until the cat tracks
disappeared, but didn't see a hair.

About mid-day I passed that same hiker while he was relaxing with some
lunch, and he said he had no idea that he had been followed.  We were both
disappointed.  The area where that occurred was not exactly remote.  It is
just outside the NP, and just before entering the Norse Peak Wilderness, but
it is fairly close to the highway, close to Park traffic, and on the head of
a drainage where there is a resort area and other human settlement.

I expect I have been watched, or even followed, hundreds of times by the big
cats, but there is no way of knowing for sure.  Many, many times I have had
the somewhat academic thought that, "Gee, this would certainly be a good
place for a cougar to relax in the rocks and watch the country", but only
one time did I have the very distinct feeling that not only was a cougar out
there, but he was also reading the menu.  I was on the PCT south of The
Three Sisters, in Oregon, near Stormy Lake when I got that sudden, creepy,
hair-raising-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling of being watched.  I don't
believe in that kind of thing, I deal in senses not intuition, but in that
instance I also got the rush of about a cup of adrenalin.  I did a quick 360
deg. inspection but there was no incoming fur-ball, no menacing snarl from a
tree, or no tawny flash heading out of site.  I moved up and down the trail
trying to improve my prospective and see some movement, but with no luck.  I
continued on the trail without a sighting and without joining the cat for
dinner.

I have a pretty good article on a PDF file about cougars that I will send to
anyone who asks.  I downloaded it from somewhere on the Internet but now I
cannot find where I got it so I don't have a URL.  I don't want to post it
because it is 16 pages in a 1.4 meg. file.  It is mostly focused on
Washington and seems to be a well-balanced discussion of cougars'
interaction with us two-leggers.

Steel-Eye

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Green" <kgreen@camelbak.com>
To: <pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 9:09 AM
Subject: [pct-l] Mountain Lions


> "Earlier, thru hiker Load took some outstanding photos
> of a cougar not far south of Kennedy Meadows.  He and
> another encountered it eating a deer, approached "too
> close" before it sensed them and ran off.  After some
> minutes passed, they noted it circling behind them,
> and made their exit."
>
> I was the other hiker with Load that day. We had left the town of Mojave
> mid-morning and came across the cougar as it sat lounging over a recently
> killed deer.

> Marmot
> CA - 2002
>
>
>
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