Mountain Lion Encounter

Yesterday Team Rash started out at the Bridge of the Gods Trailhead with a plan to run 25 miles on the PCT (Oregon Side). The day was rainy and cool with some really nice sun breaks (Oregon Weather). Two miles into the run we had our first nature sighting. Rash has made a game with a point system for nature sightings, for example, an Elk is 10000 points to where a slug is 100 points etc. Well, my spotting earned me a respectable 2000 points. Sal the Salamander a little army green amphibian enjoying his Saturday on a log.

9 miles and 3000 feet up the mountain and it begins to get cold, dark, and quiet..... No more birds, no more sun breaks. We came to an unfamiliar sound on the trail a very low "Wah-Wah" is the best way to describe it. I knew that Elk made a Bugling noise so I dismissed it as not much of a threat. But the noise became closer and louder it sounded like it was right in front of us? I said "how can we not see a huge damn Elk?" Ash said " he's probably laying down" I was skeptical. We continued on until it turned into a blizzard and a practically steaming mountain lion turd was laying in the middle of the trail marking his territory.

It was then we decided to turn around. It wasn't until we got home that we looked up Elk Bugle and found that the noise we heard wasn't a friendly Elk taking a nap, it was a Mountain Lion behind the downed tree right in front of us! This is the article we found....

http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/Mountain-Lion-Sounds.html

We survived to run another day.....