truchas wrote:

Arthur Digbee wrote:Having just hiked in McKittrick Canyon (Guadalupe Mtns) I was wondering about this too. It's a "day use" area and they close the gate at 4:30 pm. There's a backcountry campsite 8 miles up the trail; that site serves no purpose for people using other trailheads. So how do you use an overnight campsite from a day use parking lot?

I believe all you have to do is get a back country permit. You just won't be able to leave the parking lot because they lock it up. Smokey Bear almost gave me a ticket once on that road as I was trying to get out of there before they locked up the gate. By the way, that is a great hike up to that backcountry campsite. Same with the one on the Permian Reef Geology Trail.

That was my first time there, day hikes only, and I was impressed. It's a great January destination.

truchas wrote:You have to be careful in the night, pre-dawn, or twilight hours in Texas, the lions and rattlesnakes will get you.

You're about as likely to get hit by a falling satellite as get attacked by a cougar. OK, not quite but a cougar attack is so rare that it's not worth even thinking about.

MoapaPk wrote:http://www.cougarinfo.org/attacks3.htm

Exactly. 4 deaths in 10 years in all of Canada and the US. If I spent time worrying about shit that insignificant, I wouldn't ever get out of the bed in my bomb shelter.

Any of those mountain lion fatalities or attacks on people who were over 6 feet tall and well over 220 pounds? 200 pounds? Even 180 pounds?

Thought so. I'm safe.

Frances Frost [short & small], a 30-year-old cross-country skier was killed by a mountain lion. . . .

41-year-old Leigh Ann Cox [short & small] was killed by a large cat. . . .

35-year-old Mark Jeffrey Reynolds, of adjoining Foothill Ranch, California, a 5' 9" 135 pound [short & small] competitive mountain bike racer, was killed by a mountain lion. . . .

. . . A mountain lion was responsible for the death of 55-year-old Robert Nawojski. . . . Robert was slight of build (probably not much over 100 lbs) [yep, short & small] which could contribute to a cougar choosing him as a target.

I'm not quite 5'2" and travel solo in the mountains fairly often, but I still haven't been eaten by a mountain lion. I do prefer ridges to gullies - there's just something uncomfortable about being down in a gully alone in mountain lion country.

HAHA! I would say sure, why not. It's the same day all day long. So I guess it doesn't matter what time you go.

The number of avalanche fatalities is small; but among back-country skiers in the Wasatch, the percentage is fairly significant.

I run down canyons where I find the remnants of mountain lion kills; I've had a mountain lion circling my campsite at night. I've hiked a canyon in Utah, and found fresh very large lion prints when I returned 2 hours later. I'm guessing my probability of encounter is greater than that of the average outdoor person.

A 120-lb mountain lion can easily bring down a 250-lb man, if it has the "jump." I have a friend who runs through the mountains of NM, and he carries pepper spray. His "neighborhood" has had a lot of livestock and pets taken by lions. He was a center on a division 1 football team, and is a very fit 220 lbs, 6' 2".

The number of "incidents" is a lot larger than the number of fatalities. I put this all in perspective (I'm much more concerned about Mojave Greens), but if I can take small measures to skew the odds, I will.

I heard a talk two nights ago, which included a section on encounters with animals; the worst encounter was with a pack of 7 feral dogs. Who'da thunk it?

Day Hiker wrote:Any of those mountain lion fatalities or attacks on people who were over 6 feet tall and well over 220 pounds? 200 pounds? Even 180 pounds?

Thought so. I'm safe.

Don't be so sure. Check out this book, which relates how a mountain lion goes about killing a healthy, full-grown, 6-point bull elk, which, at 600-800 pounds, would be about four times the weight of a big lion. The gist of the story is on page 167-169, which unfortunately isn't available on the google preview. A great book by the way, at least to those of us who grew up hunting elk in western Colorado.

On the wild edge: in search of a natural life ... By David Petersen

http://books.google.com/books?id=otSYBMy2JMoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

brianhughes wrote:

Day Hiker wrote:Any of those mountain lion fatalities or attacks on people who were over 6 feet tall and well over 220 pounds? 200 pounds? Even 180 pounds?

Thought so. I'm safe.

Don't be so sure. Check out this book, which relates how a mountain lion goes about killing a healthy, full-grown, 6-point bull elk, which, at 600-800 pounds, would be about four times the weight of a big lion. The gist of the story is on page 167-169, which unfortunately isn't available on the google preview. A great book by the way, at least to those of us who grew up hunting elk in western Colorado.

On the wild edge: in search of a natural life ... By David Petersen

http://books.google.com/books?id=otSYBMy2JMoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I agree it's possible. I don't think I am completely invulnerable to mountain lion attack. And I know if a 150-pound cat attacked me, it could possibly kill me before I got a chance to pound on its face and eyes enough to chase it away.

My use of the word "safe" only means I consider the probability of someone my size being attacked by a mountain lion so infinitesimally small that I can't imagine ever modifying any outdoor plans out of concern for it. If I weighed only 180 or 160 or 140 pounds, I might feel differently; I don't know. Maybe I still wouldn't care.

I can't say the same about bears, grizzlies in particular. There are places I would avoid because of the possibility of encountering a 600-pound grizzly. It doesn't matter how big you are with a grizzly; they don't care if you are 120 or 320. You're not even supposed to fight back when you're attacked by one of those things because it's futile and likely counterproductive. All you can do is lay there and hope the bear isn't attacking for predatory reasons, because if he is, you're getting killed and eaten regardless of what you do. But with cats you always fight back, and you stand the chance of chasing it away by doing so. And even though I understand that a smaller cat could kill me, for whatever it's worth, unlike bears, no mountain lion weighs more than me. I just like those odds better.

The information I have acquired over the years tells me that mountain lions are far less likely to attack a large person than a small person, like a child or an adult the size of a child. On the linked page, all four fatalities were involving small people, the size of me when I was something like . . . eleven. The full list of attacks probably includes some larger people, but, again, I'm just not concerned, because of the probabilities involved.

This doesn't mean I don't think I could be attacked; it just means I don't concern myself with it because I consider it so very unlikely. If I ever did encounter a cat that appeared as though it were going to attack, I would certainly be scared. Even if I was under the impression that the cat couldn't kill me, I would be injured for sure, and that's reason enough to be scared.

KathyW wrote:I'm not quite 5'2" and travel solo in the mountains fairly often, but I still haven't been eaten by a mountain lion. I do prefer ridges to gullies - there's just something uncomfortable about being down in a gully alone in mountain lion country.

Only person I ever knew personally who was killed by a mountain lion was a 5'2" woman skiing alone near Banff....

MoapaPk wrote:I heard a talk two nights ago, which included a section on encounters with animals; the worst encounter was with a pack of 7 feral dogs. Who'da thunk it?

I've often said (mostly truthfully) that the only two animals that make me really nervous are grizzly bears and domestic dogs. With dogs being far more dangerous, in terms of number of attacks per year.

So far I've been bitten twice by dogs and hit three times by cars. I stopped worrying about mountain lions long ago...

josegarcia wrote:

Peter Bysterveld, a 23-year-old, 210 pound, 6' 3" tall student at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Calgary, was attacked at about 4:30 p.m. MDT by one cougar of a pair he and his friend Sarah McKay encountered while on the last leg of a long hike.

dude, really. i know you're a bad a$$ and all, but i reckon a hungry mountain lion would just considere the extra meat as a bonus.

Nice change of thread title to make it personal. You must really miss P&P.

I guess you're too much of a fucking retard to read the part where I wrote that I understand a mountain lion could kill me. The issue is about them being much less likely to attack a larger person, not much less able to kill one.

[off to the penalty box...]