Cross Country Skiing with a Mountain Lion
After shoveling a thick snow off our driveway and deck the day before, I was hoping to actually get out in it to have a little fun. It was Super Bowl Sunday, so I was also hoping lots of people would be indoors partying and leave the trails for me to enjoy on my own. That’s right, no baby!
I pulled in to an empty parking area at Indian Creek, a place I love for hiking and cc skiing behind Sedalia. After paying my dues, I clipped in and set out over an old track that had been pretty tramped down with about 4 or 5 new soft inches on top of it. The making of a perfect day. The weather was sunny and gorgeous and the snow sparkled like the ground was littered in diamonds. It was so nice, I stripped off my Big Agnes Coat and used my lighter Seirus Gloves the whole day rather than switching to my warmer Swany Toaster Mittens that I normally need for the return (downhill) back to the car. I was determined to go for miles and miles since I had no partner (namely my toddler) to limit my adventure.
The only downside of these perfect conditions was that this was my first time cross country skiing totally by myself since losing my dog Lucy. She would normally have loved frolicking in the snow on a day like this. I had been out on my skis a couple of times since her passing, but always with a friend for distraction. I felt Lucy’s presence, though, happily running ahead and then stopping every once in a while to chew snow balls out of her paws.
At about the 2 mile mark, I suddenly began to notice deep footsteps in the snow. It was right at a trail intersection, so my initial reaction was to wonder who would be out here without even snow shoes to prevent them from breaking through the snow miles from the parking lot. Then logic caught up to my brain and I realized there was no way a human on foot beat me to this intersection from a further away parking lot, post-holing the whole way. So animal tracks… but what kind? I remember there was a moose poster at the parking lot, so maybe a moose? But the tracks seemed to close together for such a long-legged animal.
A few more kicks of my skis brought me to a sheltered spot where only an inch or so of new snow had fallen. Then the bottom of the tracks became clear. Not a moose. A cat. And a big one.
So I wasn’t out here skiing in glorious solitude after all. I was cross country skiing with a mountain lion.
Great.
And the tracks were super fresh and soft, not made overnight and hadn’t been in the sun very long. The cat was surely just in front of me.
I knew I had no cell phone service here, a quality I normally love about this place. I turned on my Garmin inReach Satellite Phone hoping it still had a charge from my October backpacking trip in Yellowstone. It did.
Ok.
Do I turn around and short change this potentially awesome day of adventure? Do I press on alone and risk an encounter?
This wouldn’t even have been a question if Lucy was with me. Just the comfort of another being, one with more acute senses than mine, would have been very reassuring.
I grit my teeth and continued on.
The tracks continued on the road for some time, occasionally drifting off into the trees and then reappearing just as suddenly again.
I threw out my back frantically twisting around to look behind me with every “whump” of snow falling off a tree branch, every creaking tree moving in the wind, and for no reason whatsoever other than a feeling like I was about to be pounced on.
All of my “wheeee!” downhills became less fun and more of an opportunity for me to crash and be helplessly entangled in skis and snow for the lion to attack.
But as the miles kept ticking by, I slowly regained my sense of tranquility and began to enjoy the winter wonderland scenery once again.
I finally turned around when I reached the point where no one had packed down the trail probably since winter began. I unclipped to try to pee off to the side of the trail and promptly sank up to my hip in the snow. Real women pee with their skis on anyway. I took a picture of how deep I could push my pole down into the powder and then headed back the way I came.
I reached a specific spot on this trail where I had turned around the last time I was here, when I was cross country skiing with my mom and her boyfriend and Lucy. The background on my phone for a loooong time was a photo that was taken of Lucy at that spot.
I decided to spend some time reflecting on Lucy there while I had my lunch. I must not have been totally over the mountain lion because I sat with my back facing the downhill slope of the hill rather than leaving my back unguarded for an attack from the uphill ground, where a cat would prefer to attack from. Opposite of how sharks surprise their prey by attacking from underneath. It felt so unnatural to sit with my back to the downhill. Just try it next time you are having a trail snack and see how weird it is.
After eating, I made Lucy a snowball and left it in that spot. She would have liked to try to play fetch with that.
The trail was getting busier the closer I was getting to the parking lot, so I passed along the cat track information in case folks wanted to keep their dogs close or turn around. The now packed down trail made for some fast and “wheee!” downhill sections after all.
I made it back to the car without a cat sighting and was glad I had continued on with my day rather than letting fear ruin it. While I know mountain lions don’t make it a habit to attack people, being alone made me more wary. Perhaps I wasn’t alone after all. Maybe Lucy’s spirit had been there the whole time, keeping me safe as she probably had a countless number of times from animals I never even knew were there.
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