Tales from the Trail: Short Vignettes on Animal Encounters in the Wild

Although not all have occurred on the PCT . . .

1. Two friends reach a suspension bridge across a river. Interesting enough, so why not take video of the experience. Now, why not continue to take video without telling friend when a big old senile bear starts to follow the man onto the bridge, a one man bridge. And finally, watch the bear realize he accidentally followed man onto bridge (after getting a whiff or hearing a sound) and trying to amble off as fast as possible.

2. Two hikers are walking down the trail, 5 minutes apart. They meet up for a snack break. The man walking behind says to man walking in front, "I hate to tell you this, but I think a mountain lion is stalking you!" There were mountain lion prints in the dirt and dust inside of the first man's boot prints.

3. Man is hunting through western mountains, stalking several types of prey. He comes to a snowfield and sees a set of mountain lion prints. He thinks, oh great, what excellent game . . . dangerous, big, thrilling . . . so he follows the set of prints for over a mile. The prints wind trough the woods, and in a roundabout way, circle back to the first set of prints, where he began. What does he find? Another set of prints. While he thought he was stalking the mountain lion, the mountain decided to stalk the man.

4. Hiker decides to hike a mountain through Washington wilderness. He comes to a snowfield as he climbs in elevation and trudges through it. After reaching the peak of the mountain, he begins his descent. He notices enormous cougar prints beside his footprints, all the way from when he first began. He can fit his fist within the one cougar print--the size of a full adult human hand.

5. Oregon backwoods man and his friends go out to camp for a week. Oregon man is your serious bar mule, rugged, gruff, a brute, and can take on an entire bar in a fight, and will if pushed. He will probably win the fight too. His aggression and arrogance are such that it transfers to wild animals. So at this camp, a black bear comes three nights in a row, tearing up trash and causing trouble. Night four comes around, and the Oregon man says, "I think I can take this bear." He walks up to the bear and throws 3 or 4 punches at the bear. The bear stumbles back a few steps, realizes what is happening, and starts to defend itself, landing the Oregon man in the hospital, severely injured.



And although this doesn't involve animals, I'll put it in for good measure . . . .
6. 13 year old boy is assigned to a survival program for troubled youth. We'll call him Billy. 28 days in the high desert of Utah. A week or two into the trip, a winter storm rolls in, snow, fog, frost, etc. Something incredibly unexpected, and which even the counselors were unprepared for. So the 13 year old boy is a talented survivalist and makes his bed of coals to sleep on and keep warm. Well the boy the counselors assigned to Billy as his other in the buddy system is not so adept to cold weather survival and cannot get his bed of coals figured out. So, in order to keep warm, he keeps trying to squeeze his feet between Billy's thighs. Billy starts to think, "This is kinda gay," and offers up his bed of coals to the boy and goes for a night hike to smoke a bowl and eat a peanut butter cup (remember this is to reform troubled youth). On his stroll he discovers a path out of the valley (something he later leads the entire group out of in order to survive). When he returns to the camp, he notices another young girl shivering by the fire, his boots iced over. He quickly builds a large, hot signal fire and then begins to check on all the other campers, some good and warm, some hypothermic and frostbitten. Without warning, a cold air freeze blew into the valley. Billy cuts off the girl's boots and peels away her socks to reveal black frostbite all over her foot. The same for several other of the kids. Finally morning comes and they get on the radio and get the frostbitten kids airlifted out of the valley. Sweet irony.