UPDATE: Read this first. Turns out there’s no evidence implicating a mountain lion.
Original post:
Guy walking a trail Saturday afternoon got pounced upon by a mountain lion, whose youth, enthusiasm and ineptitude saved the hiker’s life: The pounce knocked both of them down a ravine; the guy got stopped by a tree; the cat rolled down into a creek and took off. From this morning’s Chronicle:
The 50-year-old hiker was uninjured but narrowly escaped with his life after the cat leaped onto him from behind about 4 p.m. Saturday, sending man and beast tumbling down an embankment, Ryan said.
The Portola Valley man, whose name was not released, was hiking along a trail that parallels Los Trancos Creek, Ryan said, when the cat lunged at him from above, hitting the man about shoulder height and sending him rolling down the slope toward the creek.
The man tumbled about 15 feet before he hit a tree, which blocked his fall. Looking up, he saw the lion roll past him down to the creek, pick itself up and scamper away, Ryan said.
“He was very lucky,” said Ryan. “It was a legitimate attack in which the lion was going to kill the man.”
A professional tracker is supposed to be on the cat’s trail, which has, I suspect, gone pretty cold by now.
(Fortunately this could not have happened to most of us, because mere mortals who live outside the city of Palo Alto cannot enter Foothills Park … well, except by the way I went).
One voice of sanity among the “SAVE THE PRETTY KITTY!” peanut gallery of comments on the Chron’s story noted that taking a dog along might keep the big cats away. Of course, this would require you to a) own a dog; and b) hike the scant number of trails where pooches are allowed.
I think the best advice in regards to avoiding a big-cat encounter is to avoid looking like a deer and hope for the best. Mountain lions normally go to extravagant lengths to stay away from people (hence their avoidance of the California grizzly’s fate). There’s a good chance one has watched you pass on a trail (cats love to gaze at anything not standing still), but that doesn’t mean you were in any danger.
More on big-cat safety at cougarinfo.org.
That’s one lucky chap.
As far as I can make out, there’s no defense from Mountain Lions. You have virtually no chance of seeing one before it attacks you, you have no time to take any defensive action if you’re attacked, and if you can see the mountain lion (the only situation that those mountain lion signs address) then it’s already decided that you’re not prey.
So really .. just surrender yourself to the fact that the odds of an attack are very low. That and stay in groups and especially keep children close to you.
Oh, and I’m glad you posted this today rather than yesterday .. we were walking in Russian Hill just uphill from Foothills and knowing about this would’ve made for a nervous hike!
That area around Las Trampas/Foothills seems to be prime mountain lion habitat … perhaps more so because Foothills’ limit to Palo Altans sharply cuts down the numbers of people who hike there … All the other parks nearby are pretty popular but almost nobody goes to Las Trampas and there can’t be many people in Foothills w/the hiking population so limited. If you’ve hiked at Rancho San Antonio you’ve probably noted the deer are almost like domesticated animals, they’re so untroubled by pedestrians. That means they aren’t preyed upon, which means the people scare off the big cats.
One note: People have successfully fended off mountain lion attacks, which is why the signs always say “fight back.”
I was next door at Windy Hill yesterday and had the mountain lion thought cross my mind a few times. I hike and run solo around here quite a bit and it’s probably my main fear. I wear bright colors, and have even been known to embarrassingly swing my arms above my head and sing when I’ve felt ‘watched’. When solo I carry a sheathed knife on my pack strap and am comfortable using it, though I hope to never have to, either for a lion or a human. I’d have better luck with it against a human anyways.
I’m sufficiently creeped out now that I think that today’s workout will be in the air conditioned gym instead of a trailrun at Arastradero.
Interesting how most of our Bay Area Mountain Lion sightings come from Palo Alto. Alas, I am not allowed in that park either, amen.
Also, last night on cable they had the couple who were attacked up north…where the wife saved her husband…they interacted with another Mountain Lion (somewhat trained-it actually purred and behaved like my house cat, but showed predatory behavior the minute something moved or ran from it). I just found the timing bizarre, that the show would be on the very same day of the pounce in Palo Alto.
Well, I’m off to hike Half Dome!
It’s a shame that our first instinct, as a society, is to kill a big cat rather than trap it humanely and release it in a more remote area. We have to get used to the fact that wilderness isn’t wilderness if we keep killing what’s wild in it.
Meanwhile, I don’t think I can stress it enough: don’t hike alone!
They are stealthy creatures. In one of the ranger stations In Olympia National Park, they have a picture of a family picnic with a mountain Lion in a tree branch above the table. The folks in the picture did not see the lion until the pictures were developed!
Looks like it was a hoax/false alarm:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9878037
Rebecca: Interesting. I can imagine any number of scenarios in which a guy in his fifties suddenly falls down a slope and explains it by saying it was a mountain lion. Some of them don’t even involve alcohol or deliberate lies. 🙂
I just saw this on Ch. 2 … amazing, I was just thinking, like three hours ago, “how do we really know this guy is telling the truth?”
While this man may have been telling a tall tale, we have had actual attacks in my area (Montana). As the survivors normally have tooth marks in their head as evidence, there hasn’t ever been much doubt as to their veracity.
-We have also had a few people just vanish from the trail while hiking – as in; you turn to say something to your hiking partner and they’re gone… (might be cats, might be something else).
But the main thing I wanted to say here is that you can’t expect any protection from just one dog. Often the cats stalk and kill dogs, so they might actually attract the the cats as possible prey. (My dog and I were once stalked by one – in a city park).
-We have also had cats take dogs on a leash.