1-26-2014

So I dropped off the backside of the ridge, skiing a thousand feet or so of old wintery snow, and then halfway back up, skinning by my descent tracks, I encountered big fresh tracks on top of my own. Not big enough for bear, but too big for coyote? I’ve seen no other people or dogs all day, and now am well down into a completely different, much quieter drainage. The tracks are in single file, going directly back up my ski tracks the way I came. Huh? I followed the tracks back into a little grove where they came from and found fresh porcupine remains. Only two animals in the Sierra are skilled and agro enough to hunt porcupine. The fisher is one, a large weasel relative, but nowhere near this big. And quite shy and rare, I’ve never seen one. The other sufficiently deft predator would be a mountain lion. I apparently skied right past a mountain lion. And now he is above me somewhere on my trail. And I have to get back over this ridge to go home, and this is the only remotely reasonable way. Shit just got real.