A day of wildlife and wild K!

Our clearing has been hopping with animal activity during daylight hours for the past couple of days. A bobcat sauntered through unnoticed at about noon today. Our wildlife camera snapped a photo.

A coyote declared our clearing as her own.

K and I hiked this morning. She endured my sunrise photos with great patience... waiting for me to let her RUN!

K's golden eye in the sunrise light.

Please, please, can I run now?

She started with a leap!

As we hiked up higher, the forest was a world of light shafts and shadows.

K just kept jumping and running - she's so thrilled to be BACK in her forest. Notice in the second photo that K chose to land on her "bad" paw! That's a great sign.

She maneuvered on nimble feet through a dense aspen forest.

After our hike, I headed out on the snow bike, encountering weird conditions. On this trail, the wind had whipped away most of the snow but compact drifts had accumulated in the dips in the trail. They were cement-like drifts that stopped me in my tracks as I climbed toward a ridgeline with beautiful views.

I made it... and was rewarded with this mountain view!

I dropped over to the other side of the ridge where winter prevailed. Six inches of unbroken snow covered the trail. I rode along on a pristine trail making "first tracks" until I came upon these stunning mountain lion tracks. Our forest's king had recently surveyed his domain. These are humongous tracks. My handwarmer is 3.5" long and looks dwarfed by the lion paw.

At times, the mountain lion walked fast, using a gait where each hind paw overstepped the track of the front paw on the same side.

Then, I came upon an odd scene that I couldn't interpret. The lion had just climbed up a steep embankment to the trail. At the point where he joined the trail, a big area was trampled, snow was melted, and a small area was scraped down to dirt. Then, the lion left this spot and ambled slowly away. You can see his tracks leaving the trampled oval and marching upward in the photo.

Going in the opposite direction, I saw the tracks of a deer taking huge leaping strides. I wonder if the lion and deer met at this point, and the deer escaped unscathed.

Regardless, I love finding fascinating tracks like these. I could tell that the lion tracks were not fresh so I wasn't worried that the animal was right behind me.

We ended our day with a sunset hike. R and K both focused on something to the west.

And the color faded from the sky to end another winter day.