The Year of the Bobcat lives on

Yesterday's experience was one of the most astonishing of my life. I didn't depart on my hike searching for a bear den. Instead, by serendipity, I discovered one. Part of the reason was a commitment that I made to myself when I decided to call 2010 my Year of the Bobcat. It was a commitment to be bold and flexible - to use my neck surgery as a springboard to venture beyond my comfort zone.

Although many of you expressed terror at the situation that I stumbled upon, I was 99.99% sure that I was safe. I've researched bear behavior over the years because I run into them on the trails. I've read books and research papers about their biology, and I felt almost certain that a hibernating mother bear wasn't going to sprint out of the den and attack me. Moreover, on every single hike or bike ride that I take, I carry a huge can of pepper spray. It's the size that's recommended for stopping a grizzly bear. I'd only use it as a last resort - but it was next to my hand yesterday.

I have to admit that I feel much less scared around the forest animals than I do when I'm in the city. In terms of safety, I far prefer a jaunt through a shadowy forest to a walk along a brightly lit city sidewalk. We all have our quirks - and that's mine!

This morning, my neck hurt more than usual before I even finished breakfast. I'm working on viewing the pain as a sign of healing so that I'll take a positive attitude toward it. Nonetheless, K's encouragement to head out the door for our hike helped me immensely.

From our first steps, I knew that we had a special day ahead of us. A paper thin layer of snow fell over night, and I spotted some bobcat tracks. I retrieved the memory card from our closest wildlife camera, and I found another phenomenal photo.
Here's the handsome dude in close-up.
I've been reading extensively about bobcats, including a fascinating book called "Bobcat Year" by Hope Ryden. She followed the activities of several bobcats over an entire year and tells the stories of their lives. It's both enchanting and sad. A bobcat's life is difficult beyond our imagination, between avoiding animals that might hurt them (people, coyotes, lions, and other bobcats) and finding enough food to survive. For a bobcat, a rabbit is the best meal imaginable. Perhaps that culinary preference explains why many of my bobcat photos occur in places where rabbits live.

I've learned in my reading that each bobcat likes to have sole possession of his/her territory. So, the forest around my house undoubtedly has important property lines that I'm not aware of. These are the lines between the bobcat territories. Occasionally, the edges of territories overlap but the neighboring bobcats avoid each other because they'd prefer not to experience a life-threatening fight. For that reason, I'm guessing that the bobcat who I photographed last night is the same individual as the one who visited slightly more than a week ago. He looked more confident and like he was moving faster last week.
Today, I was able to track the bobcat. I followed his tracks off our property and then lost them for a little while. However, as we climbed a snowy slope, K found the tracks again and alerted! In the photo below, she's just pointed out the tracks to me. I think that she's a huge asset in tracking, if I'm smart enough to read her communications correctly!
Below, I've included a photo of the tracks that K found! The bobcat was climbing snow covered slope where the drifts could have swallowed him whole if he'd stepped in the wrong place. Interestingly, however, I've learned that some bobcats hunt rabbits by hiding underneath the snow next to a rabbit trackway. Then, when the hapless mountain cottontail hops past, the bobcat bursts out of the powder to pounce on the rabbit.
Today, I learned that in areas of deep powder, bobcats use their agility to avoid having to plow through the snow. The bobcat who we followed today used logs as his primary walking surface.
When he reached the end of one log, if it was physically possible, he leaped to another log, completely avoiding deep snow.
Usually, he landed on the next log so gracefully that I could barely discern a hitch in his tracks. Once, I found a spot where he landed with all four paws under him and seemed to slip a little.
In one spot, he found a fallen tree that hung about 2' off the ground. A rabbit trackway went directly under the log. It appeared that the bobcat perched on that tree for a little while, waiting to see if a rabbit would hop under his log. Based on tracks, I think that his wait was in vain. A bobcat pawprint is in the lower left corner of the photo on the log. The rabbit tracks go from the bottom to the top of the photo in the snow below the log.
After that log, we approached the spine of the ridge, and no more logs provided the bobcat with easy travel. His paws sunk deeply into the snow.
Then, we crossed an area with a higher density of rabbit tracks than I've ever seen. As the bobcat perused the rabbit trackways, the hard snow supported his weight. In some places, the tough snow crust prevented him from leaving any trace. We lost the trail on the crusty snow and then the dry grass of the top of the ridge. But, we'd had a glorious time walking in a bobcat's pawprints, viewing the world from his perspective for the first part of our hike.

From the ridge, the clouds loomed with bluebird skies behind them. Even K stopped to look at the show!
And then, seeing the camera, she sat in a dignified way. She's such a camera-hound!
We did lots more exploring, finding beautiful lichen-covered rocks. K loves climbing high and surveying the land.
We ended up mired down in deep snow. Here, K is standing upright but her back barely clears the snow!
We found our way out of the bottomless powder, with the very smart K leading the way.For me, today's hike encapsulated my Year of the Bobcat philosophy. I didn't leave home with an exact plan but I let nature lead us through forests, over the ridges, and to the peaks. My wanderings with K since my surgery contrast starkly with my mountain bike rides from before surgery. In my wanderings, one of my rules is that I visit someplace that I've never been before each day. Moreover, I'm flexible about the route - if animal tracks lead us someplace unexpected, that's great! That, by itself, has let me discover things about my world that I never would have otherwise discovered. Here's to the 'Year of the Bobcat'!

Stumbling upon hibernating bears

Today's hike came within a hair of being a story of a long wander in the woods, perusing tracks and enjoying complete silence. However, within the last quarter of the hike, K and I stumbled upon something extraordinary. But first, I need to tell you how we ended up on an isolated north-facing slope, still deeply covered in snow, with a band of boulders above us - perfect bear denning territory.

We started by following bobcat signs, found another scent post, and then lost his trail. His trail had led us along a path toward a ravine-pocked area that I've wanted to explore. Almost immediately, I found turkey tracks, which I examined closely with K covering my back. I've come to believe, given how many lion signs we see in our forest, that K is truly guarding me when she behaves this way. She sits directly behind me and vigilantly scans the forest while I become absorbed in a track.
Then, we moved along, and I promptly lost my bearings. A glimpse of the faraway mountains helped slightly.
After trekking through snow and over fallen trees, I caught another peek at the mountains and reoriented myself again. The mountains float below K's snout in the photo below.
Then, an obvious gulch became our guide. I knew that it led to the bottom of the canyon that we've recently explored. I figured that if we followed it, we'd end up on the bench trail that contours along the wall of the canyon.K, who was off-leash at this point, definitely favored following the gulch downward.
Some gargantuan tracks led us into the gulch. The sun had destroyed every detail of these craters so I had no idea who had left them except that the stride and straddle indicated a big animal, like an elk or lion. The lack of foot dragging made me lean toward a lion but the tracks were very old so I didn't expect to run into their owner. But, to be safe, I leashed K.
We let gravity pull us down the gulch. I knew that it was inevitable that we'd intersect the bench trail so I felt confident in our navigation. However, before we descended all the way to the bench trail, I spotted an animal trail that paralleled the bench trail but contoured higher on the canyon wall.
It looked like a fun adventure to follow it so we did. The tracks were all indistinct. An occasional pile of deer scat told us that mule deer sometimes follow it. I started thinking that it might be a sneaky way for a prey animal to avoid ambush by a mountain lion down on the bench trail. The bench trail is well known for lion activity.

We wandered along, seeing very few signs of animal life except an occasional red squirrel or Stellar's Jay. When we're simply wandering, K usually walks next to me (if the snow isn't too soft) or directly behind me. All of a sudden, she surged ahead, nose quivering in the wind. She led the way for the next ten minutes, pulling lightly on the leash - a rare event for her.
Then, just as quickly, she faded behind me. I couldn't see her (I can't twist my neck due to my surgery) so I didn't note her body language. We reached a point where the animal tracks all diverged in different directions. We had two choices. We could go straight up the hill and try to clamber over the band of boulders. The band of boulders sits at the top of the ridge in the photo below.
Or, we could angle up the hill through what looked like deep powder that probably hid hazardous fallen trees.
I chose an intermediate route, hoping to find an easy spot to get over the boulders. Just then, some violently chewed trees caught my attention. It almost looked like the work of beavers but this definitely was not beaver territory. The debarked trees are obvious in the photo below, and actually block the route to a cave entrance.
The savagely gnawed trees drew me in. I headed toward them to figure out what animal had done the damage. Once I climbed another 10 ft upward, a cave entrance became obvious. K sniffed and hung back.
Never one to pass up a curiosity, I peered into the cave entrance and saw deep dark blackness. But, the darkness had a texture to it... so I looked harder.
My next peek revealed something that looked like black fur and the hint of an open eye.
Then, something stirred in the black hole, and I saw the beautiful face of a yearling cub.
The cub started to back up behind his mom who was still lying close to the den entrance.
Then, the cub snuggled into his mom, and they looked like a glossy and sleepy pile of fur.
In the midst of the five minutes that we spent gawking, I recorded some video when the bears mewed and grumbled in their sleepy stupor. Sorry about the poor visual quality. I was a little bit scared, even though I know from physiology books that hibernating bears are not physically capable of moving much at all when they first awaken.



I feel guilty that I woke up the bears, who were holed up in a remote cave like good bears. If I'd known that I was next to a bear den, I would have been far quieter and less intrusive. I hope that I didn't scare them too much or do anything to mess up their hibernation.

As I looked at the den entrance, I was overwhelmed by bear scent. I'm certain that K's alert demeanor in the minutes before we stumbled on the den was triggered by the bear scent. However, I kept wondering why a mountain lion doesn't make a meal of the pair. He'd fit in the den entrance, and I know that he frequents that hillside. Perhaps other meals, like mule deer, are tastier to a lion. Alternatively, perhaps a bear can wake up fast enough when faced with an obvious threat like a lion to defend herself. In any case, I do feel certain that the den entrance will be completely covered if we get a decent snow storm. That covering will help insulate the bears and hide their den more completely.

After our short time at the den, K and I scrambled further up the slope and soon emerged in the sunlight. Believe it or not, this vista was remarkably close to the den as the crow flies. What a day!

Riding the surf

I hit a dip between the waves as I rode the recovery surf today. My energy level had plummeted, and my pain had skyrocketed. So, it didn't rank as one of my best days. I did, however, enjoy watching a coyote wander through our clearing during breakfast.

On an optimistic note, I haven't talked about one amazing facet of my recovery. Although most people who have a 3-level fusion wear a hard brace 24/7 for 6-12 weeks, my surgeon is already "weaning" me off of the hard brace. I'm in the midst of gradually wearing the brace for fewer hours per day around the house. However, due to the snow and ice outdoors, I'll continue wearing full-time when hiking in snow and ice for another month. I'm not sure why I'm healing so fast but I'm very thankful.

Unfortunately, my neck muscles are staging a small rebellion over losing the supportive help from the brace. By launching into spasms, they're telling me that they'd prefer NOT to do the work of holding up my head. Muscle spasms and fatigue have made me feel like I'm trudging through molasses today. However, I know that it's part of the process of healing so I can endure it while keeping my eyes on the goal!

Several of you have asked how R is doing. Since his deer hoof and bone ingestion incident, he's bounced back like a 2-year old high energy puppy. He didn't have surgery so the remedy was to let his digestive tract work things through. He moped pathetically, as if he felt bad, for about a day. Then, all traces of illness disappeared. His astounding recovery leaves no doubt that he's in the physical prime of life, simply bursting with good health.

R hasn't been appearing in my photos often because I've been taking only the mellower dog, K, with me on most hikes. After the mountain lion episode, we realized that we wanted to be absolutely certain that whoever was with the dogs in the forest could control both on leash in a high intensity situation (i.e., both dogs pulling fiendishly at the end of their leashes). Until my neck gets stronger, I'm taking R and K together when only it's absolutely necessary or when I have someone with me to help. Don't worry - R gets treated to a long distance run every morning. He's not being neglected (except perhaps photographically)!

Here's our high voltage puppy during yesterday evening's hike.
The whole pack took a hike yesterday at sunset, and we found another bobcat scent post! We left the house with the goal of searching a specific boulder pile for a scent post but then we ran into a couple of close friends on the trail. They asked if we wanted to change our route to join them. We replied "No thanks, we're going to look for cat poop"! These are extremely good friends - so they just knowingly chuckled and bid us good luck.

The bobcat scent post sat beneath a beehive-shaped pile of boulders in the midst of a huge meadow that's half public property and half private. We hiked across the public land and immediately found a big cache of bobcat scat by the beehive boulder hill. To my surprise, I've become adept at finding these stashes - now there's a marketable skill!

I look for an overhanging ledge with lots of sun exposure that has bare dirt below it. More often than not, I find piles of bobcat scat in these spots, serving as scent posts for the dominant bobcat in the territory. I'd love to put a camera at the new scent post but all of my cameras are busy right now! I need a camera sponsor (ha ha!) because I can't afford enough wildlife cameras to cover all the active scent posts and wildlife corridors that I'm finding. In the photo below, the scent post stood below the pine trees that overhang the boulder pile.
After checking out the bobcat scent post, we walked through the bare brown grass up the sloping meadow. As we walked, a mat of deer fur, sticking up through snow remnants, caught our attention. It looked as if a deer had died in this spot, leaving behind a bed of fur. The bed of fur reminded me of the spot where the lion cached the mule deer carcass. The only clue that remains to mark that spot is a hillock of snow and a bed of fur. In the meadow, the fur barely protruded from below the snow.
When we reached the highest point in the meadow, the sky to the southeast cast a golden and reddish glow over the meadow. I love the ambiance of the world during the imperceptible slippery slide from daylight to dusk each evening.
I also love sunrises but my need for excessive sleep has meant that I haven't seen a sunrise since before my surgery. Maybe soon...

Despite feeling lethargic this morning, K and I headed out for a hike. We followed month-old lion tracks away from the deer carcass cache site. The fact that we could still see the lion's tracks tells you how little snow has fallen recently.
As we followed the tracks, K went on high alert, with her nose pointed up the slope. I wondered what scent caught her attention. Usually, I'd assume that it was a deer or elk but I haven't seen either species in our forest in the past couple of weeks.
After climbing through a dense and shadowy forest without finding a single fresh track except tiny weasel paw prints, we emerged into the blinding daylight of a trail. I released K to lead the way upward.
We spent the next half hour exploring a ridge that I've never set foot on before. The views were stupendous, the sun felt warm, and I felt lazy. So, we stopped frequently to soak up the sun and take photos.
Colorado blue skies with snowy mountains on the horizon provide the perfect backdrop for dog photos!
K noticed an animal in the meadow below us and watched it intently. I see why predators like rocky lookouts. They can spot potential prey from a long distance.
And, this one is for Queen Natasha of the Thundering Herd. K was Queen of this hill, and I dare Natasha to challenge her supremacy!
To get home from our ridge, we tromped down a steep snowy hill with K leading the way. At one point, she hopped over a small branch like it was nothing. Woo hoo, K is feeling better (she's been avoiding jumping since her surgery). She waited for me to hop the same branch. Not yet, K, but soon enough.
Although I enjoyed wandering with K, I still felt blue when I arrived home. Two dog-related things were dragging down my mood, in addition to the pain from my neck muscles. First, I made the mistake of watching "Marley and me" last night. I cried and cried for all the wonderful dogs who I loved with all my heart but who've crossed the rainbow bridge. That movie is painful for anyone who has truly loved a dog.

Then, this morning, I read MaxDog's blog about his serious medical situation. Please visit his blog to lend your support. I'm sending good thoughts to Max - a sweetheart of a Golden Retriever who I fell in love with from the first time that I read his blog.

Here's to Max. My thoughts are with him and his family.

Visiting a canyon: bobcat and lion signs galore!

For the past two days, K and I have explored a canyon that we very rarely visit. From my house, we can climb upward toward our small peaks or we can plunge downward into a canyon. I'd been afraid to try to descend the steep and sometimes slippery route into the canyon since my surgery. However, the recent paucity of snow made the route almost easy today. Below, K gazed over the gulch that we were planning to follow downward toward the canyon bottom.
I love walking the remote trails on the canyon walls because wild animals regularly use these routes. In fact, I found bear tracks on one of these trails at Thanksgiving, my most recent visit to the canyon wall. Usually, by mid-winter, even touring skis don't traverse the snow depths with ease. But, for the moment, hiking boots can do the job.

Before we left the dirt to tromp through snow, we passed the spot where the mountain lion laid down for a while during a recent foray through our forest. It looked fairly freshly scratched out. K lay next to it for scale. I was thinking of putting a camera here. However, if a mountain lion uses it as an ambush spot, a camera will ruin his covert activities. That realization made me hesitate.
The cat ambush hide-out has a tremendous view of the mountains but I doubt that the feline can enjoy it as he stalks deer in the middle of the night.
After looking investigating the cat hiding place, we descended a snowy trail with no other tracks on it. About halfway down, big round tracks, too old to identify, joined our trail from a snow-free slope next to the trail. We followed the animal's footsteps.
Then, when we hit the bench trail that contours along the canyon wall, the trail alternated between snow and dirt, depending on its sun exposure. We startedhiking on a dirt section.In the dirt areas, I found three different mountain lion scent posts. I couldn't ascertain how recently they'd been 'updated' but I knew what I was seeing. When a mountain lion leaves a 'scent post', he kicks back with his hind legs, and he doesn't always leave scat or urine on the pile of duff. Usually, only males leave scent posts. The scent posts tell other lions that this territory is occupied and they'd better move along. The only time that a female leaves scent messages is when she's in estrus. Then, she urinates on the male's scent posts to advertise her availability.

In the photo below, with K next to it for scale, the two scrape marks (a scent post) left by the lion's hind paws stood out even to the human eye. Snow filled them (they're in front of the tree). Obviously, the lion scraped the depressions prior to our last snow, a week ago. We found three different scrapings, separated by a third of a mile or so, along the bench trail.Just like dogs, mountain lions use their front paws when they're digging with a purpose rather than for scent marking. In the photo below, my wildlife camera caught a lion covering his deer carcass, using his front paws to launch snow and dirt over the carcass.
While building a towering pile of debris over the carcass, he paused to lick his paw.
I'm still spending time every single day working on the unbelievable number of photos and video clips that we have of this lion. My goal is to make a video from all of them but, until I start working more efficiently (i.e., stop needing mind-altering meds for my post-surgical pain), I think that the progress will stay slow.

Today, as K and I crossed a gulch and the trail faced more northward, snow swamped it, and K frolicked. In a unique twist, she sported only one ear flopping in the air in this sprint!
To my surprise, in the midst of this forested area with no meadows nearby, I found bobcat tracks. They marched along the trail atop the snow crust, diverging only to investigate rabbit tracks.
One of the tracks was perhaps the most perfect bobcat track example that I've ever found, with the double cusp at the top of the largest paw pad obvious. This feature appears only in felines.
A little further along, huge round tracks descended from the slope above us. They were old but I suspected that a lion left them. If you look carefully at the photo below, the bobcat tracks, quite fresh, march along the far left of the trail. The huge melted out tracks of a larger animal tromp along the right of the trail. Where the two tracks met, the bobcat placed each paw in one of the packed tracks of the larger animal, saving energy by avoiding sinking into the snow.
I'd been developing a picture of our woods, in which the bobcats and lions traveled divergent paths, thereby avoiding each other. After all, a lion will eat a bobcat if given the opportunity. I visualized the bobcats staying close to open meadows, hiding in boulder piles. Bobcats would rarely see lions in this habitat because lions normally eschew such open terrain. Today's hike blew my picture to pieces. I like that - there's so much more to learn!

Today, the bobcat marched along the bench trail, an obvious lion corridor. Indeed, the bobcat even left scent posts along it. Below this cliff-like boulder, K sniffed out a pile of bobcat scat in the dirt under an overhang. K pointed out yet another bobcat scent-post in a dirt section of trail. When I hike in the woods with my dogs, I pay attention to what they sniff - I've found many interesting animal signs that way.
Finally, because both K and I seemed to have more endurance than I would have ever predicted so soon after our respective surgeries, we plunged the last 500' down to the creek. I thought that we'd see tons of animal tracks, meandering down for a drink. But, we didn't. We saw a few deer and coyote prints among the willows but no other tracks.
Despite being a water-loving dog, K knew that she didn't want to plunge into this freezing water. She delicately hopped from rock to rock. Although the sun arcs higher in the sky each day, K's shadow still loomed large on the snow covering the icy creek.
After the creek visit, it was time to climb home. We trudged straight up the canyon wall, walking companionably side-by-side. Having K with me makes these adventures immeasurably more fun!