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Modesto Mutant
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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A couple of years ago I was riding my bike along West Cliff Drive here in Santa Cruz. It was a nice warm November day. As I came around the corner above Mitchell's Cove heading towards the lighthouse. I could see what could only be described as a crazed crowd along the railing. When I got into view of the cove I could see that there was a huge Humpback Whale who was basically doing laps up and down the cove. There was a huge run of anchovies in the bay and that had pulled all of these whales close to shore. This one whale in particular was within 30' of the beach. People were going crazy, pulling over and jumping out of their cars and parking them double even triple wide blocking West Cliff Drive. It's hard to say who was happier, that whale filling it's belly or the crowd getting so close to it.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Isa and I saw two really big whales breach up in Gaspe QB in fall of 2017 Super cool wolf encounter in jellystone in 96 just a year after they started their program to bring the wolves back.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 5, 2019 - 05:23pm PT
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There has been talk of condors on this thread...I see them often in Patagonia. Heading back down on Tuesday!
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BooDawg
Social climber
Butterfly Town
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Guido: Yes, they could've made a mess of us, but we had Shanachie (sailboat), not mask, fins & snorkle...
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Not actually a sighting but memorable.
Was hiking off trail looking for the best approach to a climb of Mt. Tom's north ridge (Sierra). Wandered into a copse of trees and spotted a deer carcass. Checking it out, soon found two more deer carcasses. It slowly dawned on me I was in a cougar lunchroom. The kills were relatively recent.
Got the feeling I was being watched. Slowly backed out facing the kills, looking behind me occasionally. After backing up around 200 yards, turned around and boogied the hell out of there.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Johntp....coud have been a sasquatch den...glad you escaped...
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Weenis
Trad climber
Tel Aviv
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My place backs up to Forest Service land and I've seen every native creature here. One afternoon I went to the back patio and a large adult male mountain lion casually walked up to me, stopped about twenty feet away and sat down. I wasn't scared and the cat was relaxed and so beautiful just sitting there. This guy was the size of a small German Shepard dog. We hung out looking each other over and I started talking to it in a real calm voice. Time kind of stood still. I told him that I wanted to get a picture and turned towards the house and when I looked back he was quietly gone.
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Matt Sarad
climber
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Growing up on a farm north of Bakersfield from 1966-1980, I saw bobcats, badgers, skunks, but the best of all was a Condor around 1970. It was the last one sighted and cataloged that flew from the Mt Pinos area to Glennville.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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a ways out from the boggy shore of a pond alongside the alaska hiway i spotted an anomalous shape ...
brown, with a ridge line floating too high and shaped wrong to be a log ...
not a single other clue presented itself, so i slowed out of curiosity.
glad i did or i would have missed the magnificent emergence of a huge rack, draped in greenery with gallons of water cascading off it
while the whole monstrosity panned slowly my way. if i had been raised with broader exposure than just of "moose and skweerrull,"
i would have had a clue as to what was about to take place.
after 18 years in ak, 10 in mt and 5 in wyo ... i get it now what they do for a living
doing some track skiing on lighted trails one wicked cold night in anchorage, i came upon
what appeared to be a smoke ring hanging in the air as i rounded a blind curve.
at first i marveled. then it came to me ... luckily.
stepped out into a wild snowplow and managed to avoid bullwinkle
while we fixed a couple of pitches on one of the biggies in the beartooths, my partner rathole and i left a scattering of gear laying where we started the route. that left us pretty exposed to whatever kind of havoc a beautiful mountain goat could have wreaked upon us. as it turned out, the stuff all got pretty thoroughly inspected, the goat was really nonchalant about us just above him, and he eventually kneeled down amongst our debris for a long period of rumination, a sweet bond of trust developed in which we were able to continue with our project
after many a red, my first gray fox:
i was perched on a short rim and it came out of a cubby hole about 20-30' straight below me like a train.
sporting a long plain gray back followed by what seemed like a longer tail with a black dorsal stripe.
casually walked straight out for quite a ways, then stopped and looked at me over his shoulder,
we both made a study of it, what a nice face framed in cinnamon, the fox i mean.
it moved on just as casually till it slipped behind a bushy tree.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Saw a mountain lion crossing Highway 120 in the vicinity of Buck Meadows one night. Drove beneath a bobcat perched above the opening to the Wawona tunnel in broad daylight.
But this mama moose was WAY too close for comfort,
and actually made a move for my wife as she tried to slink out of the house to catch the bus one morning,
and luckily turned back to munching the aspen:
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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MGuzzy, thats why down there they call Tegus "chicken wolves".
Got bit by one once. They're mean.
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Once had a deer run in front of my car bounding across the 120 about 20 miles west of Tioga pass. I braked for it. A bounding bear soon followed.
No sh#t.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Stumbled outta da igloo in Alaska one winter morning to go to the muktuk factory. It was
marginally light, I think. Carefully shepherding my cuppa joe I shuffled towards Rocinante.
As I reached her hind quarters I became aware of another set of hind quarters that reached
the height of my admittedly poorly focused eyes. I said to myself
“Self, did you park a large cow moose behind Rocinante last night?”
Thereupon a tolerably civilized exchange ensued between my self and Ms Moose. She
acknowledged that she had no objections to my going to work and that, yes, the backyard
would be a much more peaceful place for her to go into her semi-somnolent state. When I came home she was still there, she hadn’t moved 40’ all day. The next morning, and for a
good dozen after that, we would arise to see her peering at us through the kitchen window
with her big brown eyes. It was really cold and she implored us to let her in. It certainly
made me appreciate central heating.
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Inner City
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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This thread is gold.
I have two to mention. One time my wife and I were walking back from camping on the top of Mt Watkins. We were in a thick area of downed dry wood, very loud walking. Suddenly we heard some noise and shuffled loudly over to what it was. As we got to about 75 feet, we saw a bear at the base of a tree. It looked like it was trying (and Failing) to climb the tree.
We walked a bit closer to about 50 feet and saw, to our huge surprise, a mini cub, new born ish, seemed less than 2 feet long! The mother was trying to push the little one up the tree to protect it from us..
Fear kicked in pretty strong at this point and we slowly backed away and I remember picking up a big stick, just in case I might need it(no help!) Whew.
Other one was a great grey owl. Driving down Evergreen road after a meal at the lodge,it was twilight and we were going through that one big meadow and my wife said, "There was a big owl in that tree". We parked and slowly walked back with our one year old in arms. We sneaked up to about 40 feet and looked on in awe of this incredible and big creature, perched on a branch about 12 feet off the ground. After a bit, it took flight and swooped towards us before disappearing across the meadow. It was magical
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hamie
Social climber
Thekoots
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^^^^^^At first glance I thought those were leaf cutter ants. Very cool.
Once upon a long time ago.....
seated in the relative safety of our canoe....
near the side of the lake....
with paddles poised for a speedy exit.....
we watched a grizzly swim from the beach to the carcass of a dead moose, floating near the shore. It would swim up and rip a strip of skin/meat from the back or side of the moose, and head back to the shore to eat it. As the grizzly tore at the moose, its body would rotate in the water, and its head and antlers would partly emerge. This was repeated several times while we watched in stunned silence. A Canadian classic--grizz vs moose, albeit a dead one.
Of course the camera was back in camp.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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here's the phenomenon, bev doolittle explains it well:
but substitute sage grouse standing silently in courtship display blended in perfect camouflage with the setting of fresh snow on the wyoming sage, a world of dollops
where first just one, then sequentially a dozen or so were revealed until we stepped away in reverence,
certain that something very holy was underway and ultimately private
What Is a Lek
A lek is a gathering of males for the purpose of competitive display (strutting) and mating. The same males attend a traditional place that can be active for decades. Males commonly roost overnight near the lek and, before sunrise, will move to the lek and display. This will continue for a couple of hours following sunrise, March through May. Topography is typically wide-open and flat with escape cover (shrubs) nearby.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Attack of the butterflies! 🙀
Just yesterday La Femme handed me a story her best friend wrote about their childhood in Cameroun.
The short version is that the army ants came to their house in a column 5 metres wide!.
All they could do was move out for a couple of days.
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Happy Cowboy
Social climber
Boz MT
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Another nice thread Jim! Great encounters big and small, love the pics. I've lived in the Yellowstone region for most of my 65 yrs and had encounters with many of the local fauna. A Wolverine sighting while climbing Mt Forbes, the highest peak in Banff Park, Alberta does remains one of my personal favs. This mountain has quite the approach, and it was on the second day while heading up a steep lateral moraine ridge of the greatly receded Mons glacier, that we spotted the wolverine hunting in verdant green area we were approaching, then gone in a B&W flash...
I did have some commercialized exposure while gripping/rigging the film industry. Perhaps some of the ST crowd recognize this cat? She played a leading role in the fan-fav "The Vertical Limit"!!!and these shots were during the shooting of said movies Snow Leopard sequence.
I remember the trainers little talk "there's only one rule when working with big cats, don't turn your back on them, and if you do don't run and if you run don't fall and if you fall don't struggle and if you struggle don't scream" and then let 3 loose. We were at 8500 ft just out of Glacier Park!!!I honestly couldn't believe we had permission to just set them free...but as we'd been told "you want them back? trainer would just turn and run and the Leopards would spring from a cliff and travel 100 yds in a blur to swipe at their master(and his treats).
Their beauty was incredible, look at that tail.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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More than a decade ago I was driving up the Icefields Parkway out of Banff in late December and looked out the window of my rental car to see a magnificent mated pair of Lynx gracefully climbing away from the roadway off into powder snow at least five feet deep. It was well below zero and I wished I had a steak to toss their way as I was sure that they were both hungry.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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I was hiking solo in the Chugach outside Anchorage, came around a large alder patch and a huge bull moose was running full gallop directly toward me. My life flashed before my eyes and when he was less than 10 feet away he noticed me and made a quick right turn leaping into the alders. About 3 seconds later another moose crossed the trail right after the first. Another 3 seconds pass and some guy's Labrador Retriever crossed the path chasing both moose.
On an off day skiing in Ketchum, Idaho, we took a drive over toward Borah Peak. On the side of the highway was a huge Golden Eagle. We stopped and the bird didn't really look alive. My buddy approached to see if it was dead. He finally nudged it with his foot and the Eagle opened it's eyes and turned it's head to look him in the eye. Startled, my buddy jumped back. We left, wondering if the bird was sick, dying, or just warming up on a cold day.
I didn't see this, but it was on the Anchorage Daily News front page back in 89.
A Georgia couple in their motor home were fueling at a gas station in Valdez, Ak.
The wife got out to let little Foo Foo the dog go potty off leash. Suddenly a bald eagle swooped down and took Foo Foo away.
The husband ran over to console his distraught wife. He embraced her and sat her into the passenger side of the motor home. As he walked around the back, out of the rear view mirror's sight, he jubilantly pumped his fist and mouthed "yeah!". As he entered the driver's side, he resumed his somber look.
Edit:
Fritz,
Glad the turkey vultures left Donini alone...LMAO
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