EISPIRATEN

Coming down the ski hut trail from the summit between 7 and 9 pm on Sunday night I saw the following (in order): 2 deer, 2 bats, 1 black widow, 1 cougar.

Cougar was about 1 mile below the hut, I saw its eyes in my headlamp about 20 feet above the trail. I couldn't see anything else and had no idea what it was, and kept the light on it.

Nothing happened for about 10 secs, whatever it was just looked at the light, then it turned sideways and I got a quick look as it moved very fast out of sight. It didn't make a sound. It looked at first like a very large bobcat (I saw one of those up there once) until I saw the long tail.

It wasn't as big as I expected, probably a youngster. Realistically I was probably in more danger from the spider, but I still walked the rest of the trail looking backwards

With the two deer and all these guys below the Ski Hut in the creek on Sunday the hunt might have been on.



These guys were about 100 yards below the hut at 8 AM on Sunday.

I didn't see those guys. I went up the old trail from Baldy village, mostly the wildlife on that side is lots of bugs and a few clueless teenagers who leave the summit on the wrong trail and think they're on their way to their cars at Manker Flats.

I didn't want to go back down the long trail to the village in the dark so I went back down the ski hut trail (which when you add the extra 4 mile walk down to the village on the road makes for a 15 mile round trip). Anyway, climbing around on Baldy in the dark is a pain in the ass plus there are things that may try to eat you, i need to start getting up earlier