Big Bend Post #2 -- lions

So Jenn and I arrived on Friday morning to hike out of the valley of the Pinnacle mountains and we headed up to boot canyon. We had to carry alot of weight since we were supposed to carry all of our water for the entire trip on our backs.

Since we had to be out 2+ days we would need 2+ gallons, thank goodness we ended up finding some pools in a dry creek beg to siphon some water out of to supplement the water we carried. This leads me to my best experience of the trip. Me, Jenn and Jim (Jenn's boss' husband) went off the trail and down into a creek bed to look for blue throated hummers (we found 2-3). Jenn and I filled our water up to the top and sat for awhile, I ended up seeing a painted redstart and chased it up the bouldery dry creekbed just below the trail above, got some great looks and then came down to meet Jim and Jenn. We headed up to the trail to see Jenn's boss Lisa and she told us that there was a mountain lion on the trail. We had seen signs at the start of the trail warning of the lions

and I couldn't believe that we may see one. We inched our way around the trail to see the mountain lion sitting crouched and staring uphill, about 30 yards away were two deer just chilling in the shade. He hardly even noticed us, only glancing at us maybe twice, he was just locked on the deer. We were about 20-30 feet away, ubelieveable looks.

We finally decided to leave him alone, a couple of park employees stayed and watched him slink along the trail in a crouch and follow the deer

up the mountain as they moved. Good deal I got to tick one of the "gotta see one of these before I die" items off my list.