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Lion Gulch lives up to its name
By Bob Kretschman
I had never felt like potential prey until I saw the line of big cat tracks preceding me up the Lion Gulch Trail. The tracks, pressed into a thin layer of light snow that had fallen around dawn about two hours earlier, stopped me cold as I began a three-mile hike to Homestead Meadows.
The tracks were quite large, several inches across, and I surmised that they'd been left by a mountain lion that decided to include this quiet little draw on his morning hunt. The hiking trail along the bottom of the gulch made a convenient path for the cat, and now I followed in his steps.
I surveyed the pine-covered ridges above me, hoping to see the cougar peering at me from a sandstone perch. No such luck. The ridge tops, catching the first rays of morning sun from the clearing sky, were quiet.
Down in the cold shadows of the gulch, I thought about turning and walking the short distance back to my car at the trailhead. I'd heard that mountain lions seek solitary creatures as prey, and that morning, I was as solitary as they come. No other hikers had been up the trail since the cat made its pass through the gulch, and no one else was likely to arrive at the trailhead for another hour or two.
I reasoned that the cougar, perhaps as much as two hours ahead of me, might already be far away. I continued up the trail, following the tracks. When I hike, I usually let my mind drift and ponder things that I don't have time to think about in the rush of day-to-day living. But such idle thoughts were on hold that morning. I stepped carefully and quietly, constantly scanning the hillsides for a glimpse of the animal that had made the tracks.
After about a half-mile, the tracks left the trail and headed toward the top of a ridge. My mind pictured the cougar stalking me, doubling back along the ridge in order to pounce on me from behind. I prepared to fight. I imagined that when the next set of hikers walked up the gulch that morning, they'd find me lying in the snow, tired and bloodied, but victorious over the wild animal that tried to devour me. Oh, the stories I'd tell.
I opted not to follow the tracks up the ridge. Better to not ask for trouble, I figured. I stayed on the trail, and the tracks never reappeared. As I walked, my vigilance waned, and my mind abandoned heroic fantasy and occupied itself with the sort of mundane things that it usually thinks about when I hike. But my thoughts kept returning to the cougar, wondering where it had been during those hours before it entered Lion Gulch, and where it went when it left. Did it find a meal, a rabbit or a squirrel or a deer perhaps? Had it been lounging on the ridge top, resting in the warm morning sun, switching its tail back and forth and watching me creep up the frozen gulch? What would I have found if I'd been brave enough-or foolish enough-to follow those tracks up the ridge?
When I headed back down the gulch around noon, the sun had melted most of the snow, erasing the lion's tracks. We went our separate ways, the lion and I. But early that morning, when I shared Lion Gulch with a lion of considerable size, I think I experienced some of the sensations of your average deer when it catches a whiff of a predator on the breeze. I think I learned how it feels to be a middleman in the food chain, doing my best to avoid those creatures of higher rank. My senses grew sharp, if only for the few moments when I convinced myself that the lion might pose a threat.
Now that I'm back in town, back among the smog and traffic and blacktop, I often think about that morning. I wonder where the big cat is right now, if perhaps it's crouched low to the ground, hunting a skittish herd of deer that sense danger nearby. The deer are feeling the same thing I felt briefly that morning in Lion Gulch, the same invigorating sensation of fight or flight, life or death. Where the deer live, midway on the food chain, they experience the sensation every day. Lucky devils.
TO GET THERE:
The Lion Gulch trailhead is on U.S. 36 about seven miles southeast of Estes Park (or, from the opposite direction, about 12 miles northwest of Lyons). Park in a wide pullout beside the highway. The trail, which begins at 7,200 feet in elevation and climbs to about 8,500 feet, is accessible year-round and is a moderate hike.
The trail climbs Lions Gulch for three miles to Homestead Meadows, an area where the U.S. Forest Service has preserved the remains of several interesting cabins and other homestead buildings that were built between 1890 and 1920. Most of them were abandoned during the Depression of the 1930s. The loop trails that connect the homesteads are quite level and make for easy walking.
Lion Gulch Trail is heavily used, so be prepared to encounter many other hikers and horseback riders.
For more information about Lion Gulch Trail and Homestead Meadows, contact the Canyon Lakes District of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, 970-498-2770.
--Posted Dec. 19, 2000
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