On the night of June 23, 2005, Sally and I drove down to the Cathedral Valley campground from Loa. When we got there at about 7:00 pm, storms were passing and we had the place to ourselves. We had the sense that few use this campsite, even the latrine was remarkably clean. It was a beautiful evening, but I was tired from a long day of driving and hiking so I got into my bag in our small backcountry hiking tent (MSR Hubba Hubba, to be exact) and read with the last rays of light. We were very quiet campers--no fire, no lantern, no flashlights (until after the encounter). Eventually, Sally got down on all four and entered the tent as dusk approached, leaving her shoes outside. Again, I emphasize I was already in my bag very quietly reading. She got into her bag, lay down, then sat up to look a last time at the last shreds of red color coming over the mountain to the west. As she lay down, she said, "Jack, you really must take a look at the last bit of light." Since I couldn't read in the dim light anymore, I set my book down and sat up. This would have been about 5 or 10 minutes, max, after Sally had entered the tent.

As I strained to see the sky past the branch of the juniper tree outside our tent vestibule, I realized I was looking directly, and at its level, into the very big eyes of something about five feet from our tent. Then the rest of the head and body became clear. At first I thought bobcat, but I had seen one only a few weeks early on our trip and this was four times as big and a beautiful caramel color and it's head was round and BIG and the one paw it held in the air MID-STEP FORWARD DIRECTLY TOWARD ME (actually, Sally, I believe) was also BIG. My immediate instinct was to be cool, but not to take my eyes off it. I said, very calmly, "Sally, there is a mountain lion looking into our tent." Not really believing me because I tend to kid her this way, she sat up, looked out, and then laid back down and pulled the sleeping bag over her head and went stiff as a board with fear.

I then did what I had read one is supposed to do: I tried to make myself as big as I could. This was none too easy given that I was zipped into a kevlar tent with 42 inches of headroom and still in my sleeping bag from the waist down. I spread my arms out like an ape and yelled at the thing as loudly as I could (I won't repeat the exact phrasing, but suffice it to say it was something I've never said to another living being!). The lion just stood there staring at me, paw still in the air, like it was deciding what to do. That's when I really got worried and knew I had to do something more drastic.

I must pause here to point out that it was a magnificent, healthy creature (my guess is it was between 80 and 100 pounds weight). I'd guess a young male, but I don't know why I say that. The antelope hunters we saw later the next morning may have put the male part in my head. I do remember it's paws and I think it could grow into them a bit, like a dog.

With no knife to cut through the tough tent material, and no camera or flashlight at hand to flash at it, I had no choice but to crawl over Sally, unzip the tent and try to stand up. All my thinking was sub-verbal, right from the gut at this point, and the whole thing probably took no more than 60 to 100 seconds to happen. I unzipped, and started to crawl out, when my hand landed on Sally's hiking shoe. Hoping to distract it long enough to stand up, I threw the shoe and beaned it right in the forehead. The shoe popped up into the air and that's when the lion finally moved.

With sickening speed, it rose on its hind legs, snatched the shoe midair with both forepaws, pulled it into it's mouth, turned and took off. In about 5 bounds it seemed, it covered about 50 feet from the somewhat isolated juniper by our tent to the tree line where, (I found the next morning while tracking it to look for Sally's shoe), it went down a shallow runoff ravine.

I won't bother you with the strictly human adrenaline charged drama that followed, except to say that we armed ourselves with ax and crowbar and turned on every light we had, lantern, headlights, flashlights, and built a fire in the fire pit. I decided that driving out on the storm ravaged 4-wheel road was out of the question at night. When the moon was high and we were casting shadows, we finally went back to bed hours later with the lantern blazing right outside the tent.

It was an amazing experience and after the initial shock I felt almost like I'd seen god. It wasn't till we talked it over many times and the silliness of the cat taking a shoe wore off after seeing you, that I thought about it more seriously.
Here are the important points that make that lion a danger, to my mind.

1. It did not know I was there because I'd been quiet in my bag for maybe an hour.
2. It was only a few minutes between the time Sally entered the tent and I made eye contact with the lion which was only 5 feet away.
We were at EYE-LEVEL with it, no bigger than it at any time.
3. It was not just passing by; it was coming straight at the tent and at Sally and I caught it mid-step, dead on, paw poised.
4. It did not move at all when I yelled and flapped and shook the tent. In fact, I'd say it looked even more intent somehow.

In sum, Sally was certainly stalked by a lion, and literally inches and perhaps seconds from being attacked. And there was a high likelihood that if I had moved any closer to it--which was my only option except to wait in the tent passively--it might have had to take a swipe at me. It was certainly within range to do so.

I want to encourage you to investigate this particular lion further for the safety of other human beings. I have nothing against it, especially since nothing serious happened. But had I not been there, who knows what would have happened to Sally. And had she been a child or a dog, she may not have even made it back to the tent. Please let me know what precautions you are taking.

Also, as I've said, I've read an index of 150 documented lion attacks over the last century. In most cases, the going advice of "make yourself bigger" did not work. Someone should review what the national agencies are advising campers and others in this regard.

Hope this helps campers and cougars alike.

Return to Stephens' encounter report

Go to Stephens' Photos from the scene in Utah