Yesterday I decided to take off for the D&L Trail out of Lehigh Tannery. So I did a mega hike, 15.23 miles -- that's one of my longest. I went to mile marker 120 and just beyond where there was a lovely waterfall.
Then I turned back. At about 6pm I was 2 miles into my return walk when a cyclist was coming towards me, really barreling along. The new gravel path is just great and crunchy and allows one to hear a bike coming from a great distance away. The bike approached and flew past me and seconds later a large animal snarled and growled at me from the shrubbery at the side of the road, no more than 10-15 feet from me. Then it moved, running thru the thicket of rhododendrons at roadside. I couldn't see it well but I could tell it was not black. But it was large and ran to a point where it seemed to disappear. From the snarl I reasoned it had to be a feline of some sort. But at bobcat or even a linx are too small to have been my creature. It was as big as a bear, probably feline, not happy. I realized that it had been hiding in the bushes, probably watching the approaching cyclist whose tires made a loud crunching noise while I came the other direction walking next to the path on the grassy verge, making no noise. As the cyclist passes,the "cat" must have suddenly seen me almost behind it and freaked, snarled and ran. The road, an old rail line, is carved out of the cliff side in what was a deep defile with the Lehigh River at the base. So the right side of the road, heading north, is a very steep drop-off to the river and the left side is sheer rock face of varying heights from 20 feet to 60 feet. The section where this animal had run had deep concavities which were almost cavelike. Since the trail is on the west side of the river and due to the high ridge on that side, many of these declivities in the rock face are all but impenetrable to the eye due to deep shadows especially at this late hour. And at this particular juncture, the trail and the rock face come very close together creating a blockade and enclosure of sorts. The animal ran only a short distance before disappearing. It did not cross the path. It either was lying in wait in the darkness or it had scaled the cliff face.
I gingerly crept past the pinch point in the road with my hiking poles held in a jousting stance. If the beast was still there it did not stir. But at each moment I fully expected a mountain lion to pounce on me. Now, there are constant rumors of big cats in PA but this is really just a myth. So, what I encountered was indeed mysterious and utterly unknown. I went down the path what I considered to be a "safe distance" and turned to observe. It was all silence. Creepy. I then realized that whatever it was, it was big, it was snarling at me and it was not happy. My safe distance needed to be increased ten-fold at least. Adrenaline was pumping and I took off at a healthy pace with many looks back over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being stalked. About a quarter mile further down the road I saw an actual cat, a house cat in the woods. I was calling to it when I realized it was a skunk!! Here kitty kitty...
The next 5 miles were long. My feet began to hurt around mile 13. Saw two lovely young bucks with just the early nubs of horns growing. On my drive back thru Hickory Run I nearly hit two deer. I got home by 8:15 or so.
I googled cougars in PA and according to what I found, officially, cougars do not exist in PA, in the wild. Ok, then what kind of large cat snarled at me?
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