| Wildlife Encounters |
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Don't let the potential of meeting cougars or bears stop you in your trail-running tracks. As a four-time member of Canada's mountain running team, Jason Loutitt is used to pacing himself through the bush. Adapting to the terrain and its elements is par for the course. Still, he was stopped in his tracks during a training run in January 2006 when he stumbled on a cougar."The first thought I had was: Darn, what am I going to do for my training?" says Loutitt, who was then living in Banff. On that day, he was headed for Canmore on a 21-kilometre trail. As he often does when running solo, Loutitt was listening to music and singing out loud, in an effort to warn wildlife about his presence. About 15 kilometres into his run, Loutitt suddenly felt the need to be more alert. He took off his headphones, and stopped singing, too. A minute later, he saw the mountain lion about 20 metres ahead on the trail. It was preparing to crouch. "My intuition was that I just had to scare him off and not back down," said Loutitt, who began kicking up his knees, stomping his feet, pumping his arms and shouting. The animal inched closer. Loutitt picked up a stick and kept shouting, before choosÂing a log so big he could barely lift it as the cougar approached further. Then it moved up a 20-metre-high embankment where it sat "like a cat at the back of a couch, just waiting to pounce on me as I'd roll by," Loutitt said. So Loutitt stayed put, shouting and waving the log. Finally the animal left. Carrying a big stick and making as much noise as he could, Loutitt ran the remaining six kilometres to his planned coffee stop in Canmore. While this standoff scared Loutitt, he won't let fear deter him from running on, and enjoying, the trails. Jen Segger, endurance athlete and owner of Challenge by Choice Coaching, has had her share of wildlife encounters, too. Living in Squamish, B.C., she often sees black bears during her early morning trail runs in summer. Unusually, in 2009 Squamish had at least four reported cougar incidents that resulted in minor injuries for a child and a scary standoff for two mountain bikers. A dog was killed and another injured in two other incidents. Segger also ran into a cougar last year. "My dog and I were out flagging the MOMAR (Mind Over Mountain Adventure Racing) course in Squamish the day before the race, and we were pretty remote," Segger said. "I heard the cougar in the bush, the dog smelled it and, before I knew what was happening, the dog put the cougar up a tree and then came right back to my side. We just got out of there. I continued flagging but did it very fast and just kept looking over my shoulder. We never saw it again." Segger also encountered a grizzly during an adventure race she did with a team. "That was scary as it was nighttime. We instantly started making noise, made ourselves look big and grouped together. The grizzly bluff-charged us twice and then took off. We found out later that area had been closed to humans for seven years to regrow the grizzly population, and we were the first race that had gone through it. No wonder we had that experience." Both athletes believe potential wildlife encounters shouldn't scare runners off the trails - just into preparing themselves. "Being aware of your surroundings and being educated on how to deal with a situation is the best part of prevention. We choose to run, be or play in their homes, the wilderness, so chances are good that we might come across an animal, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all bears or cougars are going to attack," Segger said. Trail runners and national park safety wardens recommend carrying a handful of gear to help in the case of an incident: bear spray, bear bangers and a SPOT Satellite GPS, which you can program to send preset messages via satellite as you continue along your trail. Note that cellphones often don't have coverage in the places people like to trail run. Ted Cheskey, conservation ecologist at Nature Canada and an avid runner, has one key recommendation to safeguard against undesired interactions with bears and cougars: never run alone. About the Author "Final Impact: Wildlife Encounters" first appeared in the 2010 Mar/Apr Running Issue of IMPACT Magazine. |
