I have yet to meet a cougar along the trail, but have often seen their tracks and scat. As hikers love to tell each other, cougars are shy and therefore rarely seen by humans, but they're also curious cats so if you hike a lot you can bet your ass they will have seen you many times!

In the early days of Rainier National Park, cougars were referred to as varmints and hunted by rangers, on the grounds that they depleted the deer and elk population, and visitors liked to see deer or elk.

They are large cats (the fourth largest cat species worldwide), although not a true big cat as they are unable to roar. Their range spans all the way from the Yukon to Patagonia, and they have correspondingly many names: cougar, mountain lion, puma, panther, catamount.

They are solitary and adaptable generalists, primarily hunting by ambush and preferring to prey on large mammals such as deer.