Mountain Lion Hike
March 28, 2026
There are still places in Northern Colorado where the land remembers what it was before engines, fences, and hoofbeats rearranged the story. Places without ATV tracks scribbled across the ridgelines, without 4WD roads clawing into the timber, without livestock pressing the wild flat. In these pockets of true wild country, wildlife behaves as wildlife should—unguarded, unpatterned by us, fully itself. This is where we’re going.
Our Mountain Lion Hike steps into that rare trifecta: wild land, wild lions, wild behavior. The kind of landscape where a lion can move like a mist through timber and stone, unseen yet ever-present. We will be reading a living manuscript written in snow, sand, or soft dirt—whatever substrate Mother Nature offers us that day. Each track is a sentence.
We’ll search not only for tracks, but for scrapes—those deliberate, often misunderstood messages lions leave behind. When we find them, we’ll lean in close and ask why. Was it a territorial boundary? A communication to a mate? A declaration of dominance? A signpost in a travel corridor? Typically, there are four core reasons a lion disturbs the earth in this way, and understanding them opens a window into a social world most people never realize exists. And we’ll look for scat as well.
Mountain lions hunt and navigate very differently than our other common Colorado carnivores. They are masters of contour, of shadow, of patience. Where a coyote may trot a road and a bear may lumber through a drainage, a lion threads terrain with intention—using slope, cover, and silence as tools. Tracking them is about finding connection: predator to prey, terrain and plant communities to movement.
This is an opportunity to experience WILD—not the curated version, but the real thing. To witness the ripple effect of an apex predator, and more importantly, a keystone species whose presence shapes everything from wild ungulate behavior to vegetation patterns. When you begin to see the landscape through the lens of the mountain lion, the entire ecosystem rearranges itself before your eyes.
Space is intentionally limited to seven mountain lion enthusiasts. Small enough to move quietly. Small enough to listen. Small enough to feel the pulse of a landscape that still beats to its own rhythm.
A female mountain lion is circling back to a mule deer carcass she buried to feed on with her kittens.
What: Mountain Lion Hike
Where: Northwest of Fort Collins (details will be sent to participants)
We will meet at Me Oh My Coffee and Pie in Laporte, Colorado at 7:15 am, 3310 WCR 54G, Laporte CO 80535
When: Saturday, March 28, 7:15 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Cost: $220 per participant
Please pay via the PayPal link below.
The Hike Includes:
learning where to find mountain lion tracks, scrapes and scat
air currents and how they decide wildlife movement for many mammals
learning how mountain lions hunt and navigate across their territories
why mountain lions are elusive and yet predictable
how mountain lions are different from other predators
being safe in mountain lion country
learning how to maximize your chances of seeing wildlife and wildlife activity
being prepared to deal with backcountry emergencies
setting up remote cameras to film wildlife successfully
Female mountain lion is spooked by her kitten as it comes around the tree in the upper right of the image. The adult female lion was investigating who had visited the mule deer carcass that had been buried by snow.
WHAT TO BRING
layered clothing
decent footwear for hiking (closed toe footwear)
snacks and lunch
at least two liters of water
camera (cell phone is plenty)
a sauntering spirit
Mountain lions tracks from the Mountain Lion Tracking hike on January 10, 2026. We followed the tracks for 1.5 miles, up a mountain side, through a saddle and down into a steep draw where the lion was most likely headed to get water.