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On (Inadvertently) Chasing Mountain Lions

Originally posted on Powder | By Jack O'Brien | Last updated Mar 24, 2026 9:43 AM ET

It had been the better part of a week since I had enjoyed my escape, a predawn resort tour at my home mountain.

I usually didn’t let more than two days pass without taking to the still closed and darkened resort with skis, climbing skins, and a headlamp for my snowy two-thousand vertical foot jaunt before daybreak. Other priorities had intervened, but there I was again, ascending a mountain under silent, still chairlifts and a starry sky yet to see sunrise. All to ski just one run. It was my typical solitary endeavor; an hour to myself and my thoughts. But though I never saw them, that morning, I wasn’t alone.

To the uninitiated, ascending a ski area alone in the predawn hourscan perhaps seem strange. Why would someone choose to leave the warm comforts of bed for a dark, cold, human-powered ascent of a closed resort, a place that has chairlifts, for goodness sake? But for many of us skiers, the resort tour offers a convenient oasis for exercise, excitement, even catharsis.

Sequestered from the true backcountry, where route finding and avalanche danger present unique challenges that are part of the essence of wild skiing, this version offers a novel experience shielded from those dangers. It’s perhaps not quite the real thing, but it offers a taste of the wild that the open resort doesn’t quite grant.

That morning, I climbed upward, striding in step over a soft, even plane of resort snow on ski runs I more often descended, but who over the years had become well-known to me in their uphill form. I knew the slight rollovers and small bends, the trees that lined the runs, and the vistas of town they relinquished when clear views came to.

But climbing over a small rise, the familiar slope and terrain was interrupted by a long and deep set of tracks. Cast perfectly in the soft snow, four toes were joined by a lobed heel pad that together looked oddly like my housecat’s prints. Only they were as wide as my own hand.

Mountain lion? I thought. The soft, disturbed snow around the tracks spoke to their freshness. They led uphill, but into the trees, away from where I was headed. I smiled at the small thrill and continued my workout.

Mountain Lions in the mountains of Montana, United States (Photo by: Dennis Fast / VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Dennis Fast / VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Often, it seems that training and exercise are mutually exclusive with adventure.

While fitness certainty begets experience at a certain point, the two typically reside in separate spheres. Rigid training ideals are better tailored to digital heart rate apps, even the confines of an indoor gym, than they are to the unknown of a new mountain or a thrilling jaunt down the path less traveled.

And unfortunately, resort touring quite often resides in the former category. No matter how beautiful the serene darkness may be, often my entreaties of Good morning! uttered to fellow tourers is met with muted fanfare, if any response at all. We’re all busy trying to get it all in, after all.

But occasionally the pattern is broken, and god bless it that it is. Where a morning pleasantry isn’t always returned, it sometimes is manyfold. On a previous predawn tour, I did my due diligence, calling out a hello to a fellow I was passing on our ascent, who acknowledged in the warmest of tones. "Good morning, brother!" Something that filled my cup more than he could have known.

And that morning, the circle was broken anew, and in a beautiful way. Continuing my climb, creeping ever closer to my goal, I was greeted again with the long trail of unmistakable tracks–fresher than the last–across my path.

Juxtaposed to the manicured lines of the corduroy snow they were imprinted upon were again these prints; wild and huge, a sign of primordial power. My heart raced. And not only could I not see my feline companion, the other snowcats—the mechanical variety—were nowhere to be seen.

Where I would often pass by them as they prepared the slopes for the day’s paying customers, that morning I was utterly alone. My familiar mountain experience–one typically sanitized, even droning–became something more lively; more primal. Even frightening. I revelled in it.

Lisa Ducret/picture alliance via Getty Images

It all had the purity of child-like wonder, that blend of fear and anticipation; the kind that makes a haunted house exciting or the kiss from a new lover’s lips tingle with anticipation.

It’s not any conquest or rote achievement, but experience, perhaps adventure, in its purest sense.

I descended that morning in the usual way—headlamp lighting a specific path down the groomed slope, back to my car.

But the simple mark of a wild animal, and that certain feeling its invisibility granted, made for a morning I wouldn’t have had in any other way; a serendipity I was lucky to find, inadvertently chasing mountain lions.

About The Last Chair Column

This article was written by POWDER writer Jack O’Brien for his bi-weekly ‘Last Chair’ column. Click below to read the previous column, ‘SkiMo Was Boring To Watch at The Olympics‘.

This article first appeared on Powder and was syndicated with permission.

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