A hiker captured her scary encounter with a mountain lion in Ojai on video.
On July 3, Cortney Rasura was hiking the Gridley Trail in Ojai, something she said she’s done for the last 15 years.
“I was 6 miles into my hike, and I had 2 miles to go,” she told KNX News. “I was going down the trail, and I had cell service. I was checking my emails, checking my texts.”
When she glanced up, she saw a mountain lion headed in her direction.
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“I did the typical, probably double-take, like, ‘OK, that's really what I think it is,’” she said. “I've never seen one in all my years of hiking. Here we go, like. It's very rare, but maybe it was bound to happen at some point.”
Rasura said she decided to capture the encounter.
“I also didn't feel like I was in imminent danger,” she said. “I felt it wasn't lunging toward me. It wasn't running toward me. It was just walking up the trail, just like it was going one way, I was going the other, which just happened upon each other.
As Rasua filmed the mountain lion, she watched as it went into the brush.
“I was kind of relieved and then it came back out of the brush and it started walking toward me,” she said. “I was kind of freaking out at that point, because I've seen bears and they run off when you yell at them. So this one was just sauntering up the trail.”
She said she picked up her phone again and yelled at the mountain lion again. The mountain lion then went back into the brush and Rasura made her escape.
She said she ran into a mountain biker and told them of what she saw. She added that in the future, she plans to carry both bear spray and an air horn just in case.
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