SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A hiker is recounting a harrowing face-to-face encounter with a mountain lion inside Mission Trails Regional Park, one of several sightings in the park over the last 5 weeks.<\/p>\n
Gabe Yanez was several hours into a hike on the Suycott Valley Trail in the central part of the park just before 7 p.m. two Thursdays ago when the experienced hiker, who was jogging down the trail, spotted the big cat in the brush about 5 feet off the trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreaked the heck out of me,\u201d Yanez said. \u201cI thought this was the end of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yanez said he immediately tried to make himself as threatening as possible.<\/p>\n
“I see it, and I put my arms up and roared!” Yanez said.<\/p>\n
He said the mountain lion kept low, ready to pounce, as he maintained eye contact with it.<\/p>\n
“Waving, yelling, screaming at it. At one point, it showed its teeth, and I ended up showing my teeth,” Yanez said.<\/p>\n
After a several-minutes-long standoff, the mountain lion backed off slightly.<\/p>\n
“Once it backed off enough, I started to move off to the side, and it was moving side to side with me, hiding behind bushes,” Yanez said.<\/p>\n
Yanez then took out his phone and photographed the animal. About 5 minutes after the encounter began, the mountain lion took off.<\/p>\n
Park Ranger Christian Navarro said Yanez handled the situation correctly.<\/p>\n
“Gabe sounds like he did exactly what he should have done, stood his ground,” Navarro said.<\/p>\n
Navarro said there have been several mountain lion sightings in the park since late June. Mountain lions are native to Mission Trails Regional Park.<\/p>\n
“We are monitoring it. We think it’s the same mountain lion. They are usually solitary animals. Their range is large,” Navarro said.<\/p>\n
Navarro said the mountain lion is believed to be a juvenile.<\/p>\n
Yanez said he is sharing his story to raise awareness for other park visitors who may cross the animal’s path.<\/p>\n
“Be aware. It can happen to you,” Yanez said.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A hiker is recounting a harrowing face-to-face encounter with a mountain lion inside Mission…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":981500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,65873,228825,1666,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-981499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-cougar","tag-mission-trails","tag-mountain-lion","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117040856757728849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/981500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}