Photo: Press
Taking to his Instagram account, Oliver described the incident, jokingly beginning his post by writing "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat", then clarifying that it was “a pretty heafty sized mountain lion”.
Oliver wrote that he was fortunate that he was not wearing headphones at the time, and that it “probably saved his life”.
Shortly after taking a photograph of a misty trail (which he also posted on Instagram), Oliver ascended into the clouds where “visibility was down to about 30ft”. Then, while he was meditating and counting his breath, he noticed a rusling sound over his left shoulder.
“I turned to look expecting to see a rabbit but out of the corner of my eye was a much larger mammal,” he wrote. “I thought to myself ‘that's a brave coyote’. As I fully turned around to view the creature I realized what it was. Jumping out of the thicket onto the trail about 25ft away the lion approached seeming disappointed I had heard it coming. It adopted a low profile as it moved toward me.”
“Now the first thing that came to mind was ‘aww beautiful cat like the ones in the zoo’ swiftly followed by a daunting realization of the danger I was in,” he continued. “I knew a little about what to do but couldn't remember all. I faced the creature and got as big as I could. I put my hatebreed voice to work and stood my ground. It hesitated. This seemed to be working. I backed up slowly darting looks, scanning my surroundings for a weapon.”
He then added that another fortunate factor was that the ground was covered with “decent size sticks” and “hand sized rocks”, so he proceeded to grab a large stick and “swung it around violently”.
“The lion came at me as I bent down but halted again as I swung the stick,” he wrote. “I snapped the end of the brittle stick which formed a sharp point, I felt enabled and a little more confident with a weapon. Made the mistake of trying for the offensive but the cat just echoed my movements. We kept a distance of about 30 feet and I decided to fight back with rocks.”
“The third fortunate thing was that my adrenaline allowed for a good accurate throw, and most rocks came within inches of the cat. At first it seemed confused but each rock bought me a few feet........
