It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t until the sixth article in this series that I decided to write about perhaps the scariest predator — at least in the United States, where we don’t have to worry about hippopotamus attacks. However, a story from New Year’s Day has prevented me from putting it off any longer. Whether you call it a mountain lion, puma, or cougar, the animal known as the “Silent Killer” appears to have taken the life of a female hiker in Colorado on the first day of 2026. CNN reports:
A woman was found dead Thursday on a hiking trail in northern Colorado, in what authorities believe to be a rare fatal mountain lion attack.
Hikers on the Crosier Mountain trail in Larimer County spotted a mountain lion near a person lying on the ground around 12:15 p.m., according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
The hikers drove the animal away by throwing rocks before finding the victim had no pulse.
“Mountain lion attacks in Colorado are considered to be very rare,” CPW spokesperson Kara Van Hoose said at a news conference. While 28 previous attacks have been reported to CPW since 1990, the last fatal attack was in 1999, the agency said.
While it is certainly reassuring for those of us who take the occasional hike to learn how unlikely such attacks are, even nonfatal encounters with the animal are experiences no one would want to endure. In fact, we learn from the Coloradoan that there had been reports of run-ins with mountain lions in the area before the New Year’s attack:
Just months before a woman died from a suspected mountain lion attack on a hiking trail Jan. 1 near Glen Haven, Edward Settle saw a startling live video on his home security camera of a woman pleading for help.
Settle, who lives in Loveland but has a second home near Glen Haven, told the Coloradoan he happened to be watching his Blink camera Oct. 29 when he saw a woman walk past his camera with a dog. Minutes later she came running past the camera and Settle could hear the person say, "I need help," on her cell phone.
Knowing there is scant cell phone coverage in the area, Settle, who was in Loveland at the time, called his Glen Haven neighbor to help the woman. Settle said the help came too late, as a mountain lion grabbed the woman's dog and was gone.
"The lion came right up to her while she was walking her dog and grabbed it by the neck," Settle said. "She picked up some rocks and sticks to throw at it but it took off. We were able to find her dog's remains the next day."
It’s believed that the woman whose body was found on New Year’s was hiking alone, which increases the risk of being attacked. Too many people seem unaware of this, or choose to ignore it — like the woman I mentioned in my piece on “5 Harrowing Wildlife Encounters in 2025,” who was followed by a mountain lion on a hiking trail in Southern California.
That encounter was fortunately very brief, with the cougar quickly disappearing behind a bush. By contrast, in perhaps one of the scariest encounters you can find online, a man jogging alone in Utah recorded his six-minute encounter with a cougar on a hiking trail in 2020:
In this case, it was a mother lion protecting her cubs, a situation we've learned more than once in this "Predator Watch" series is always best to avoid. She only turned and ran away when the jogger, Kyle Burgess, threw a rock at her. Burgess did everything correctly during the encounter, making a lot of noise and not turning his back on the animal.
Related: Predator Watch: 'Bambi Will Mess You Up'
What makes this predator so terrifying, however, is that it can be stalking you without your knowledge. Hence the saying: “If you see a mountain lion, it’s not hunting you.” This video explains, pithily and chillingly, how this animal hunts: “Cougars are solitary ambush predators. Hunting techniques. 1. Stealth stalking. Moves silently using terrain for cover. 2. Powerful leap. Can jump over six meters, 20 feet. 3. Neck bite. Kills prey by biting neck or skull.”
One activity that can sometimes trigger a predatory response from a mountain lion is cycling. In 2018, a cyclist was killed and another injured by a mountain lion near Seattle, Wash. According to CNN:
Generally, desperately hungry cougars might attack livestock, sheep or cows rather than humans. But this cougar may have reacted to the humans because of its natural instincts, or what [wildlife expert Jeff] Corwin called the “yarn ball response.”
“Cougars are ambush predators,” he said. “These guys go flashing by on their bikes at an extreme speed, maybe 20 miles an hour. This animal goes into predatory mode; it’s willing to take that risk; it goes for low-hanging fruit."
We can see that predatory response in action in a video taken by two bikers in Orange County, Calif., last year:
At least they didn’t have to fight for their lives like one biker did in Mission Viejo, Calif., in 2004. Anne never saw it coming:Suddenly, I felt something grab a hold of me. It felt like I just got hit by a bus. I couldn’t believe how hard I hit the ground.I realized then that the animal actually had a hold of me. The claws were dug into my shoulders and the fangs were dug into the back of my neck and I realized there’s only one animal out there that could do something like this, and that’s a mountain lion.
Her friend unsuccessfully threw her bike at the mountain lion, which proceeded to carry Anne, dragging her down the trail. The animal kept readjusting its grip from the back of her head to the side of her neck. Eventually, Anne's ear was separated from her skull. Then, she could feel her “entire cheek tear away. … He had just ripped my face off and for that split second I told myself I didn’t want to live.” The story of how she survived is amazing:
Other mountain bikers heard Anne's friend screaming and rushed to the scene, hurling rocks at the mountain lion — just as the hikers did on New Year's Day in Colorado. Unfortunately, in the latter case, it was already too late.
Have you ever seen a mountain lion? Share your story in the comments.
