Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear City, CA — Residents in Big Bear’s Whispering Forest neighborhood aren’t the only ones to have had an encounter with a mountain lion in recent days. On Tuesday morning, May 4, a Running Springs woman was jogging alone in the San Bernardino National Forest, just north of Lake Arrowhead, and was followed by a mountain lion. According to Jason Ardenski, an Off-Highway Vehicle Patrol Leader with the San Bernardino National Forest Association, he and two fellow volunteers were just east of the Pinnacles OHV staging area on Forest Road 3N34 in the 10am hour—it was then, he tells KBHR, “We heard someone screaming. It was such an intense scream that we knew it was for real, and not someone screwing around. So, we immediately got on the line with dispatch.” While personnel from the California Department of Fish and Game and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department made their way to the area, Ardenski and the OHV team made announcements over their PA and started hiking a mile or so toward Forest Road 2N31. Meanwhile, an employee at the Willow Creek Treatment Plant, off Alberta Lane and Manitoba Drive in the Lake Arrowhead area, also heard screams when the pumps at the plant were turned off; the employee drove his truck until he saw the woman, who had scrambled up a tree to get away from the mountain lion. The animal fled the area upon arrival of the truck, just as the OHV team was also approaching the area. The female jogger escaped injury, according to San Bernardino County Sheriff’s headquarters, though she did have cuts and bruises from climbing the tree—and, the jogger told Ardenski, hearing him over the PA while she was in the tree with the mountain lion clawing at limbs, gave her hope. According to Harry Morse with the Department of Fish and Game, they do not believe that this is the same animal that attacked a small dog in Big Bear City last Friday. In fact, the juvenile mountain lion in our area was seen in the Whispering Forest neighborhood again last night (May 4) and is still being tracked by County officials. As noted in our mountain lion story earlier in the week, DFG’s wildlife biologist Jeff Villepique reminds residents that Big Bear does border the forest, home to mountain lions, black bears and coyotes. Parents are reminded to supervise small children, while pets should be brought indoors at night and, to reiterate his words, “Jogging alone at dawn or dusk is not a good idea.”
