Face to Face With A Mountain Lion: 9 Lessons About Risk-Taking I Learned in the Nevada Wilderness

Fellow Riskologist,

As a mountain climber, I  like to make cheesy metaphors like “We’re all climbing our own mountains” or “Summiting life’s peaks takes daily effort.”

Somehow, it all broke down as I tried to come up with clever wordplay to relate staring down a mountain lion miles out in the backcountry to everyday risk-taking. Perhaps you can come up with your own. All I have is:

It is ****ing scary to come face to face with a mountain lion.

***

Greetings from Fallon, Nevada—a small, rural town where I’m visiting a few friends and resting after a weekend hiking in the Ruby Mountains.

I headed out into the wilderness with my friend, Brian,  to scout for deer in his favorite hunting spot. I’m not a hunter, and we weren’t hunting on this trip, but it was a great opportunity to learn about the sport—something I’ve never truly understood or had much of an appreciation for.

The trip was a major success. Not just for Brian as a hunter, but for me as well.

Most people would not think of heading out into the bush in Nevada in the dead of summer as the best of times, but these are the types of trips that often spark the most creativity in me.

They challenge me the most, forcing me to think about my work and my life in different ways and helping me overcome challenges I can’t see from inside my usual routine.

If you read nothing more of this article, at least read this: getting outside of your daily routine and challenging yourself in new ways will unlock all kinds of potential in yourself and help you become a better risk-taker in your every day life.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to challenge yourself in new ways in order to improve your ability to take smart risks.

In many ways, though, this trip was a series of misadventures. Most new challenges are. And as we made the 300 mile journey back to town after an exhausting but excellent weekend in the wilderness, I couldn’t help but think about some of the lessons this trip’s successes and challenges underscored for me.

Here are the 9 lessons about risk-taking I learned in the Nevada Wilderness.

1. Preparation is everything.

Your comfort in the wilderness (and life in general) will depend a lot on your preparation. In most cases, forgetting something is not the end of the world—you simply adapt and move forward. But, when you’re miles from another person and hundreds of miles from any kind of emergency services, forgetting something important can put you in a lot of peril. Of course, the prescribed solution is still the same: adapt and move forward.

On this trip, I underestimated how cold it would be at night, bringing a sleeping bag not equipped for the cool weather. With 104 degree temperatures during the day, I didn’t expect lows all the way down into the 30s.

Luckily, there was a simple fix: wear more clothes to bed.

I also committed a sin unforgivable by any true outdoorsman: I forgot to bring my knife. Since I was traveling with a friend, I had to borrow his—highly embarrassing.

I got away with these flubs on this trip because we were never that far away from safety. But they could have caused me serious trouble on other, more demanding outings or if something went really wrong.

Preparation—whether you’re in the wilderness or working on any other risk—can make or break the whole thing. I have a standard checklist I use every time I travel, but I have to actually look at it for it to do much good!

2. 99% of all modern conveniences are unnecessary.

It’s important to prepare for any risk, but it’s also just as important to not over-prepare.

We’ve all seen it—a family out camping that’s brought along everything but the kitchen sink (but often the kitchen sink as well!). They have gadgets and appliances and generators to run them. It looks neat, but then you notice all they’re doing is running around maintaining their stuff while you sit back and drink a beer or do something else more productive.

I’m a fan of good technology, but it’s important to know where the line is between something useful and something that weighs you down and is more trouble than it’s worth.

On this trip into the Nevada Wilderness, we started out pretty light to begin with. By the end of the weekend, we had shed even more weight—extra food, unnecessary clothes, a bottle of wine, and other comfort items that detracted from our end goal: to cover as much ground as possible to scout out deer for an upcoming hunt.

What risks are you taking now, and where have you over-prepared? Take a second to let go of anything that’s holding you back from succeeding as quickly as you could.

When the things you keep around for comfort end up dragging you down instead, it’s time to reevaluate.

3. A gun can can be a useful tool.

I am not much of a fan of guns, but this weekend was one time in my life I realized how important it can be to have one.

On the last day of our scouting trip, Brian and I were sitting on a rock outcropping, scanning the canyon hillsides for deer. It was hot, and there was no one around, so I was hanging out in my underwear (Yep, super sexy).

Just when we were convinced we weren’t going to see anything interesting, out of a patch of manzanita trees 200 yards from us hops none other than a mountain lion. She was enormous, sleek, and muscular. Truly majestic. Also, truly frightening.

As I put the scope on her to take a closer look, she hopped down from a rock and looked right at us. She could have been ripping out my throat and having a nice Tyler appetizer 20 seconds later if she wanted to.

I’ve never felt so vulnerable and, for the first time I can remember, I wished I’d been carrying a gun. It would have been my only chance for survival if there’d been a confrontation.

Fortunately, there was no need for it. We made it down without a problem. But for a few hours as we made our way off the mountain, my heart was beating out of my chest and I really wished we hadn’t left the pistol in the truck.

4. Knowing when to call it quits is a very useful skill.

The mountain lion story above was the end of our scouting trip. When you see one so close in the wild and you’re completely unequipped to deal with it, it’s time to go home.

Q: What’s the likelihood of seeing a mountain lion in the wild?
A: Extremely low.

Q: What are the odds a mountain lion would attack two humans unprovoked?
A: Even lower.

Despite the low odds of having a problem, our decision to abandon camp was the right one. We’d achieved what we set out to do—scout the mountain for deer for an upcoming hunt—and any further time spent there would have been solely for our own enjoyment.

The goal was met, but it would have been hard to relax or enjoy ourselves knowing a mountain lion was watching us all night from just a few hundred feet away.

So, we did what was most enjoyable for us in that moment: retreat to the trailhead where we could breathe easy.

When you’re doing something big, it’s important to understand the likelihood of things going wrong. If the odds are extremely low, no need to change course. But if you’ve already achieved what you set out to do, why risk it all for something small that doesn’t matter?

Know how to adjust your decisions based on changing variables. It’ll save you every time.

5. Don’t own things you can’t fix yourself or live without.

On our journey back to town after coming down from the mountain, one of the bearings on our truck decided to take a crap 200 miles away from home.. at night…on a Saturday. Our options were:

1. Call a tow company and pay for a tow. Cost: $1,000
2. Hang out in rural Nevada until Monday and hope a local mechanic could take care of us on the same day (unlikely). Cost: $1,000 for mechanic, extra food, and lodging.
3. Walk to the auto parts store, buy a new hub, and fix it ourselves. Cost: $200 for parts and one night lodging.

We chose option #3.

Neither of us are mechanics, but we are problem solvers, we try to understand how the things we own work, and we aren’t afraid to get a little dirty when something breaks.

I have a lot more to say about this, but one philosophy I live by that has always served me well is this:

Do not own things you cannot fix yourself or live without.

If you’re going to head out into the woods, don’t plan to find your way in and out with a GPS device. Or, if you do, it had better only be a convenience that allows you to set aside your ability to navigate by yourself with a map and a compass.

For all the amazing things that technology can bring to your life, it can also fail you when you need it the most. In those moments, you’d better be able to either fix it or fall back on your own brainpower and brawn.

Any other solution will be incredibly expensive. I call it the “lazy tax.”

6. Life is better when you avoid the crowd.

On our way up the mountain, we thought it would be fun to take the horse trail up to camp and not the designated foot path. It turned out to be a great idea. There was absolutely no crowd (on a Friday!), and it was a quick and easy route up.

On the way down, we took the foot path. It was a horrible idea. There were people everywhere slowing us down, and the path was nearly twice as long. We baked in the sun trying to get down, and the extra distance tired us out and made us late to our next trailhead.

Whether in the wilderness or in the middle of the city, you’ll always do better by avoiding what’s popular.

Popular = long waits, lost time, excess expense

Unpopular = quick, efficient, and full of opportunity

Once something is popular, most of its opportunity has been discovered and exploited. To keep ahead in life, spend more time doing your own discovery and avoiding what’s already been discovered for you.

7. You’ll never regret being in great shape.

On this trip, we hiked close to 15 miles with full packs at high altitude in intense heat and difficult terrain in a short period of time. Thanks to all my running and climbing, I’m in pretty good shape, but I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t have been in even better condition.

Between the two of us, I was  the one slowing us down. I’m glad I was in good enough shape to keep us on a steady clip, but if I hadn’t been training for other things all this time, it would have been a miserable outing for me.

Being in great physical shape is something that’s valuable in many more ways than just the activity you train for. Almost every day I discover something that would have been a lot more difficult for me if I didn’t exercise regularly.

Running, jumping, and lifting things is more than just a workout routine; it’s practical training for practical life challenges. Being a Smart Riskologist means more than just having a sharp mind. A fit body—ready for unexpected challenges—is also required.

8. A temporary change of environment can fix so many things.

Heading out into the wilderness—away from the hustle of everyday life, my normal routine, and technology that keeps me hyper-connected to the world around me—gave me a lot of time and space to sit and think critically about my life. I was able to find solutions for lots of challenges I’m facing and come up with new ideas and plans for my life and my work.

This doesn’t happen only when I’m out in the wilderness; it happens any time I break my routine and get away from my normal environment.

Every day, we all feel the pressure to get more and more done. There’s a never-ending list of tasks to finish, and the idea of getting away from it all seems impossible. Who has time to set aside their responsibilities for even a minute?

If you’re so stressed out and busy that you don’t have time to get away for a bit, let me tell you: You don’t have time not to get away.

Changing your environment is one of the fastest ways to solve big problems in your life and generate new ideas. A change of scenery has a way of taking you out of your routine and letting you look at your life from a new perspective.

Schedule time regularly to get away from the everyday routine, or risk getting stuck in a rut with no way out.

9. Reaching your destination is only half of the trip.

Anyone who’s climbed a mountain know the destination is not, in fact, the summit. It’s the trailhead where you began. If you make it to the summit, but don’t make it back to the trailhead, you’ve done something terribly wrong.

On this trip into the Nevada Wilderness, nothing underscored that principle for me like locking eyes with a mountain lion miles from safety.

We had a few objectives when we set out on the trail, and we accomplished them all. But the journey wasn’t truly over until we made a safe return. This was especially true for Brian, who has a wife and two children to support.

Whatever big risks you may be taking in your life now, take a good look at them and ask yourself:

What’s the real destination? How do you know when you’ve succeeded?”

Taking smart risks is a way of life, but each risk we take is really just a means to an end. We’re trying to accomplish something for ourselves.

If you focus on the action itself without ever thinking about why you’re doing it, you’ve already failed.

What are you really trying to accomplish, and what measuring stick do you need to use to gauge success?

Yours in risk-taking,

Founder, Riskology.co