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A woman killed while she was hiking alone in the mountains of northern Colorado on Thursday is likely the first fatal attack by a mountain lion in the state in more than 25 years, authorities said.
Wildlife officers later in the day shot two mountain lions in the area, said Kara Van Hoose with Colorado Parks and Wildlife
The attack occurred in the mountains south of the community of Glen Haven, about 7 miles northeast of Estes Park, the town considered the gateway to the eastern entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Shortly before noon, two hikers encountered a mountain lion near the woman’s body along a remote section of the Crosier Mountain trail, which is on a national forest.
The hikers threw rocks at the animal to scare it from the immediate area so they could try to help the woman, Van Hoose said. One of the hikers is a physician who attended to the victim but did not find a pulse, she said.
Details about the woman’s injuries and cause of death were not immediately released.
Wildlife officials later tracked down and killed two mountain lions in the area – one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will determine if either or both of those animals attacked the woman.
A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was ongoing Friday, Van Hoose said. Trails in the area remained closed while the hunt for the animal continued. She said circumstances would dictate whether that lion also is killed.
Sightings of mountain lions are common in the forested area where the suspected attack occurred, but there have not been any recent documented attacks on humans, Van Hoose said.
“This is a very common time of year to take mountain lion sightings and reports and especially in Larimer County, where this is very good mountain lion habitat,” she said. “Trails in this area are in pretty remote land, so it’s wooded, it’s rocky, there’s elevation gains and dips.”
Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the gleam of two eyes in the nearby brush. He pulled out his phone and snapped a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.
Messina said he threw his phone at the animal, kicked dirt and yelled as the lion kept trying to circle behind him. After a couple of harrowing minutes, he broke a bat-sized stick off a downed log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran off, he said.
“I had to fight it off because it was basically trying to maul me,” Messina told The Associated Press. “I was scared for my life and I wasn’t able to escape. I tried backing up and it would try to lunge at me.”
The 32-year-old man from nearby Glen Haven, reported his encounter days later to wildlife officials, who posted signs to warn people about the animal along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. Those signs were later removed.
Mountain lion attacks are rare and Colorado’s last suspected fatal attack was in 1999, when a 3-year-old was killed. Two years before that, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Last year in Northern California, two brothers were stalked and then attacked by a lion that they tried to fight off. One of the men was killed.
The animals, also known as cougars, can weigh 130 pounds and grow to more than 6 feet long. They eat primarily deer.
Colorado has an estimated 3,800 to 4,400 mountain lions, which are classified as a big game species in the state and can be hunted.
