Originally Posted by
Prada
This happened to me two weeks ago...Solo trip from Unicoi to Dicks Creek Gap.
I just had lunch and I started coming down from Powell Mountain. I had come to an area that was a nice flat run. I was even able to look around a little while I walked because the trail was nice and clear, a softly winding dirt path. I was looking down to my left side, admiring a beautiful flat, grassy area that someone had recently used to camp when I heard it.
On the mountain next to me, at about my same elevation, came an extremely loud, horrid rumbling gutteral noise, like an alligator but deeper and more masculine...almost oozing with testosterone (if you can imagine that). It was a powerful noise with it's strength almost vibrating my very insides and making every hair on my neck and arms stand on end. I froze in my tracks, not even breathing, and stared intently in the direction of the noise, waiting to see or hear any possible movement. Then, to my left, just around the ridge, came a noise very much like the first, but it sounded feminine????
There are NO ALLIGATORS in the mountains, and there sure aren't male and female sounding ones for sure. What the heck were those things? I don't know. I didn't hear them again. I stood there for several minutes, wishing my camera wasn't deep in my pack. I really hoped I wouldn't regret it being inaccessible! But nothing else happened and I saw nothing of interest relating to these noises. It actually was strangely silent on the trail after that. Not even birds. It was strange in a way I can not begin to explain. I wasn't the least bit afraid. That was even stranger.
This reminds me of an encounter I had in Maine.
When I was 16 I did a SOBO thru-hike of Maine starting June/July ‘81. This encounter happened on the first day of the hike, we (father, uncle & me) were going up Katahdin from the north to Knife-edge, starting from Roaring Brook Campground, going up the Helon Taylor trail (IIRC).
I’m not sure how long into the hike we were, but I know we were still a good way from tree-line, in the dense foliage. All I remember was hearing this deep sounding roar, sort of like hearing an African lion in the zoo. It caused us all to stop dead in our tracks. Never saw anything, but heard some rustling in the brush and a second growl, then it was gone. It was scary as hell, now when I hear the term, "freeze in your tracks" I think of that moment. I was – we all were – stopped in our tracks with great concern for whatever that was.
At the time we just assumed it was a black bear. However, now I'm not too sure. I’ve read a lot about bears and the sound they make and from what I gather they don’t make the sound we heard, at best they make a weak roar/growl, this was no weak roar/growl, it was a very powerful roar. I’ve heard recordings of mountain lions and this was no mountain lion, too deep of a sound, that’s why I say it reminds me more of an African lion, but not quite.
I even saw a video of two male bears fighting (I think it was on Bear.org) and they were making weird sounds, but nothing coming close to the sound of a roar, much less the roaring sound we heard that day.