travel and rhum

We’re going on a two day backpacking trip. Nothing crazy: about 13 miles for each day, with less than 3500 feet elevation. One buddy (the tallest and largest) is concerned about bringing enough food. This person is about 6 foot 2.8 and ways maybe 252 pounds or so. I’m guessing 4000 Cal for the day should be ample, no? They want to bring over 3000 Cal just for 1 evening meal, which is over the top imo. This person doesn’t have hiking experience and doesn’t seem to realise you have breakfast, lunch and as many snacks as you want throughout the day… If they bring two 600 Cal dried meals for dinner, that should be just fine, no? (Right now they’re thinking 4 bag meals and 2 bag desserts for one dinner, which made me lol)

Edit: we’re talking a light backpack, no long climbs and 4x 600 Cal meals and 2x 300 Cal desserts = 3000 Cal in freeze-dried meals for dinner. I’d like to suggest 2x 600 Cal meals for dinner and bring some chocolate or something for dessert.

I’m very interested in getting into long distant hiking. Starting at even a night, working to a week and becoming comfortable enough to go for as long as I possible. However I know nothing about gear and the little tips and tricks. I understand most of you are probably bored of people asking so perhaps there is already a thread or a channel you could direct me to to start me off. Thanks!

Sorry if formatting sucks, I tried but I’m on mobile

The advice you see from the Forest Service or NPS is to stand your ground until you’re sure the mountain lion has left the area, tonight I unfortunately learned that advice is really only useful when it’s daytime.

I’m still not sure if this was the right reaction, but hey, we’re alive.

My boyfriend and I just finished a two day one night backpacking trip and hiking out took (a lot) longer than anticipated and we ending up having to hike the last 4 miles in the dark. A mile in to night hiking, I spotlight a pair of greenish yellow eyes with my headlamp and my heart stopped. I directed my boyfriends attention to it (it was maybe 100-200 yards away) and then started shouting at it, but it just stared at me. So I let out a deep, guttural scream telling it to go away and it finally got up and left, seemingly away from the direction we were going. But really we had no way of telling how far away it went. Our only choice was to keep moving forward.

  At this point we have 90 minutes left of hiking and I have no intention of stopping or letting my guard down. I’m shining my headlamp on our surroundings more than the actual trail. An hour later, I see our friend again. I let out that deep guttural scream again and that seemed to scare him off, but now I’m terrified because I realize we are actively being stalked. We don’t see the mountain lion again but I did let out that scream a few more times at random intervals just in case he’s still around but out of range from my headlamp.

Guys, I’ve never felt so terrified and helpless in my life. I know that we were very close to being attacked. I don’t know what else we could’ve done. So Reddit, do you have any advice for encountering a mountain lion at night, aside from screaming at it?

P.s I plan on calling the ranger station tomorrow to report the encounter and ask the same question but figured I’d post it here too.