A Utah man used his handy snowboard to protect himself after being attacked by a mountain lion on a snowy slope.
Charlie Duffy posted on Instagram on Sunday, February 4th, about his near-death experience at a ski resort in Beaver Mountain, Utah.
Duffy told a local station: KSL-TVAs he was walking, he noticed new footprints and said he immediately felt “nervous.”
“Within half the time, I started seeing some new footprints,” Duffy said. “And that irritated me. I’m conscious of my surroundings, constantly looking around.”
After a while, the snowboarder said he looked up and noticed a mountain lion nearby.
“I looked over my left shoulder and saw a mountain lion five or six feet behind me and about three or four feet above me,” he told local media.
In a social media post, Duffy said the mountain lion appeared to be “preparing to pounce.”
The young man acted quickly and swung his snowboard “with all his might” at the mountain lion as it lunged at him.
“My fight response was immediate, I grabbed the board with my right hand and swung as hard as I could at the jumping mountain lion,” he wrote on Instagram.
Duffy said the big cat “barely” grazed his neck, knocking his handy snowboard to the ground.
He says his encounter with death isn’t over yet, and the mountain lion stands up and starts stumbling towards him.
Duffy wrote that she noticed the cat was “starved to death” and injured from the impact of the snowboard.
“I kept pushing it back and eventually it got disoriented and drove off,” Duffy wrote. “I was lucky to be here today and only had a few small scratches from the cat.”
A photo posted on Instagram showed Duffy’s torn jacket after being attacked by a mountain lion.
After sharing Duffy’s story on Instagram, snowboarding brands Nitro and 686 promised to send Duffy new snowboarding gear.
“Insane! We have to send a new board!!! I’m glad you’re okay,” Nitro Snowboards commented.
“Insane. I’ll fix it,” 686 wrote.
