Something out in the darkness was staring at them.
Nick Burson and Marc McPherson were on their way down from the summit of Mount Jefferson, a 10,502-foot volcano in the Oregon portion of the Cascade Range. It was late, sometime between 10 and 11 p.m. When they moved off trail to get around a downed tree, led by their headlamps, they spotted a set of glowing eyes, maybe 50 yards away.
"My first thought was it was probably not a deer," Burson said. "You could just kind of tell by the way it looked at us."
Whatever it was, they wanted it to leave. Burson yelled and threw rocks at the mystery creature. It didn't budge.
The standoff continued like that for a few minutes. Then, as the two climbers started moving again, the animal jumped on a log, and they were able to make out its silhouette against the night sky.
A cougar.
"I'm not sure if it was interested in us or just curious," Burson said. "But it definitely wasn't scared."
Burson growled at it, threw more rocks. Nothing worked. They worked their way back up to the trail and started walking, mindful that the cougar was tracking their every step.
About 4 miles separated the pair from their truck. For the next half-hour or so, they saw the cougar when they looked off trail. They heard it snapping twigs. It was walking with them.
After a half-hour or so, they stopped seeing it. They assume it peeled off, content with giving them a scare and nothing more.
When they got back to the trailhead, they knew they had a story to tell.
They also knew they had another mountain to climb in the morning.
Climbing partners
That encounter came midway through an 11-day mission to summit every volcano in the Cascade Range taller than 10,000 feet, an undertaking that covered 12 peaks in three states. Jefferson was their seventh peak of the trip.
That may sound crazy to the casual hiker, but for these two climbers from Ellensburg, it's just the sort of project they love.
The 37-year-old Burson, who is originally from Deer Park, is a corporal in the Kittitas County Sheriff's Office. McPherson, 49, is a lieutenant with the Central Washington University Police Department.
They started climbing together about 14 years ago after being connected by a mutual friend. McPherson said he could tell after their first couple of trips that they'd be good climbing partners.
"We just meshed so well," he said. "We push each other to be a little bit better and go a little faster, a little harder. On the flip side, we both know exactly when to say, 'This isn't going to work out.' "
Six years ago, they climbed Washington's five tallest Cascade Range volcanoes in five days. When that was over, they decided they should take on something even bigger.
They came up with this idea: a self-supported trip to climb all the tallest volcanoes in the Cascades, from Lassen Peak in California to Mount Baker east of Bellingham.
Last summer, they made their first attempt. They started with Lassen and headed north from there.
They hit trouble on North Sister in Oregon, one of a group of three "sister" peaks west of Bend. As they neared the summit, they ran into snow they didn't expect. Their ice axes and crampons were in their truck, and there wasn't a safe way to keep going.
"We decided to call it at that point," Burson said.
With the goal of the trip now impossible, they changed their plans. Both had a few vacation days left, so they took a leisurely — for them — three-day jaunt up Glacier Peak.
Then they started planning for redemption. Instead of going from south to north, they decided to start with North Sister.
"We wanted to get the one that got us last time out of the way first," McPherson said. "Turns out that was not actually the toughest part of the trip."
Peak to peak
They started the trip at the Pole Creek Trailhead on July 23, with North Sister in their sights. They brought crampons and ice axes this time, and they made it to the top.
From there, they crossed a saddle and summited Middle Sister. Then, they hiked down to the truck and drove two hours to a trailhead for South Sister. They reached that peak that night.
Then they drove south to California, where they knocked off Lassen Peak, Mount Shasta and Shastina.
"We did our first six mountains in the first 72 hours," Burson said.
Mount Jefferson was next. Even without a late-night cougar run-in, it's a tough climb. The route they'd planned on wasn't usable, so they took a longer one. Then, once on top, they used a rope to rappel down to their walking route, using hardware stuck in the mountain that had seen better days.
The morning after the cougar encounter, they woke up and kept moving north — Mount Hood, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Glacier Peak and then the grand finale, Mount Baker.
There wasn't much sleep involved. Burson wrote in an email that they got "33 hours of deliberate sleep." Good nights meant four or five hours. There were naps here and there — on Mount Rainier, they curled up and snoozed in small cups formed by snowmelt.
Protein bars and dried fruit made up the bulk of the menu. They made a hot meal once, but otherwise kept the stove stowed away to save time.
That part was a little rough, McPherson said.
"Before long, you're craving fried chicken in the worst way," he said.
When they reached the Park Butte Trailhead after descending from Mount Baker on Aug. 2, they'd been on the road for 10 days, 23 hours and 51 seconds.
They'd hiked nearly 170 miles, driven another 1,910.
They'd gained 72,014 feet of elevation.
And they'd stared down one cougar.
Along the way, they celebrated each climb. They signed summit registers, drank shots of Fireball and listened to a short playlist they call their "Summit Concert Series."
They also reveled in the scenery. That's part of what makes their climbing partnership so good, McPherson said — they like the same things about being on top of a mountain.
"We love the peacefulness up there," he said.
