This topic certainly has an audience. I'm very late to the party, but thought I'd add a sighting in another area. In 1996 I through-hiked the AT (the first time). About the middle of Shenandoah National Park, I came across the Pocosin Cabin about noon. I once led trips for the Wilmington, DE, Trail Club, and we had used the Pocosin Cabin a number of times. There was no one there at the time, so I jogged over and had my lunch on the steps; bit of nostalgia involved. When I finished, I went back to the trail by the access trail and turned north. In a few steps (the cabin was still in sight) the trail turned a bit to the right, and there were bushes above eye-level, close to the trail on the right. Therefor, I couldn't see ahead until I actually started into the turn. As I did, there was a mountain lion crouching in the middle of the trail, looking squarely at me, one paw slightly raised. He was probably about ten to fifteen meters away (well before the access road crossing). I think that somehow, I had surprised him. I was so surprised that I essentially froze, and it was not until after he left that I remembered I was not supposed to hold eye contact. I just stared. But he didn't stick around to see how I was going to react. Withing about ten or fifteen seconds, he turned and took off toward Skyline Drive in a series of long, fluid leaps with his tail flowing behind. I could see him for the first three, but then I could just hear a couple more. By that time, he was very close to the drive. If he crossed it, and somebody saw him (or her) There would have been a very surprised driver. I believe that sighting was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen on a trail, and I've been hiking since the late 1940s.

It's only a couple miles or so from there to Lewis Mountain. I tried to report the sighting at the store, but the storekeeper could not get through on the telephone. I hustled, and managed to make Big Meadows just before dark. I found a ranger, reported and answered questions for long enough I couldn't really go looking for an appropriate camp site (the campground was full), so the ranger helped convince the lodge that there really was a room available for a "friend of the park" (it was a tiny one up in the eves that they evidently rarely rent out). But I never found out if they confirmed. They were skeptical, and when I stopped at the naturalist centre on the way out, they tried to convince me that it had to be a bobcat. They admitted that they had had a number of "sightings" reported, but that they had been unable to confirm any of them, and that they did not believe there were any in the area. I've seen several bobcats over the years (usually just a ball of generally yellowish fur going the other way very fast)but never one with a tail like that. Like another poster here, I grew up in Northwest Arkansas, and I remember the yowl of the "panther". We brought in the goats.