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A friend of mine took the following picture of the tree with claw marks on it, in the pacific northwest Washington while on a hike. Both cougars and black bears are known to be in the area. Is this a picture of black bear or cougar claw marks? Me being from the Midwest I don't have a point of reference so I have no idea, but it sure seems fresh.
The photographer / hiker here.
WA Fish and Wildlife (retired friend) indicated: bear, pulling sheets of bark aside to lick the sap. Seemingly common for this time of year in the PNW (this is Cascades region). That's a deciduous tree, smaller things under its canopy are the conifers.
The three-touching-parallel grooves had made me wonder about cougar claws compressing vs. bear claws, which don't do that as much.
Thanks all for the replies! I'd much rather share immediate trailspace with bear than cougar, rightly or wrongly on my part.
A black bear stripped the bark to eat it.
I first went to porcupines, as they tend to scrape and eat bark, but I've never seen damage with those deep groves; they tend to leave a finer, smaller pattern behind. Next I thought elk, but they only eat photosynthetic bark found in aspen, and that looks like a conifer. So I think that leaves black bear, using their teeth (not claws for reasons described in other answers) to eat the phloem (sap-transport tissue under the bark). It's hard to find good photographic sources, but I used these pages:
USDA black bear damage USFS animal damage to trees Save the redwoods bear damage Possible suspects from Cool Green Science blog
Black bear is my final answer!
Ok, so let me preface this by saying I have absolutely no idea about the subject and I'm neither from the pacific northwest nor the US. Where I'm from, there are a handful of secluded wolves on the other side of the country and that's all we got when it comes to large animals that could leave marks like that. I did find the color of the tree and the patterns interesting so I gave it a try.
So, first of all I believe it's neither bear nor cougar. Lets have a closer look at the claw marks (if they actually are claw marks, but I do think so) first. There are two types of marks, the long scratches and the smaller shorter ones which kind of look like deer footprints or apostrophes ("). The scratches have two very clear lines with a third sometimes visible on the "outside". The scratches appear in sets of two or three in parallel, starting roughly at the same height. Below each of these sets, a set of the smaller "apostrophe" marks can be seen.
If you look at the symmetry of the "left" and "right" marks, I believe we are looking for an animal with four claws or toes. They also don't appear to be territorial marks or from claw sharpening/trimming (think cat on a couch) which both would leave more random, overlapping marks in one place. The combination of the long/short marks makes me think this is from an animal climbing a tree.
So lets rule out bears. First of all they have 5 claws and they climb by "hugging" the tree and wrapping around the tree with their arms. This is a mark from a black bear. 
Apparently the also tend to bite and scratch in a single spot when marking territory as seen here.
Cougars aren't as obvious to rule out, but if you look at pictures from here, they seem quite different. Their 4 claws all seem to leave a mark.
So what else could it be? As said above, most likely a 4 clawed animal that can climb trees. As you mentioned bears and cougars, I went straight to other large animals. But after looking at the picture for a while, the marks seem to be a lot smaller. More like the size of a racoon or so. Perspective can be deceiving, but the diameter of the tree seems more like 25-30cm (10-12"). Again, you can (most likely) rule out rodents, they also have 5 toes/fingers/claws.
Then I came across this picture: 
Apparently felines have their four toes more or less in one line whereas canines have the two middle ones quite far forward compared to the outer ones. So a canine would be in line with the very distinct two middle claw marks in the picture.
So a canine that climbs trees? Well there seems to be two species that can do that: The Japanese raccoon dog and the grey fox. We can rule out the former for obvious reasons. The grey fox however is native to north america and vulpines have an even more pronounced central toes than other canine.
Here is an example of their tracks:
So this would be my best guess. Of course could be also anything else ;D
