Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Two young marmots play in a mountain meadow as one of the adults looks on. We came across this colony in the early fall beside the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier. You can see how chubby even the youngsters are at this time of the year as they prepare to hibernate through the long winter on the mountain. Despite being wrapped in waddling clothes, the marmots move with surprising speed when they want to, bursting across the talus fields with a speed that belies their bellies.
When I visited Mount Rainier National Park in the fall of 2008, I saw more pikas on the the Pinnacle Peak Trail than I’d ever seen on a single trail before. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say I saw more pikas on that hike than I had seen in my entire life until then. They weren’t all close to the trail, the talus fields are extensive and often lead far from the trail, but some of them were close enough for pictures, including this pika that popped out of a rock wall near sunset.
It’s hard not to be jealous of how well-adapted some animals are to their environment. It was a little humbling to watch these tiny little pikas sprinting across the talus field with plants in their mouths. I don’t think I’d be quite so quick if I had to drag several 12 foot tall trees in my mouth as I ran across a boulder field with rocks as big as a school bus.
The higher elevations in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier got a light dusting of snow on the morning of my last day there but it melted when the sun rose. After hiking a bit on the Sourdough Ridge Trail early in the day hoping to see marmots, pikas, or grouse (and not seeing any), I went a little lower in elevation to the trailhead of the Summerland Trail. The trail is an uphill march mostly through a forest before you pop out into a mountain meadow at the very end of the trail, I chose it since there was a chance of seeing hoary marmots and elk in the meadow (the mountain views from the meadow are also spectacular and make up for the lack of views in the forest).
I didn’t see any elk but I did see a few marmots when I first entered the talus field. The afternoon sun didn’t make for good light for pictures but this marmot was shadowed by rocks where the snow hadn’t melted. I followed the trail through the rocks and saw more and more marmots until I realized just how large the colony is at the end of the trail, this was by far the largest marmot colony of any species I’ve come across.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the marmots as at least one was usually close to the trail, taking advantage of every passing cloud to improve the light. I had thoughts about staying until sunset but I still had a long hike back down and while I had my headlamp, I was hiking alone and didn’t want to risk it. When the marmots that had been near the trail were no longer around, I took that as my cue and headed back down the trail.
Some day I’m going to stop posting pictures of this bear, but today is not that … no actually I think today is that day. Watching the bear in person it was pretty obvious that it was young, I’m no expert on bears but it clearly was at least a year old but not yet a full adult. Looking through my pictures sometimes it appears younger to me and sometimes older, a furry changeling, but I just love its fur coat of many colors.
My favorite moment with this bear, after stopping to eat huckleberries beside the trail (the picture in the previous post), it returned to the trail but soon turned aside again, stood up on its hind legs and began rubbing its back up and down on this tree. I guess it had an itch that needed scratching (or a scent that needed marking).
Another picture of my favorite bear from my trip to Washington. I watched it graze on huckleberries for an hour in a meadow below the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, so it was already pretty comfortable with me when it started moving up towards the trail. I could tell where it wanted to go so I moved down the trail in the opposite direction to give it plenty of space.
I assumed it would continue higher up the hill but instead it started walking down the trail in the same direction I hoped to head. I followed at a long enough distance to keep it in its comfort zone, so mostly I had a view of its rear end. I should post a gallery of animal rear ends I’ve taken over the years, keeping an animal in its comfort zone doesn’t necessarily lead to the best pictures 😉
I’ve experienced this in my own home, Scout has liked to sleep on me ever since she was a little kitten, but unlike Templeton she often sleeps with her rear end pointed towards my face. Sometimes to the point that she actually sits on my face, when she was younger I woke up many a time getting smothered by a little kitten butt. My wife convinced me to take it as a badge of honor, that she was showing trust by exposing her most vulnerable position, so I’ve adopted the same philosophy to animals on the trails. Missed picture opportunities are a small price to pay for earning their trust.
In this case though, the bear’s desire to fatten up for the winter worked to my advantage, it turned aside for a moment to grab a few more huckleberries before continuing down the trail.
This is the same pika that I denied a taste of my mango, as you can see it was quite adept at finding food on its own. It had just sprinted across the talus field with these twigs in its mouth, it paused for a moment and straddled these rocks before disappearing below to add to its winter store.
Ever since first seeing pikas in the Tetons, I always choose some of my hikes on my Wyoming trips to go into terrain where I might glimpse these little mammals. So it should be no surprise that I chose many of my hikes on my trip to Mount Rainier to put me into the land of marmots and pikas. At first I had only near misses at pictures as pikas scampered along the Sourdough Ridge Trail, dragging plants down into their homes under the rocks. But at the end of my first full day of hiking, the Palisades Lakes Trail blessed me in abundance.
I stopped at a talus field near the end of the trail for some water and snacks, hoping that a pika might poke its head out from the rocks while I rested. I had heard but not seen them in the area as I passed by at the start of the hike, but it wasn’t long after I opened my water bottle that this pika first appeared. It was busy adding plants to its cache under the rocks, occasionally stopping to eat a little. I took a number of pictures while it was active, spending almost half an hour watching it as it gathered food. During the stretches where it was out of sight, I swapped the camera for my water bottles.
I took me a while to quench my thirst as I picked up the camera any time the pika popped up, but eventually during a quiet stretch I turned my attention to my hunger and brought out my bag of snacks. We had picked up some dried mango slices shortly before I left, I had never tried them before but they immediately became my favorite treat of the trip. As I started into the mango the pika suddenly reappeared, so I closed up the bag and set it a nearby rock before picking up the camera for more pictures.
The pika kept ducking in and out of the rocks, classic pika behavior, but I could hardly believe my eyes when I realized that the pika was actually working its way in my direction. The little thing was soon too close for pictures so I just stood baffled by such a close encounter. I soon realized its intention as it shuffled over towards my snack bag and sniffed around. I eased over and took the bag away, having just watched it store away a variety of plant life I feared my dried fruit was about to be added to the cache and enjoyed all winter long by my furry friend.
It hung around for a little while, almost at arm’s reach but always with an escape route into the rocks. The timing was probably coincidence, but when I finished the mango it either lost interest in the remaining fruit or realized I wasn’t going to share and headed back up the slope. I finished my snack and hoped for more pictures, but it wasn’t long before the pika went under for good and I continued up the trail.
I couldn’t help but feel guilty about not sharing my bounty, given that it posed for so many pictures, but better to keep them wild. Besides I knew from our time together that it wasn’t going to go hungry this winter, even if it was going to have to miss out on the mango.
A hoary marmot at the end of Mount Rainier’s Summerland Trail eeks out the last bit of warmth from this sunlit rock before the mountains blocked the sun and threw its perch into shadow.
Boolie 