A Beary Interesting Hike

Day 306: Yesterday's MeadoWatch hike offered up a little surprise. I left home early in the morning to be on the trail during the cool of the day, and had been looking for bears on the slopes as I came up the Lakes Trail, but hadn't seen any sign of one except for one deposit of scat early on. When I got up to the monument at the junction with the Skyline Trail, I sat on the stone bench to take a short break. I'd been there for a few minutes when a piercingly loud marmot whistle (the loudest I have ever heard!) knifed through my eardrums. With no one else around, I stood up as I said, "Jesus, marmot! Deafen me, whydontcha?" and then I saw why the marmot had sent out the alarm. A scrawny yearling bear loped at speed up a draw not thirty feet from me, turning and heading down the Skyline Trail when I made my presence known with a startled, "Oh, bear! Hi!" Bear went over the side and into the valley to the east about fifty feet further on, crossed the creek, started up the other side of the valley but thought better of it when two hikers came to the edge of the slope to see what was going on. The bear then turned south and tried to climb up a steeper slope, grabbing onto a rotten stump for an assist. The stump collapsed under the animal's weight and dumped poor bear onto his hindquarters about five feet downslope. He recovered from the indignity with something less than good grace and disappeared around the knoll to the west. By this time, I'd gathered a crowd of visitors who were curious about what I was photographing, but only the two on the far side of the valley actually saw the bear. Still, it was time for some bear education, so I spent the next half hour talking to visitors, letting them know that this particular bear was both young and very thin and therefore might require a little more caution in a potential encounter. That said, my sympathies were with the poor bear who was obviously not having a good day, even without the presence of too many humans on his patch.

In Your Face, Ranger Lady!

Day 337: When I arrived at the Stevens-VanTrump monument near the top of my MeadoWatch hike, I noticed a man eating a sandwich and a marmot on the ground about a yard away from his feet. I figured I was going to have to speak to him about feeding the animals, but then I realized he wasn't feeding the critter. As I watched, the marmot brazenly moved closer until it was just inches away from the visitor's legs. Then it hunkered down like a cat getting ready to pounce, its hindquarters wiggling in a way any cat owner would recognize. At that point, I saw that a rapid intervention was needed to keep the animal from jumping into the man's lap, so I shooed it off, but it moved reluctantly and only went a few feet to stand its ground at the edge of the trees. I chased it a little more vigorously, but as soon as I turned my back on it, it came right back to where the man was sitting.

After I had hazed the animal several more times, the hiker got up and walked over to the stone bench to eat his sandwich standing up. The marmot followed, got up on the high back of the bench, and appeared to be preparing to leap onto the man's shoulder. By then, several other visitors had gathered around. The marmot went up to several of them, contacting their shoes or pantlegs with its nose.

In all, I spent about 45 minutes chasing the marmot back toward its den. Invariably, it returned as soon as I stepped away. I even pushed it with my trekking pole (rather forcibly, but not abruptly or sharply). I figured this stand-off might well go on all day, so after instructing all visitors present that they should not approach or feed or in any way encourage the marmot, I went off to complete my hike. When I came back down, marmot was still there with a new set of visitors and being just as insistent as before. For the record, I have never seen such assertive behaviour in a marmot, but after all, they are just enormous squirrels.