The Marmot
After hiking up a mountain, my brother and I took a quick break on top of a giant boulder to take in the views. On the way up, we saw what my brother thought was a bear cub (because he thinks all brown animals are bears and all large-ish fish are sharks), but was really a marmot missing a tail. Marmots are everywhere in the mountains, so we didn’t think much of it. However, as we were sitting on that rock, the tail-less marmot reappeared. It stealthily got closer and closer, hiding under rocks, then emerging on top of a closer rock. We kind of joked around, like:
Crap, we just climbed up a rock face with no gear, but now, we’re stranded on a damn boulder in the middle of the Holy Cross Wilderness because of this stupid thing.
My brother saw his chance to break free, so he scrambled away. I, however, mostly missed the opportunity, and as I jumped off the boulder, the marmot charged. I armed myself with a small rock, grazed the weird animal, and hauled ass down the boulder field. We made it out alive, but it was a close call:
Related posts:
- Backpacking in the Holy Cross Wilderness, Part III
- Backpacking in the Holy Cross Wilderness, Part II
How large is a Marmot? I looked at the pics and assumed that it was no bigger than my hand. But from the looks of your post, it is large enough to do some damage?
Wow, hide and squeak with a Marmot…. I saw his blog page and the little sod didn’t even mention seeing you guys, how rude is that?
It’s about the size of a beaver. I doubt it would do much damage, but it was acting weird, so we were worried about rabies or the like. It was more just ridiculous that we were stranded on a rock because of a marmot, and neither one of us wanted to make the first move. Haha.