We have been getting a lot of a heavy rain in the San Juans the past few weeks. As a result, there have been a number of mudslides causing temporary road closures. After a particularly heavy rainstorm a couple of days ago, I headed out early the next morning to look for a couple of large bull moose I had seen previously high up one of the valleys east of town. I spotted the big bull laying down in the grass across the valley, but it was a long way away and the light was poor as it was still early in the morning. I decided to drive up to the end of the road and then hike up the trail to a saddle at the top of the valley. The trail was covered with hail from the previous evening’s storm. As I approached the saddle at the top of the valley, I spotted a couple marmots out on the rocks. When I stopped to take a few photos, I saw several more marmots including a number of young ones.
It turned out that there were several adults along with 5 or 6 young. I spent almost an hour watching them and taking pictures. Fortunately, they weren’t particularly alarmed by my presence. The young ones were very playful, wrestling around and chasing each other. The parents would keep an eye on things and would groom the young ones. While I often see marmots in the high alpine tundra, this was the first time I had the opportunity to see them interacting with their young. I would guess that the young ones were a couple of months old at this stage, although I don’t know exactly when they would have been born. At such a high elevation as this, marmots typically hibernate until around May.
Yellow-bellied marmots live in burrows excavated into soil near boulder fields or rocky terrain, often at high elevations. I found this group at around 12,500’, which is well above timberline in the San Juans. This enables them to see predators from a long way off. The often perch on rocks to keep a lookout, making a sharp chirping sound to warn the others if alarmed by a predator.