10-17-15
Morgan Berquist
Today we left a little earlier, around 6am. We were out in the park before the sun was out, giving us the opportunity to see the sunrise in the Lamar Valley. It was a chilly morning, looking for the wolves in the valley. There had been some sightings, but unfortunately we did not see any wolves today. We then decided to go view some pika, which are an animal in the rabbit family that is very sensitive to temperature and climate change. They are pretty small, and blend in well with the broken lava rocks the pika call home. We then watched them for quite some time, taking photos and listening to their small “barks.” They somewhat reminded me of a prairie dog, but not quite. They live under the rubble, underground and store grass for the winter. They pick the grass and leave it out in the sun to dry. They then will stash it away in their burrow for the winter. The pika will need to harvest about 4 household garbage bags full of grass to have enough food for the winter. They will need to harvest 6 if they want to breed. These animals are very territorial as well.
When the pika viewing was over, we decided to go and have lunch next to the Soda Butte Creek that is deeper in the mountain range. During lunch we saw a few mountain goats way up on the cliff. After lunch we started moving up a trail our guide Shauna snowshoes and skis in the winter. We traveled about 4 miles round trip, looking for mammal signs along the way. Our group found weasel, coyote and possibly some kind of cat scat. It was pretty interesting to see how each animal differs in that area. We walked through a large meadow in the middle of the forest that had been planted with timothy hay long ago, to feed the bison.
On our way back towards Gardiner, stories were told, and bison were seen. Everyone had the chance to go to the Boiling River for a swim, but I decided not to go. The water is very warm, almost like a hot tub. The water is hot when it comes from the source underground – hot enough to burn the skin.
This ends my eventful day in Yellowstone!