2024 Pika Patrol, Part 2

After our pika hike south of Berthoud Pass last month, my husband and I did our second pika site for the Denver Zoo’s Pika Project last week, climbing up Halfmoon Creek on the southwest side of Mount Massive.

We went up to the site a day early because rain, and at the higher altitudes, snow was forecast for our original time.

This is a view from where we stayed in the Upper Arkansas Valley. The clouds were already catching on the high peaks there, so we went to our site that morning, rather than sticking to our original plan of going up the next day. Wise choice — by the next day it was raining hard.

It was a truly spectacular day for a hike. I’ve posted similar photos every year, but that’s because the beauty always takes my breath away. Well, that and the fact that we are at 11,300 feet (3444 m). So we’re puffing by the time we see this view.

This site is always a little chance-y as to whether we’ll see pika or not — unlike most pika sites, it is surrounded by trees and brush that could hold weasels, pine martins, coyotes, bobcats or hawks, any of whom could dash out and nab an unwary pika before it could dive into the safety of the rock crevices.

As we scramble around on the unstable scree, we often we hear their squeeky-ball cry before we see them. And we look not only for the animals themselves, but for recent white urine stains, scat or hay piles. Any of these say that pika are present.

One of the first, and most interesting, signs we look for is orange lichen. This particular type of lichen likes to grow where there is a lot of nitrogen — like, say, where an animal has urinated repeatedly. It’s like a big orange flag for us.

And sure enough, we found a few leaves among some rocks sporting orange lichen where a pika has stashed plants it had gathered. The plants dry and turn into hay that the pika will eat through the long, snowy winter.

Then, as I was scribbling down measurements around the hay pile, my husband said “Hon, look down”. There, about three feet away, was a pika poking it’s nose up. I about fell off the rock I was standing on (a disturbingly easy thing to do). The pika scampered a little ways down the slope, but it eventually came to a stop on a rock to sun itself.