ochotona princeps

This is the American Pika (picture is mine (and cropped), taken about five days ago on the ridge north of Soards Creek, BC). It's a lagomorph (rabbit family) that looks like a hamster, and goes "EEEEP!!" rather loudly. They are absolutely hilarious. There were about five in and around the loose rock piles of our last camp kitchen area. They spend the 2.5 summer months collecting grass and essentially curing it into straw by leaving it in a pile in the sun for a day. They then store it all deep in their burrows in the rock falls, and eat it over the winter (surprisingly they don't hibernate). They are amusing because they'll steal each others' piles of grass, and chase each other around, making loud insistent "eeeeep!" sounds.

It turns the quiet mountainside into quite a vibrant community, when there are also the whistling marmots, the screaming birds of prey, the rockfall-causing goats, the chattering ptarmigans, the squeaking ground squirrels, and the cluster of sparrow-like birds that bombed us with rocks.

One particular pika, over the course of a few nights, shredded the spongy foam of my sandals (as they sat in the vestibule of the tent, a few centimetres from my head), presumably for nest insulation material. It also left a lot of little shits on my "doorstep" for me to find each morning as I pulled my boots on. Bastard. I chased it whenever I saw it. It would run under a rock, then as soon as my back was turned it would run out and "eeep" at me. Such insolence. They'd make an amusing pet though, if you could get them to scare the shit out of your guests by "eeping" loudly at them when they least expect it. Your average run-of-the-mill pet hamster, gerbil, rabbit, or rat will not do that.

Any pet with the ability to surprise or shock people is good in my book. So the monkey that dances for you then steals your wallet, parrot that asks for a cracker then tells you to fuck off, or small fake hamster that can ruin your eardrums are all good. Marmots are loud fuckers too, but they're groundhog sized and so not as easy to keep as a pet. They have a shrill whistle that they give when they sense danger, or wish to chat with other marmots (or people pretending to be marmots). It is possible to have a good solid back-and-forth conversation with a marmot for several minutes before one of you gets tired of it.

You can see my video of Matt Callaghan of Arrow Helicopters landing the A-Star helicopter C-FKHG, directly beside me on the mountain, by clicking right about here. Or here. Or even here. But never here. Oh and it appears that google video has ruined the video quality. Bugger.

He always lands directly beside us and our gear, which is mildly distressing if you're not used to it. It's actually much safer that way than him being several metres away, where we'd be in danger of being chopped up if the wind suddenly caught the machine and tipped it sideways. Plus it's faster to load the copter if he's just right there. That's why pilots who aren't comfortable landing right beside us are not preferable. As an aside, it is rather difficult to hold the camera steady when you can't see due to the wind blast, and it's not a video camera by design (i.e. no picture stabilization technology or anything).

bye for now. Some interesting field stories to come, probably. Most interesting how we both escaped a very near call with a falling stone, moving so fast it was invisible. Probably chucked at us by the fucking birds.

update with photos

I've left my bloody camera battery charger somewhere, and you can't charge the camera batteries by putting them in the camera and plugging it in. Doesn't work. Thus I'll probably have to buy a new charger, and another backup battery. It's gonna be at least a hundred bucks. Anyway for the last camp we had, I had to use the old "mercury cyberpix" camera that is three yrs old. It's not bad; it gets the job done (500 pics from summer '04 in the Monashees, 2075 pics from Europe summer '05). Here's a few of the nice pics it took for me over the six days.

This is Mica Creek (to right) and the Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) "Monashees" heli-skiing and heli-hiking lodge (to the left). They're the ones we're in contact with every night at 7pm when we're in the field. Note how Mica Creek is rather small. Again: no groceries, no beer store, only a few houses and a lodge for hydro workers from the dam. It has lost it's classification as a village, and is not a proper community anymore. It was only a village when there were thousands there to build the dam in the late 60s - early 70s. There was everything a normal town would have, including a school.

Ten points and a degree in structural geology if you can describe the prominent feature in the above picture.

The lake, from the kitchen.

The lake, from the other side looking back towards the kitchen and tent (I don't think either are visible). The lake was warm enough to swim in, but we never did because we got mostly crap weather after the first two days.

The Mica Dam, with the Columbia Reach of Kinbasket Lake. Kinbasket is huge; it's mostly responsible for generating the crap weather we get. The dam is also huge; when finished in '73 it was the largest earth-filled dam in the world. It's not wide (as you can see) but it is very long (parallel to river direction). The slopes on the headwater and tailwater sides are very low angle, and at its base it's sthg like 5 km long. It also rises well above the headwater level, so that large waves won't wash over it (a real concern with a lake this big). Phil Simony, one of my supervisors, recounted how it took about five years to fill the headpond, during which time he was frantically rushing around in it, trying to map the available outcrops before they were flooded.

And lastly the tent, with the small pond nearby. This was on the morning of the heli pickup. I was expecting the copter in about 5 minutes. 7.5 hrs later they actually showed up. We passed the time by killing annoying insects, eating chocolate, throwing rocks at water and at other rocks, and finally by damming the pond by the kitchen until the flow was diverted elsewhere. I was rather pleased with our engineering feat.

Back in F'ton on the 23rd, there until the 7th or sthg. Hope to see as many of y'all as possible.