Trip Report – Snowshoeing above the Sea to Sky Gondola – January 26, 2018

Five intrepid explorers headed up the Sea to Sky Gondola for a snowshoe outing. It was very fortuitous timing, as pass-holders were able to rent snowshoes free of charge for the month of January!

It had been exciting to see a Pacific Marten (Martes caurina, f. Martes americana ssp caurina, pine marten) in the Wonderland area the day before this outing and I’d followed the tracks to get a feel for his route. I was hoping that today we would find new tracks in the fresh snow – and we did! There was also evidence that a snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) had fled his predator with some giant leaps more than one metre apart. It looked to us that the hare had successfully escaped.

Questions arose:

Tracks were small for a snowshoe hare.
Stéphane Perron has seen some hares above the Gondola and they are brown, not white, in winter.
No other rabbit family species is known from this area/habitat/elevation.

Follow-up discoveries about snowshoe hares in North America:

Winter pelage of snowshoe hares in the Pacific Northwest tends to be brown where snow cover is not continuous throughout the winter.
Snowshoe hares are smallest in the Pacific Northwest compared to rest of their range.
For more details see e-Fauna and David Nagorsen’s research.

Carl spotted a small flock of birds which he was able to later confirm were likely kinglets. (Providing additional confirmation, two days earlier Golden-crowned Kinglets and Chestnut-backed Chickadees were spotted in the same general area by Kav, a Quest University student.)

Thanks to the fun and lively participants: Family, Rhonda, Steven and Tristan, Peter, Carl and Leona

Judith