Phelps Creek, Day 3: Whistling Pigs

In the wilderness, it’s not unusual to awaken to a rosy finch or other alpine avian before dawn's first light. However, on this day, my alarm clock was the melancholy whistle of a mountain marmot.

Known as “whistling pigs” to the miners in upper Phelps Creek (above) and vicinity, the marmot is actually a large ground squirrel that tends to live in mountainous areas of the world. They typically live in burrows -- or in the case of the yellow-bellied marmot common in the Cascades -- rockpiles, where they hibernate through the winter.

Also know as a rockchuck, most marmots are social beasts and use their prominent whistles to communicate with one another, particularly when they are alarmed. They primarily eat greens and many types of grasses, berries, lichens (an algae and a fungus that took a “lichen” for one another), mosses, roots and flowers. The marmot inhabits steppes, meadows, talus fields and other open habitats on the edge of forests.

They dig burrows under rocks because predators are less likely to see their burrow. Predators include wolves, foxes, coyotes, and of course, humans and dogs. When they see a predator, the marmot whistles to warn other marmots in the area, and then typically hide in a nearby rockpile. The miners took note of the marmot, which turned out to be essential to their very existence in the wilderness.

Mining historian L.K. Hodges wrote in the Seattle Post Intelligencer that “among the rocks, the whistling marmot burrows his holes, from which he comes to feed and sit on the rocks. He is shaped like a small pig, with gray fur striped with brown, and is nimble as a cricket and shy of human society.”

“Instead of being no better than dog meat, as I was led to say in writing about the whistlers in Horseshoe Basin, his flesh is sweet and tender as that of a rabbit and is a favorite article of diet up Phelps Creek. I feasted off the boiled whistler at Mr. Harvey’s cabin and in the Phelps Basin and found it sumptuous fare.”