HOLDMYBEER Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 I want to share some good fortune. Maybe not all that relevant but things on this forum have been kinda slow lately. Last week (July 17, 0800 hours) my nephew and I were leaving Goat Lake headed down to Snograss Flats. Progress was very slow because I was cutting steps across the snowfields. We had a lot of rain and lightning the night before so things were just treacherous. We had a short segment of clear trail allowing us to get round a corner when I saw an adult wolverine running straight up the snowfield ahead of us. It ran with a characteristic lope and turned its head in our direction as it ran up the 60 degree slope from our lower right to our upper left. It had already seen us so I yelled to the nephew and he was able to get his binoculars up on it right away. My binocs and camera were stowed away for protection while I cut steps. The wolverine ran with a lope that made it seem almost happy. Despite running straight up the icy snowfield it kept turning its head watching us. Then it was joined by a second that had already been above and to our left but not at all noticeable. And then I lost sight of both. Total time of sighting was maybe 10 seconds. I have read there may be 300 wolverine in the lower 48 states. I contacted a wolverine study group and gave them the details. We really felt fortunate. We had good success the previous night counting mountain goat but it was seeing the wolverine that really made our day. Goat Lake July 17 Red circle is site of wolverine encounter Mountain goat inventory. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slabdog Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 Awesome HMB! Once in a lifetime! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest COGrizzly Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 Excellent!! I saw one back in 2005 or so. They're not suppose to in CO, but I saw one and so did a friend. Then, NavySeal sent me an article about one in RMNP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DWA Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 I had to chuckle at the red circle. "That's a wolverine. You're not looking close enough...oh wait, red circles are bigfoot..." Jeff Meldrum went to a presentation once and couldn't believe all the great shots the guy had gotten of wolverines. He said: how do you do that? The guy answered: Game farms. You remember that pic of a dot in the middle of a snowfield? That's the only photo in all my research of a wild wolverine. I once followed wolverine tracks with my brother through North Molar Pass in Banff. That's as close as I've gotten. Lucky dog. Shoot, more people have seen bigfoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WV FOOTER Posted July 23, 2013 Admin Share Posted July 23, 2013 Awesome pics. HMB. I bet that was an exciting sighting of a Wolverines. Looks like someplace I would like to visit, that deep of snow in July. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1980squatch Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 Congrats on the sighting! Cool story, glad you posted it- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOLDMYBEER Posted July 23, 2013 Author Share Posted July 23, 2013 (edited) I always get rankled when people post sightings but don't post the distances involved. In this case the distance was just over 75 yards. I spent many years estimating distances out to 200 meters so I am pretty confident on the estimate. It was too far for me to see face markings but the body shape on the snow was electrically sharp. A guess on the weight would be greater than 25 pounds. The thing that really stood out in my mind was the ease with which it ran straight up the snow field. I have heard wolverine think nothing about taking the most difficult path up and over mountains. This was a case in point. We were really struggling with footing on the very steep and icy slopes and this animal just danced up the steepest part. Edited to add: One of the reasons we were lucky was probably the noise of all the waterfalls in Goat Creek basin. Between the emptying of Goat Lake and all the snow melt and rainfall it was something of a roar the entire time we stayed up there. Edited July 23, 2013 by HOLDMYBEER Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WV FOOTER Posted July 23, 2013 Admin Share Posted July 23, 2013 With the waterfall noise your scent probably gave you away. Had you met the Wolverines by chance at a much closer distance you could have experienced a much different scenario. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 congrats Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobbyO Posted July 23, 2013 SSR Team Share Posted July 23, 2013 Plus from me HMB, that's brilliant. How high were you in elevation up there ? I remember looking into the GRW from when I drove into MRNP in 2011 from Naches via White Pass, got some great pictures and I remember thinking that there looked to be SO much snow in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airdale Posted July 23, 2013 Share Posted July 23, 2013 I had to chuckle at the red circle. "That's a wolverine. You're not looking close enough...oh wait, red circles are bigfoot..." Jeff Meldrum went to a presentation once and couldn't believe all the great shots the guy had gotten of wolverines. He said: how do you do that? The guy answered: Game farms. You remember that pic of a dot in the middle of a snowfield? That's the only photo in all my research of a wild wolverine. I once followed wolverine tracks with my brother through North Molar Pass in Banff. That's as close as I've gotten. Lucky dog. Shoot, more people have seen bigfoot. I believe this post is extremely relevant to the bf subject. Here is an animal that has historic distribution through most of the northern hemisphere in sufficient numbers that it has long been known and recognized though now hunted nearly to extinction. "Recently compiled genetic evidence suggests most of North America's wolverines are descended from a single source, likely originating from Beringia during the last glaciation and rapidly expanding thereafter, though considerable uncertainty to this conclusion is due to the difficulty of collecting samples in the extremely depleted southern extent of the range." Attribution: MITOCHONDRIAL PHYLOGEOGRAPHY AND CONSERVATION GENETICS OF WOLVERINE (GULO GULO) OF NORTHWESTERN NORTH AMERICA Eric Tomasik *a and Joseph A. Cook b aJudith Ranger District, Lewis and Clark National Forest, 109 Central Avenue, P.O. Box 484, Stanford, MT 59479, USA (ET) bMuseum of Southwestern Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA (JAC) It is rarely seen in modern times, even by those who spend a great deal of time in the outdoors, the only good photos are from game farms and zoos. And this animal, despite a reputation for ferocity and great cunning, is still fairly low on the IQ scale and manages to avoid humans because their numbers are limited, they tend toward a solitary existence and are relatively small. With Bigfoot, we have a creature postulated that, at least in historic time, has never existed in large numbers and while physically much larger than the wolverine, is also evidently capable of a fairly high level of reasoning and actively avoids contact with humans in most cases. If the wolverine had never existed anywhere, in historic time, in numbers greater than its current population in the lower 48 and was possessed of the intellectual level of the higher primates and an aversion to human contact, would it be any more than a legend? Something to think about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOLDMYBEER Posted July 24, 2013 Author Share Posted July 24, 2013 Plus from me HMB, that's brilliant. How high were you in elevation up there ? I remember looking into the GRW from when I drove into MRNP in 2011 from Naches via White Pass, got some great pictures and I remember thinking that there looked to be SO much snow in there. We camped at 6800 feet just below the terminator between the Goat and Jordan Creek basins. Great place to count goats but the drifts were corniced and beginning to look unstable so we broke camp early. We descended through the ice fields around Goat Lake to 6350 where we crossed paths with the animals. It is a really desolate place under those conditions so they probably didn't expect us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
norseman Posted July 24, 2013 Share Posted July 24, 2013 *scofftic alert* No video? No pictures? What's up with that? It was probably just Rock Chucks dude..........there are no Wolverines there........... everybody knows that. We discuss it on the JREF all the time! Or it could have been that you were suffering from mild snow blindness and saw the shadows of clouds moving on the snow field. *scofftic nonsense off* I'm envious bro! Awesome! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveedoe Posted July 24, 2013 Share Posted July 24, 2013 awesome! you guys are so lucky to see the wolverines. I have always hoped I would someday see a wolverine. Wolverines are more rare than Bigfoot, from what I've been told, never seen either one but I know the wolverine does in fact exist. I love Goat Rocks one of my favorite spots in Washington state. Great photos would love to see a few more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2013 Share Posted July 24, 2013 Very nice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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