14ers.com

We had a sad thing happen at the Wetterhorn trailhead yesterday, and I wanted others to be aware as I’ve not heard of this happening before. We had camped in our vehicle overnight, gotten up for an alpine start, and returned from our climb. Upon starting our vehicle, our driver heard a strange sound and felt a shudder in the engine. People around the vehicle started pointing underneath it. They said they saw a marmot scurry away dragging its back legs. Turns out the poor guy had climbed up into the engine and was injured when the vehicle was started. He dragged himself into his den and we couldn’t find him to try and help.

Sad,

I hate the thought of injured animals, but damn marmots are annoying. In the future it may make sense to knock just to see as that cannot be healthy for the engine. I usually drop some predator urine around my car and knock on wood that usually helps.

Unfortunately this is rather common, including some hikers taking a marmot over 100 miles home back to their garage before noticing they had a passenger.

When I was up there last year, marmots were all over the place around the trailhead. Had some unrelated truck issues so didn't get to hike, but I plan on bringing some of that plastic construction fence to wrap around this year. Can't be too safe 1000 miles from home.

It's only a sample size of one but I have been using this animal repellent for the past two years and haven't had any animal or rodent issues. I was even at the upper 4WD TH for Matterhorn Creek on a two night backpack a few weeks ago and had no issues. You can find this at most hardware stores.

https://www.amazon.com/BONIDE-PRODUCTS- ... 9356&psc=1

Well thats one marmot that won't climb into a vehicle to chew wires anymore.