August 4, 2009

The Parc National de la Vanoise is the home to a large array of wildlife: snow rabbits, foxes, wolves, squirrels, ermines (my dictionary reads “ermine: a stoat, esp. when in its white winter coat”), and a vast array of birds topped by the soaring eagle. There are two animals that live in the Vanoise that my favourite geologist and I particularly wanted to see, though – they were marmots, and bouquetin. The marmot (marmotte in French) is a possum-sized burrowing rodent that lives in the mountains. They are known for communicating via whistling, which is something I find particularly amusing and hoped to observe. Bouquetin (ibex in English), on the other hand, are the most regal and majestic of the goat family, shy and rare, excellent climbers on unfathomably steep terrain, and preferring high altitude haunts of at least 2000m above sea level. We wanted to see both very much.

We quickly discovered that marmots are not uncommon by any stretch of the imagination. They pop up out of the grass, poke around, bare their huge front teeth, look around, move on. Every time they stop they flick their furry flat tail up in a compulsive movement. I swear I saw one stop and just admire the view, which I suppose was understandable.

The park has a large number of refuges (mountain huts) which offer food and warm accomodation to hikers and mountaineers. It would be wonderful to walk from refuge to refuge and explore the park that way, but having limited time we stayed for just one night in the Refuge du Col de la Vanoise. After a chilly walk up we woke up the next day to find it snowing outside, and with snow on the ground and low cloud everywhere our chances of seeing bouquetin seemed to be dashed – the cloud made it impossible to see anything much, we had to walk down below their preferred altitude, and any sensible bouquetin would, in any case, be somewhere out of the freezing wind.

But we had luck on our side! The bouquetin were indeed out of the snow and wind, but one herd had ducked into a valley that we hiked down on our way back to Pralognan. We were privileged to see them. They are most dignified and magnificent animals, and their horns are just inconceivably large. One stratched his back – his far, distant back – with a casual raise of the head. Another stood on the horizon, took a glance at his mountains, then turned and looked at us, as if to say “not bad eh?” — and I had to admit he was right.