14 Woverines

An Encounter with Wolverines

In the Summer of 1964, I was working for the Rocky Mountain National Park Service. Based in Grand Lake, Colorado on the western slope of the Rockies, we were about 15 young men, average age of 20, performing trail maintenance tasks. We were broken up into small groups to work on different projects. A fellow from Greeley and I were assigned to repair hiking trails up in the tundra at an elevation of about 10,000 feet.

          Tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo by Rick Bein 2010

The trail that we were working connected Grand Lake with Estes Park crossing over the Continental Divide between 13,000-foot mountains and crossed over to the Eastern Slope. We were working the western slope of the trail. Because the slope was steep, a series of “S” shaped switch backs made it easier for hikers to move up and down. The pristine environment was only disturbed by this trail.

One day in late July the two of us were working a series of switch backs, clearing rocks and stabilizing places where the trail had been eroded. My partner was two switch backs above me when two wolverines began crossing laterally up slope above him. They were loping along, not a care in the world, hardly noticing us. These fearless creatures known to attack animals many times their size, reportedly killed a polar bear in a zoo enclosure.  They are said to have keen sense of smell.

  Wolverine by Skansen an existential hero is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

He thought it would be clever throw a few stones at them. The two wolverines stopped and looked at him as if to say, “Who are you to be harassing us?” and then started straight down the slope toward him! Terrified, he panicked, dropped his shovel (his only weapon) and raced down toward me.  I tackled him to keep him from falling over the cliff behind us, and then I turned to face the wolverines!

They were still coming!

I too was scared but I knew running would make things worse as they could run faster than I! Instinctively remembering what my father had taught me when warding off an angry bull, I raised my outspread arms over head, brandishing my only weapon, the shovel!

For some reason they stopped about 10 feet away and looked at us then decided this was not an encounter they wanted! They then continued their leisurely trot off to where they were originally headed.  What a relief!

Then I noticed a terrible stench. I recognized that smell and when I looked around at my partner behind me, I knew it was not coming from the wolverines!  Maybe that was why the wolverines stopped coming and it had nothing to do with waving my arms!                               

Now you know what to do the next time you meet some wolverines!