High Sierra Topix

bobby49 wrote:...If you don't take these precautions, you stand a good chance of your vehicle being immobilized by the pesky devils, and then the towing bill is going to be astronomical.

Outside of leaving the hood up that lets in sunlight that discourages their clandestine activity, have never done anything through several trips of many days. Will speculate marmots tend to target new vehicles that have newish plastics and rubber parts that out gas fragrance strongly. My old dirty grubby Subaru's parts are ignored even during early season.

There is a theory which I can neither refute or confirm. Yes, large rodents like marmots like to chew on rubber and some plastics that seem like rubber. Apparently they are not killed by lapping up small amounts of spilled radiator coolant, as you would expect of any normal mammal.

So, one backpacker who parks in Mineral King has this practice. He parks his car in one end of the parking lot. Then he puts the bait at the other end of the parking lot. The bait is an old piece of radiator hose with a fresh scent of coolant on it. He expects that the marmots will go for the bait instead of his car.

I certainly don't know. The rangers might catch him.