The snowshoe hare is a common animal of Colorado’s high forests. Open occurrence databases hold 598 records for it here, 482 of them iNaturalist photos, nearly all from the mountains rather than the plains.
A hare of the spruce and fir
The snowshoe hare is a specialist of cool, dense conifer forest. It needs thick understory for cover and browse, so the records climb with the terrain: the montane and subalpine woods of Larimer and Boulder counties lead, with Rocky Mountain National Park the single richest place, followed by the high forests of Gunnison, Grand, and Clear Creek counties. The animal is named for its oversized hind feet, which spread its weight like snowshoes and let it stay light and fast on deep powder that would bog down a predator. Brown and hard to spot among summer deadfall, it is easiest to see against fresh snow.
Two coats, one clock
Unlike the hibernators around it, the snowshoe hare stays active all winter, browsing bark, twigs, and conifer needles above the snowpack. Its signature trick is the molt: over a few autumn weeks the brown summer coat gives way to brilliant white, and in spring the white gives way back to brown. The switch is triggered by day length, not temperature, so the hare changes on a fixed calendar whether or not the snow has actually arrived. In a low-snow year that can leave a white hare exposed on brown ground, a growing mismatch that makes this species a closely watched barometer of a warming climate. The observation record clusters in the warm months, when hikers and the hare’s brown coat coincide, not because the hares are any less present under the snow.
Status in Colorado
The snowshoe hare is native to Colorado and secure here, ranked S5 by NatureServe. Look in dense subalpine spruce-fir forest, especially at dawn or dusk, around Rocky Mountain National Park and the state’s high national forests.
Full species profile
