the high altitude matches. We were half-way up a mountain, I would only be guessing to give a number.....I wonder what is considered "high altitude"?

sometimes I find it's good to put something down for a while and then come back to it with fresh perspective. Having done that with your photo here, I'm now ready to say with confidence that this is definitely Hippodamia and not Coccinella trifasciata. The body shape and shapes of elytra markings just don't match C. trifasciata. And based on location and another read through Gordon's Hippodamia listings, I'd say this is H. moesta bowditchi. Gordon lists several locations from western Montana, northern Idao, and following the rockies into Canada (that area is one of my favorite natural places in the world :) There's still heavy similarity with H. oregonensis, but re-reading the variations allowed for H. moesta, and that H. oregonensis is listed from Banff, Vancouver, Mt. Hood, Colorado, and Utah (all around but not in the distro for H. moesta), I suggest we stick with the known and say this is H. moesta. H. oregonensis is listed as 4.0 - 5.0mm, while H. moesta is 6.0-7.5mm. I don't tend to like using subspecies names and the bowditchi merely seems to refer to H. moesta with yellow and black elytra as opposed to entirely yellow or almost entirely black.

Anyway, very nice photo and another new species for BugGuide :)

mentions H. moesta has 2 large white patches on each side of the pronotum and not one large and one small like this one and that it is always impossbile to tell without disection of the male (the same info he gave me for the mountain ladybird I posted.. (I am probably wrong but I wanted to let you know.) I send the picture to you if you want to look at it.

While I made a bit of an error on your mountain ladybird, I believe this one is correct as H. moesta bowditchi. Unlike yours, this one is a very good copy of Gordon's fig. 604-j. And as seen in fig 604, the pale markings on the pronotum can vary at bit, including the pattern seen on this one. While some H. m. bowditchi might be confused with other Hippodamia (H. quinquesignata, H. glacialis, etc.), when they look like this one I don't believe there's much uncertainty. But someday a real ladybird expert will visit our site and fix all my errors. Thanks for the challenge. :)

Chapin's review of Hippodamia(1) has 7 illustrations of H. o*regonensis, all with white anterior pronotal margins, and 10 of H. moesta, all without white margins there. I definitely support H. moesta here.

We've got an empty subspecies node for H. m. bowditchi, and according to Gordon, this individual fits:

"Hippodamia m. moesta [the nominate subspecies] is a coastal form occurring at low altitudes from southern British Columbia to northern California." (p. 739)

On his map, only H. m. bowditchi is in Montana, and between that and the high altitude, this must be H. m. bowditchi.

I wouldn't make a big deal about it except that we already have that empty node, and without two subspecies (i.e., w/o the nominate subsp.), the "Browse" tab for H. moesta shows no images of the species at all.

See this forum discussion for an explanation that comes from higher up the totem pole than me!