The summer pelage of different subspecies varies drastically but, in general, it is dark or cinnamon brown, turning to grey with a yellowish tinge during the winter.

The alpine pika is found in western Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, and Russia (Tuva, Irkutsk, Altai, and Krasnoyarsk), as well as in China (northern Xinjiang and Heilongjiang), in very cold, mountainous regions.

German zoologist and botanist Peter Simon Pallas originally described the alpine pika in 1773, in his work Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs.

[2][3] It is a large species in the pika family, Ochotonidae, which consists of small mammals that have short ears, forelimbs very slightly longer than hindlimbs, and no external tail.

In 1980, Vladimir Sokolov and V. N. Orlov treated them as separate species, with their ranges overlapping in the Khenteii and Khangai Mountains in Mongolia.

The latus (side of the body between the rib cage and the uppermost and largest part of the hip bone) is tinged with rust-red, and the underside is pale yellowish ochre.

[5] The alpine pika inhabits mountainous areas in western Mongolia bordering the Gobi Desert, eastern Kazakhstan, southern Russia (Tuva, Irkutsk, Altai, and Krasnoyarsk) and China (northern Xinjiang and Heilongjiang).

[5][1] It is found on mountain ranges such as the Altai, Khangai, and Sayan, and is also distributed from the east and south of Lake Baikal eastward to the Amur River drainage.

[10] It occupies talus piles (collection of broken rock pieces at the base of cliffs, volcanoes, or valley shoulders, accumulated due to periodic rockfall from adjacent cliff faces) with larger stones and rocky areas although it does not inhabit swampy montane tundra or talus lacking vegetation.

By 1986 or 1987, a few localities that had high alpine pika population densities 16 to 17 years earlier became devoid of the species, due to its low reproductive rate and the insular nature of its habitat.

[5] The alpine pika is a generalist herbivore, mainly foraging for mosses, trees branches, pine nuts, and plant stems, which it gathers during the summer to create haypiles for use in winter.

Both males and females have been observed to mark corners of stones mostly located near the center of their home territory, from April to December, by rubbing their neck glands against them.

The female's fecundity is low, as with other pikas inhabiting talus piles, and the size of litters decreases as the elevation increases.

[5][9] Internal parasites of the alpine pika include many worm species, such as Schizorchis altaica, Cephaluris andrejevi, Heligmosomum dubinini, and Eugenuris schumakovitschi.