Goat Rocks Wilderness 9-2009
Location: USA,WA - 60 miles south of Mount Rainer NP
A Mountain-Goat habitat - We sighted at least 20 in 2 days.
Bill and Maret descending Old Snowy Peak
Trip companions Maret and Bill
Maret on the summit of Old Snowy Peak, with Mt. Raineer in background
Eagle-eye Bill with binoculars spotting 3 goats
White boulders sprinkle the slopes in the region, making for a lot of false goat sightings. Positive IDs where made with the use of Maret’s binoculars. The magnification removed all doubt and brought the experience to a more real level. Most of the goats were viewed from over a mile away.
Goat Lake
Uncharacteristically the lake was ice free, but none the less numbingly foreboding. Here we had four goat sightings. One of these was a young adult which came within 100 meters of us. After some moments of admiring the creature, Bill perked up, bound off along the trail and then climbed up a steep slope to circle around the goat and crept up close to it. From hence forth Bill was known as “He-Who-Dances-With-Mountain-Goats.”
Bill and Maret, with Mount Saint Helens in the distance
Our premium camp location abounded with many evening delights: a goat grazing high on a ridge; a balcony view of an alpine meadow with a deer; an endless range of mountains bathed in amber light near sunset; a cloud ring around the belly of Mount Saint Helens; a large mushroom shaped cloud periodically rising above the summit of Mount Saint Helens giving the appearance of a small eruption; the red glow of sunset off the glaciers of Mount Saint Helens attesting to the mountain’s ancient presence; and pleasant weather made a wonderful day seem complete. Just as night set in, the moon would flick on as a cinema movie projector and a steady stream of small clouds provided our feature film. Starring of course fluffy creatures – puddles and oh - lions and tiger and bears oh my!
