Photo: Mountain goats on a ledge.

When we left Seattle, I had two kinds of wildlife on my list to see: moose and mountain goats. On our previous trips we had made special trips to bays known to harbor moose and spent time sweeping moutainsides with binoculars at Tracy Arm and Glacier Bay looking for goats. Both had eluded us. Now that I had seen a moose on the Stikine River, I was determined to check off the goats. So when the Park Ranger at our orientation told us mountain goats had been spotted on a rocky promontory called “Gloom”, I was determined to go there.

We saw this goat and her kid on a ledge about a third of the way up the hillside. We watched them moving easily up the rocky slopes. Then as we were leaving, Steve spotted a herd of goats near the top. They were worth waiting for.