Mountain Goat

On the way back to camp, we stopped at Marsha Peak for a little while. Bob tried to fly his kite but it would not cooperate. I don't know if it was the wind or something else.

As we relaxed and snacked on a narrow saddle several hundred feet above camp and away from the mosquitoes. A mountain goat appeared in front of us. He spotted us without a problem and it seemed like we were in his way. He decided to go down the other side of the ridge instead.

Some people have called me a mountain goat. And I admit that I do have a good sense of balance and can move around steep ground without much difficulty. But I am NOT a mountain goat. This is a mountain goat doing what only mountain goats can do. He walked down this cliff until he was in the middle of the orange colored rock. He scrambled around there for a while before I decided I should get a photo of him from above. I tried to sneak around and was almost there when he decided to go up the cliff. He did it in not time flat. Goats are unbelievable.

Once again, the mosquitoes were beyond bad. Bob decided to go to bed without cooking supper just to get away from them. I decided to go back to the saddle where we had taken a break earlier. So I rounded up my stove and food and headed up the mountain. I couldn't stop because a large herd of mosquitoes were following right behind me. There wasn't any noticeable wind to blow them away which meant that taking a break would also mean a blood donation to a swarm of insects. When I finally got to the saddle I was extremely disappointed to find that I had not escaped the tormentors. But there was no water around and I decided that I could probably kill most of them off and enjoy a decent meal. So I sat down and started swatting (I had a t-shirt and shorts on). They were so bad that I would make a swat unless I could kill at least 5 to 10 of them. That is not an exaggeration. Not only is that the truth but I was constantly swatting. I kept that up for about ten minutes when it seemed like I was making headway. The mosquitoes were finally thinning out. But then I looked behind me. The faintest of breezes had gently blown the mosquitoes out from in front of my face. The sight behind me was another story - the sky seemed full of mosquitoes. I gave up and pulled the rain gear out of my pack and put it on, I pulled the hood over my head and cinched it down. After doing that I heard a familiar noise. It sounded just like rain on the fly of a tent. But it wasn't raining, at least it wasn't raining rain. The mosquitoes were hitting my rain gear in a manner that made it sound like it was raining. But at long last, I was safe. I was finally able to eat my meal while pacing back and forth to keep the mosquitoes at my back. As I hiked back toward the tent I looked down at my hands. It looked as if I had been handling charcoal. My hands were black. I had swatted so many mosquitoes that my hands had become stained with the residue from their wings. Trust me, I was never happier to crawl into a tent.

By the time I got back to the tent I thought Bob was a genius for deciding to go to bed without supper.