Road block:
And then as we continued our ascent, we encountered this mountain goat and her lamb on the trail. These animals were
quite content to stay in the path and browse
on the shrubs. Our half-hearted attempts to shush the animals off the trail resulted only in their giving us long,
baleful glares, as you see here.
They simply would not leave. We were flummoxed. Neither of us could interpret the mother's
mood, and we did not know how she might respond since she had young with her. Note that she has very long horns, and I suspect
she knows how to use them.
I noticed a few hikers about 30 m beyond the goats, blocked in their attempts to descend our trail, as we were
blocked in our attempts to ascend it. We were all frozen on the path.
What could we do? We were less than 1 km from where I suspected to find
the Pinguicula, but we were stymied by a pair of mountain goats.
We were eating up time--we were just about at the halfway point in the day, at which we would have to return towards the car.
But the goat would not move, so after a while we turned and headed back down the valley. This was a 20 km hike, by
the way.
I've had countless previous experiences in almost, but not quite, reaching carnivorous plant sites. Usually I do not even mention
those trips on my travel reports. However, this incident was worth describing as certainly the
oddest reason I have ever been foiled.
