Our snowstorm has me thinking about springtime and the warmer days and photo opportunities it brings.
Last year, COVID caused the Forest Service to shut down Mount Evans, preventing me from visiting these high-altitude denizens. I am hopeful that this year things will have improved enough that they will allow it to open.
So, for this image, I go back to Labor Day weekend 2019, the last opportunity I had to visit the rarified air of Mount Evans and the mountain goats. This handsome fellow was really quite the poser and gave me some nice captures as he looked toward the early morning sun.
While mountain goats have become a somewhat iconic symbol of Colorado wildlife, they actually are not native to the state. Six transplant operations from 1948 to 1972 brought 50 or so of them as game animals and tourist attractions. They now number in the thousands.