up the Mess Creek canyon

Since watching Monty Bassett and Cas Sowa's film Life on the Vertical about mountain goats in the Stikine canyon I've wanted to view and film goat myself. I had heard that there was a goat population living in the Mess Creek canyon which flows into the Stikine from the south side between Telegraph Creek and Glenora.

Stikine River Song river tours have pretty much closed down regular business for the season but Dan Pakula is still taking individual clients on trips and doing other business at the office in Telegraph so I planned to have him ferry me over to the other side in his jet boat, the Ali-B.

It's been raining pretty steadily over the last few days but a weather report predicted a sunny day for the 24th. so after a delicious Wednesday dinner at Dan and Dianne's I arranged with him to take me over in the morning.

I decided to take the camera as well as the video camera and tripod. The tripod is really too heavy and bulky to take hiking and this was duly confirmed as I lugged it four and a half hours uphill through the bush and then down again.

It was a beautiful day and the canyon is spectacular. I saw goat sign, moose sign and bear sign but no goat, no moose and no bear. That's the way it goes in the wild. I really enjoyed watching a curious chipmunk watching me though and the fresh feces, tracks and trails were evidence of the presence of all the big animals I was hoping to see.