Distinctly Montana Magazine

G unsight Lake occupies a mile-long trough at the bottom of a more or less east-facing cirque that drains northeast from the park and eventually into Hudson Bay. From the lake it's a three-mile climb and a two thousand- foot elevation charge to Gunsight Pass and the Continental Divide. There were nine of us in the group: Marsha and I in one tent; Jeremy, Wendy, and their two-year-old daughter Kestrel in another tent; and Miles, Zerc, Pinball, and Petey, our rent-a-llamas, over by the hitching post. We'd made the six-mile hike in from the Going-to-the-Sun Road that day, and while I fished that evening, the oth- ers tidied up the cooking gear, hung our bright red llama- panniers to keep them out of reach of bears and deer, and generally got comfortable for the night. There were some big fires west of the park—it was so dry that the national forests out that way were closed to hiking. But for us, high in the park, the only effect of the fires was to make all the views hazy and the predawn skies a deep rose. On such a dawn, after two cool nights camped at the shore of this lake, we rammed everything back in the panniers, hung them on the sides of the llamas, and marched off to conquer the pass. After the rest of us crossed the swaying footbridge across the outlet of the lake, Marsha led the "packstring" of four llamas across the shallow stream, and we began to climb. I'd never before encountered an animal that seemed to get so absorbed in a good view the way the llamas did. Whenever we stopped at a steep place, "my" llama Miles would move right to the edge and gaze intently off into the smoky distance. I suppose a few thousand genera- tions of South American mountain lions made him that way, but it was fun to pretend that he was as impressed by the view as we were. DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL For more paintings by Marsha, see … www.distinctlymontana.com/goats122 www.distinctlymontana.com 19 They were terrific animals to hike with. They were cooperative, attentive, and enormously amusing, and their habit of humming back and forth to each other was a soothing force I missed for weeks after the trip was over. It only took them a day or so to have the rest of us quietly humming, now and then, in imitation or just because it felt good. But the llamas weren't prepared for goats. This was all the more surprising because they barely deigned to notice the deer we encountered on the trail and at the Gunsight Lake campsite. Gunsight Pass's goats, a little like the goats at Logan Pass on Going-to-the-Sun Road, were famous. Because of their "habituation" to people (which makes them both a management problem and easy to Goats at Gunsight BY PAUL SCHULLERY ART BY MARSHA KARLE Pass

• Cover