Mountain goats almost seem like living myths in a lot of ways.
The way they can scale apparently sheer cliffs, moving effortlessly between tiny footholds, and their feats of endurance.
They mostly live in drier, hotter areas, but even many of these places are seasonal.
While watching a nature documentary featuring these intrepid climbers with my family, my son asked me a simple question—where do they go during winter?
I had no idea, so I decided to look into it and find out.
So, where do mountain goats go in winter?
For mountain goats distributed in areas with extreme seasonal weather variance, they will tend to move to lower-elevations for the winter months. They tend to flock to south-facing, old growth forests, for protection in the rocky outcrops. But they don’t really migrate or stray too far from home.
Mountain goats do not really travel all that far, then, in preparation for the colder months.
Depending on where they are in the world, they may have to put up with very low temperatures indeed.
However, they are some of the hardiest of goats, and can put up with extreme cold.
Let’s look further into this.
Do mountain goats live in the Arctic?
No, they don’t.
They live in alpine and subalpine environments, but they do not live in the Artic itself.
They may, sometimes, be found in the Arctic Circle, but even this is rare.
They tend to stay south of such extreme temperatures.
The arctic itself is really not home to many herbivores.
There is virtually no plant life there to sustain large populations living there year-round.
Mammals that live there do so by hunting other organisms—seals eat Arctic fish, and polar bears eat seals.
Mountain goats are hardy creatures that can put up with a great degree of cold, but there is no way they would survive in the Arctic continent itself.
It would be way too cold, for one thing—more than even they could handle.
Even if they could stand the cold, though, there would still be very little for them to eat.
So, no, hardy as they are, mountain goats do not live in the Arctic.
Which state has the most mountain goats?
So, mountain goats aren’t commonly found in the Arctic—it’s too cold for them.
Where can they be found most abundantly, then?
In the United States, at least, the highest concentration of mountain goats is actually in Idaho.
That said, populations across the northwest are fairly constant, and there are also large populations in Washington and British Columbia.
In Idaho, most of the populations of mountain goats live in the center of the state.
This is where a lot of the highest elevations are, and where they best thrive.
Do mountain goats hibernate?
No, mountain goats do not hibernate.
The problem for goats hibernating is that they have a difficult time building up fat and food stores in order to be able to do so.
Bears, for instance, are able to hibernate by building up reserves of fat before the winter, so that they can go many months without eating.
They are in desperate need of food when they emerge, but they can make it.
Goats cannot do this, needing to spend most of their time feeding to get all of their nutrients.
So, if they don’t sleep through the winter, do they migrate for it instead?
Do mountain goats migrate for winter?
No, they don’t migrate either!
As I said, sometimes, they will move to lower elevations to try and find some protection from the worst of the winter weather.
South-facing slopes are usually their choice, as this protects them from snowfall.
Without coming down, they remain safe from wandering predators even during the winter months.
Living sometimes above 13,000 feet, where they are in fact the largest animal at such an elevation, it can get very cold, but they are more than able to put up with it.
During the winter months, they tend to subsist on tundra grasses and forbs.
These are still readily available and abundant during the winter, and being able to live off such food is how they are adapted to survive in these conditions.
So, no, they don’t migrate and they have no need to!
Where do mountain goats live in Canada?
Canada is also home to large mountain goat populations, but the country is famously much colder than the United States is.
So, how do the mountain goats living at these heights deal with the temperature?
Well, again, they tend to live south of the Arctic Circle in Canada.
South of this, there are many regions where mountain goats can live comfortably in Canada, even in the harsh winter months.
Their tactics are largely the same: move to south-facing cliffs and forests, and take shelter behind outcrops of rock for the harshest and worst of the weather.
They tend to be found most commonly and widely in Canada’s western mountains.
So, though they are able to put up with pretty low temperatures, mountain goats generally tend to stick to warmer climates, to begin with.
Those that do live in areas with very cold winters, don’t tend to move very far from home for the cold season.
They simply find a south-facing cliffside or forest and wait out the colder months there.
Then, they return to their old peaks.ountain