Sentinels of the Northern slopes: Mountain Goats, Avalanches and Ceremonial Robes

To be a mountain goat is to live where no one else dares. High above the treelines of Southeast Alaska, the alpine mammals creep along ridgelines and mountainsides through dense snow in search of bare ground where they can forage for food. Winds howl through peaks, shaping the landscape, and rain slicks the rocks, making every step a risk. Clouds hug the slopes, sometimes passing intermittently, other times shrouding the mountains in fog for weeks at a time.

Their white coats, tangled with wind and weather, once provided warmth not just for themselves, but for Alaska Native weavers who spun their wool into transgenerational stories. These robes weren’t just clothing, they were expressions of ceremony, identity and place.

“Indigenous peoples … have long used mountain goat wool to weave blankets, and the horns for spoons and bowls. Mountain goat meat is also a vital subsistence resource where other large mammals are scarce,” said Kevin White, an ecologist with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the University of Alaska Southeast. Today, White is studying one of the greatest and least understood threats to mountain goats: avalanches.

Adapted for danger

To survive in the most extreme alpine environments, mountain goats are well-adapted to challenging weather and terrain. Their hooves have a hard outer rim for edging into rock and soft, textured pads for gripping slick slopes. Shaggy outer hair and dense undercoats not only keep them warm during winter, but they also provide camouflage that lets them blend into snowfields and cloudy mountain peaks.

Their greatest defense is terrain. Wolves, bears, and wolverines – their main predators – rarely follow them where they go. Mountain goats seek the steepest cliffs, narrowest ledges and sharpest spines for safety. It’s even where they go to give birth. Within hours, newborns must be able to stand and climb. Their first steps are their first test, and many don’t survive. Mountains are their shelter, and also their greatest threat, one exacerbated by a changing climate.

As the climate warms, the frequency, timing and severity of avalanches are changing, and so are the lives of the mountain goats that depend on the steep terrain for survival. Falls are a significant cause of death. Even a seasoned animal missteps as loose rocks give way or snow turns to ice.

They eat whatever is available on the mountain: grasses, sedges, mosses, lichens, and shrubs. In winter, they paw through snow, descend into forests or, as White and his team recently discovered, venture into avalanche debris fields to find exposed vegetation.

Sentinel species of the alpine

On cliff edges, mountain goats carry more than just themselves; they carry signals. They are a sentinel species, animals that can detect early risks to humans by providing warnings of impending danger.

“They respond more rapidly to climate change compared to species in low elevation areas, making them valuable as barometers for how alpine environments are being affected,” White said.

Evidence from long-term climate data has led to a clear scientific consensus that the global climate is changing due to human activities. Within this broader trend, change is occurring more rapidly in high-elevation mountain ecosystems compared to the global average. These environments are particularly vulnerable to shifts in temperature, snowpack and seasonal timing — all factors that directly influence the species adapted to survive there.

Because mountain goats depend heavily on snow-dominated systems, their population dynamics offer insight into how alpine wildlife may respond to a warming climate. Snowfall patterns, summer temperatures and the timing and length of the growing season all affect forage availability and quality. These climatic factors also influence the risk of predation and access to forage landscapes.

To study these changes, White and his team placed radio collars on more than 400 mountain goats across four study areas in Southeastern Alaska. Over a 17-year period, they closely monitored mountain goats’ movement patterns and causes of death using satellite tracking, aerial surveys and ground investigations. They identified avalanches as the leading cause of mortality, responsible for 36% of all deaths. In the most avalanche-prone regions, this number exceeded 60%.

Not all mountain goat deaths are evenly distributed across age classes. While predators and starvation typically remove young or elderly animals, avalanches kill at random, including healthy goats of prime reproductive age. Such losses can severely impact long-term population viability. Mountain goats typically birth just one kid per year, and population growth rates range between just 1 and 4% annually. With a lifespan of 12 to 15 years, heavy avalanche mortality can quickly destabilize isolated herds.

Beyond their ecological consequences, avalanches themselves are also changing.

“There are two main types of avalanches: Large snowpack avalanches caused by unstable, massive snow accumulations and rain-on-snow avalanches, where rain forms a hard crust beneath a smaller snow layer that causes instability,” White said. “Even years with little snow but persistent instabilities can produce avalanches.”

While avalanches pose significant risks to mountain goats they also provide risky opportunities. One afternoon, White’s research team was tracking goats from a plane on a tributary of the Tsirku River in the Haines area. Honing in on the animal, they were unsure whether it would be found alive or dead. As they neared, they saw the goat beside a glide avalanche that had torn through the slope, removing six to eight feet of snow and exposing the vegetation beneath.

With telemetry tracking technology, White was able to track the same animals from winter into spring and summer, and one thing became clear.

“As spring approached and as the area started melting back, the avalanche exposed an area that had greened up much earlier than other areas, and provided food for the goats when they were having kids,” White said.

While Southeast Alaska lacks a detailed avalanche trend analysis the region is expected to become both warmer and wetter with less precipitation falling as snow. Collaborative research, including large-scale avalanche modeling may soon provide localized insights, building on work supported by the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center and White’s foundational studies.

In these ways, mountain goats provide more than a window into their own survival. In northern Southeast Alaska, where deer are absent, they are a key prey species, meaning their population trends influence predators, plant communities, and the overall structure of the alpine food web. Their vulnerability reflects the broader ecological pressures shaping alpine systems, helping scientists detect emerging threats, monitor ecosystem health and understand the cascading effect of climate change at high elevations.

From avalanche to Aatóow

For Indigenous communities in Alaska, mountain goats are a vital source of food, tools, art and identity. Their wool, carefully harvested and spun by hand, is woven into ceremonial robes that tell stories, mark lineages and hold the memory and connection to the land.

Weavers Marsha Hotch and Lani Hotch of the Chilkat Indian Village in Klukwan, along with other Tlingit weavers, have continued to carry the traditional ways forward.

“The wool in particular was valued for weaving robes. Though the hides are thin, the wool was collected and used in Chilkat weaving or even stuffed into moccasins. Sometimes, the wool was mixed with grass for added texture and warmth,” said Marsha Hotch.

While the traditional use of mountain goat wool declined with colonization and the advent of more accessible materials, such as merino wool, efforts to revitalize these practices have gained momentum in recent decades.

Teri Rofkar, a celebrated Tlingit artist from Sitka, led this resurgence. After more than 15 years of gathering and preparing wool, Rofkar wove the first all mountain goat Ravenstail robe in over two centuries. Much of this wool was provided by mountain goats that died in avalanches collected by White. By providing wool from goats found during mortality investigations, White has helped support Tlingit weavers in continuing their craft with the traditional materials that shaped it.

These collaborations demonstrate that ecological research serves not only conservation but also nourishes culture and supports Indigenous sovereignty.

“It takes four times longer to prepare and spin mountain goat wool than commercial wool. But I still do it, because my ancestors used it … The robes are not just garments. They hold titles. They tell stories,” said Marsha Hotch.

The Hotches represent a powerful continuation of tradition. Their weaving is not only a cultural practice but a form of education, one that holds memory and meaning across generations.

Lani Hotch’s approach blends the old and the new. Though her work uses traditional materials and structures, it’s guided by her own creative vision.

“I follow the old ways in terms of materials and structures, but I design my pieces. I have a story I want to tell, then I figure out how to weave it,” said Lani Hotch. “When you have something really good, you don’t keep it to yourself. You share it. Whether that’s food, knowledge, or stories, we pass it around. That’s how we keep each other going.”

But that cycle of giving and creating is increasingly threatened. Climate change is not only altering the landscapes where goats live, it’s altering everything dependent on the species.

“[Climate change] affects the snowpack, the river, the fish, and the goats,” said Lani Hotch. “If one of those disappears, it’s not just a loss of food, it’s a loss of culture.”

Mountain goats are more than just climbers of treacherous terrain. They are connecting climate science to cultural survival. As scientists like White study the impacts of a changing world, and weavers like Marsha and Lani Hotch carry their knowledge forward, protecting the mountain goat is not just about protecting a species, but a way of life.