Stone Sheep

Stone Sheep, the sight of one—or two or three—perched on a ledge on a high rock cliff above the Alaska Highway will bring your vehicle to the side of the road and your camera to your eye just as surely as the sight of a grizzly. They turn craggy heads with great curved horns. Their strangely delicate faces fix inquisitive eyes down on you.

You do not bother them. You would need pitons, ropes, time–and youth–to get to their ledge. Their slender fur patched bodies, on the other hand, can bound up and down the cliffside like squirrels run up and down a tree. Looking at them you really cannot picture that. But they rest on a tiny ledge a few hundred feet above you, and they got themselves there somehow.

Bears on the Alaska Highway

Sheep populate the Alaska Highway right alongside the bears and the moose and the other magnificent creatures who call Northern Canada home. Not humble places, British Columbia and Yukon Territory do not host humble creatures. You can forget the simple, wool covered critter the word “sheep” brings to mind. The Alaska Highway presents Stone Sheep.

If you are not from there, you have not seen a creature like this before. According to the website “Discover the Outdoors”, they stand thirty-six to forty-two inches in height, and weigh between 125 and 200 pounds. They live on high mountains, usually above the timberline. The website

Approximately 3,000 Stone Sheep populate the Canadian Rockies in Yukon and British Columbia, and they reproduce slowly. Ewes reach breeding age at three and have one lamb a year. Rams must wait until their horns get big enough to establish their dominance—seven to nine years.

Sadly, most of them never make it.

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