As we ascended, we heard some distant whoomphing noises that soon after were followed by a thunderous clamour from accross the valley as an avalanche poured off of Going to the Sun mountain. We re-assessed our route several times and were mindful about the avvy potential on Goat, but there was not much snow to worry about. Still, we stayed out of the gully and stuck to moderate slopes - this was also because of the snow covering everything - it would have made any hands on scrambling quite difficult.
When we got within 300 metres of the peak, our route was blocked by some cliffs/cracks that dropped off sharply below us, but we managed to carefully navigate around them. Descending we thought briefly about following the ridge south and going back more directly to the car, but to be conservative we didn't stray too far south and eventually rejoined our route form the morning.
The elevation gain was a lot more than I'd thought(4,156 ft/1266 m)! Took us a bit longer to get to the summit than planned... Guess we should've studied the map closer. My legs were just about done by the time we got to the top (El.: 8826 ft/2690 m) and my hamstrings were on the verge of cramping. The summit was truly getting blasted by the wind and blowing snow, which made it quite unpleasant, so we didn't linger too long.
A google of 'Goat Mountain' shows that at one time (back in the 1940's), there had been a trail maintained by the park all the way to the summit. The trail had been abandoned by the early 70's, as per George Ruhle's 'Guidebook to Glacier Park'.
