Researchers used to find mountain goats every time they visited Pinto Canyon. Now they walk entire survey routes without seeing a single one.
Mountain goats have long occupied the steep cliffs of Pinto Canyon in Alberta, navigating terrain that few other large mammals can reach. Groups of ten or twelve animals were once a routine sight for researchers visiting the canyon each season. Over time, those sightings became less frequent. Today, a full survey can pass without any goats at all, just tracks pressed into the ground, hair caught on vegetation, and the quiet accumulation of an absence that has grown harder to ignore.
Ghosts in the Canyon, directed by Jordan Hoffmaster and Jon Johnston, follows two researchers returning to the canyon to search for what remains. The cliffs the goats inhabit are still protected. The surrounding landscape is not. Forestry operations, oil and gas development, and other industrial activity have transformed the ecosystems connecting Pinto Canyon to the wider region, disrupting the movement routes, forage areas, and ecological relationships that a protected cliff face alone cannot provide. The film sits with that uncomfortable gap between what conservation has achieved and what it has not, using the researchers’ long familiarity with this population to make the loss feel specific and real. They remember a time when finding goats was simply part of the work. Now, the most significant observation they can make is the absence of something that used to be there.
Filmmakers Hoffmaster and Johnston are based in Missoula, Montana. Johnston is a natural history cinematographer and certified professional wildlife tracker who specialises in filming elusive animals through Muddy Hollows Films. Hoffmaster’s other recent work includes Something to Hold (2026), which premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Why This Film Matters
Protecting a stretch of habitat is not the same as protecting the ecological relationships that make it viable. The story of Pinto Canyon’s mountain goats is a quiet illustration of that gap, and a reminder that conservation boundaries drawn around the places where animals are most visible may not extend far enough to keep them there. Ghosts in the Canyon documents a population that could disappear with very little public awareness, and makes the case that recognising what we are losing, while we can still do something about it, is itself a form of conservation.
Film Credits
Filmmakers: Jordan Hoffmaster and Jon Johnston
A Muddy Hollow Films Production, in association with Friendly Fishes Films
Film Sponsors: Fiera Biological and Alberta Conservation Association
Location: Pinto Canyon, Alberta, Canada
Runtime: 9 minutes
Release Year: 2026