Wildlife in Yellowstone

We spent last week in Yellowstone National Park. This wasn't our typical trip. There was some minimal hiking, but otherwise, it was mostly riding in vans, looking for wildlife, and watching said wildlife in scopes. It was an amazing trip. When we visited Yellowstone in 2015, we did a one-day guided wildlife watching trip with a company called The Wild Side Wolf Tours (we paid for our trip). We had a great time and learned a lot from our guide, but it was August, which is not the best time to see wolves or grizzly bears. We saw other animals, but our guide said we really needed to come back in winter for a week-long tour. So, last week, we did and he was completely right.

We had ten people plus our guides, which was a good number (and it was a good group!). We spent our days in the park and there were fascinating talks in the evenings after dinner. The tour itself was three days, but another guest asked if Michael and I wanted to go in with her on an additional day. We decided that spending more time in the park was preferable to spending that time in Bozeman. Don't get me wrong, Bozeman is a lovely town, but I am always going to choose to spend time in the great outdoors vs. spending time in town.

All said and done, we saw about a dozen individual wolves from three different packs (Junction Butte, Lamar Valley, and the 8 Mile Subgroup) on three out of four days. On two of the days, we saw wolf tracks and spots where they had marked their territory on the side of the road. On our last day, we were able to follow their tracks up over ridges with the scopes, but we never actually spotted any of the animals. We also saw, over the course of the week: bighorn sheep, lots of bison, moose, elk, pronghorn antelope, mule, deer, bald eagles, golden eagles, mountain goats, coyotes, pine martens, and foxes.

Michael and I spent couple of days in Bozeman before meeting our group and going to Yellowstone. The first afternoon in the park, the group took a quick trip to Mammoth Hot Springs. It was really neat to see it in the snow and without millions of our closest friends.

One of the terraces above Canary Spring.

Looking north towards Mammoth.

Green terraces on one of the lower springs. That really is the color!

The next three days, we started our morning at 5:45 at a little restaurant near our hotel. By 6:30 a.m., we were all in the vans, headed for the Lamar Valley to see if we could find wolves.

The temperatures never made it much above 20 degrees all week. On our first day in Lamar Valley, they struggled to get out of negative numbers. The picture above is the temperature at 8:15 a.m.

What follows is wildlife and scenery pictures from four days in Lamar Valley.

 Sunrise from the Lamar Valley.

 A bison cow near where we were watching wolves.

Setting up scopes to watch the Junction Butte Pack of wolves feeding on a carcass.

On our first day in the valley, we did a short hike from Yellowstone Picnic Area up onto a ridge above the Lamar River Narrows. We had a great view from the top of the ridge and there were animal tracks everywhere.

 Looking out over the Lamar River.

 Mountain Lion tracks. I should have put something in the photo for scale. The track itself is about the size of my palm.

 A thermal area on the Lamar River.

 A collared bison cow.

One night we walked around the town of Gardiner, which is where we were staying. We came across two young elk sparring and pushing each other around. They didn't pay much attention to us, but every now and then, they would stop and watch traffic on the main road.

There really are wolves in this picture! Four of them! Our third day, we got to see the Junction Butte Pack again. This was the closest we ever got to them. The view through the scopes was pretty good, though. They were a lot closer than our earlier sighting and they were playing in the snow.  We were able to observe them for close to an hour (maybe? It seemed like a long time). One nice thing about The Wild Side: They had enough scopes for everyone, so we all got to spend as much time as we wanted watching the wolves without worrying that others weren't getting an opportunity to watch the animals. Not every company does that.

 Bighorn Sheep working it for the camera. We had a theory

 Another view of a very photogenic Bighorn Sheep.

 The Lamar River on a gray morning.

 On our last official day with the whole group, we got to do a short walk up Pebble Creek Canyon. So pretty!

 Another view of the canyon.

 Pebble Creek under a lot of snow.

Pine Martens! These guys are members of the weasel family and they move fast (which is why it isn't the sharpest picture)

We saw a number of coyotes on the trip. There is actually one in this photo. It blends into the sagebrush really well. See if you can find it.

On our last day in Montana, we drove around the valley around Bozeman as much as our little two-wheel drive rental car would allow. This farm was in the hills near Bridger Bowl Ski Area.

Wyoming & Montana, Part 3: Yellowstone National Park

After our backpacking trip, we headed to Yellowstone. We stayed at Canyon Village campground for four nights. It took us forever to drive there from Grand Teton National Park because we kept stopping to see all of the cool things along the way. We kept saying, "we really need to just focus on getting there," and then we'd come around a corner to something amazing and throw that idea out the window. That basically started at the entrance sign and continued all the way until we pulled into the campsite.

The Lewis River at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

Lewis Falls.

We stopped at the West Thumb Geyser basin. This mud pot is in the parking lot. It was actively bubbling and spewing sulfurous steam.

One of the pools in West Thumb Geyser Basin. I think this area was my favorite of the developed thermal areas that we visited while we were in Yellowstone. We happened to be there when it wasn't horribly crowded and it sits right on Yellowstone Lake, which made for a pretty backdrop.

Yellowstone Lake from the West Geyser Basin boardwalk

Mimmulus guttatus (Monkey Flower). These little guys were growing right next to a thermal feature where nothing else was growing at all.

Black Pool in West Thumb Geyser Basin

Yellowstone Lake from Pumice Beach.

A bison bull in Hayden Valley.

Our second morning in Yellowstone, we took a guided wildlife tour. It was fabulous (we paid for the tour). Our guide, MacNeil, did a great job and we learned so much about the park from him. Right off the bat, we saw this bull elk near the road. 

Another view of him. The stringy thing hanging over his eye is actually some of the velvet that he's been rubbing off of his antlers.

Hayden Valley in the morning light.

A bison bull along the Yellowstone River.

Lamar Valley. We didn't wind up seeing any wolves or grizzly bears, but like I said, the wildlife tour was absolutely worth it. We did see bald eagles, sandhill cranes, a badger, a weasel and lots of bison.

After our tour, we went up to Mammoth. This is above Canary Spring. The red color is from algae growing in the heated water.

Canary Spring.

A Western Tanager near Canary Spring.

We had dinner in Gartiner, Montana. On our way back, we drove Blacktail Plateau Drive. We had asked a ranger in the Mammoth Visitor Center about the drive and he pretty much said, "eh...it is another hill." We drove it anyway and did not regret it. It is quiet and we had great views up there.

Our last stop of the day was Tower Falls. When I was there in 1998, you could hike down to the base of the falls. Not so, anymore. Apparently, mud slides in 2004 resulted in the closure of the trail. It was pretty anyway and since we were there late in the evening, there were very few other people there.

On our last full day in Yellowstone, we did two short hikes. The first was a loop that began along the south rim of Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We followed the river for a couple of miles out to Artist Point. We took a side trip down Uncle Tom's Trail, which leads down a series of metal stairs to a stunning view of the lower falls. Since we were there early in the morning, we had the viewpoint to ourselves and we had great light. It was definitely worth the hike down and the climb back out.

The Lower Falls from Artist Point. This was the only crowded place on our hike. By the time we got there, the tour buses had arrived. From there, we took a right and immediately entered the Yellowstone backcountry. Within about 25 feet, we had left all of the madness behind and had the place to ourselves.

One of the features of the loop we did was a backcountry thermal basin. This one is small compared to some of the others, but it was neat to hike through one without boardwalks (stay on trail!) or crowds. I would have liked to have spent a bit more time here, but it was pretty exposed and there was a thunderstorm passing through.

The end of the hike took us up on a ridge overlooking Hayden Valley. Storms were passing through the area, making for dramatic photos. We saw a bison bull near here, but I didn't get a good photo of it. It is a completely different experience to see one when you aren't near your car (we did not get close). Not bad for a hike finished before lunch.

As an aside, since we had our own food, we had lunch in one of the picnic areas along the way to the other side of the park. The picnic areas might be the best kept secret in Yellowstone. We wound up eating in three of them. They were all pretty and away from the madness of the dining facilities in the park.

After our morning hike, we drove to the other side of the park to see some of the more famous thermal features. This is Grand Prismatic Spring. We hiked from here to Fairy Falls and back. Unfortunately, although Grand Prismatic Spring and Fairy Falls were very nice, in between was like hiking through a pine plantation. The area burned badly in 1988, so all of the trees are the same age and are pretty dense. It isn't a bad hike, but it was a lot of walking through pine trees that are twelve feet tall.

 Fairy Falls.

One of the few views along the trail to Fairy Falls.

Old Faithful. This was as crowded as one would expect, but Michael had never seen it.

After dinner, we drove Fire Hole Lake Drive. Again, going in the evening meant it was quiet. There were thunderstorms rolling through again, so we sat out and tried to photograph lightning.

I got lucky once and captured a lightning strike - the first time I've ever been able to get one.

On the way back to Canyon Campground, we were treated to an incredible sunset. What we didn't realize at the time was that the brilliant red was due to smoke from wildfires to the west that was rolling in. More on that in the next post.

On our last morning, we did laundry, dried out gear from the previous night's storm (Michael spread the gear out in the parking lot of the general store and wound up being photographed by tourists as they drove by...seriously). We drove out through the Lamar Valley towards Red Lodge, Montana, and happened to see this bison bull rolling in the dust. It was funny to see such a large animal throw himself down on the ground and roll around.

So, after spending three days in Grand Teton National Park, I want to go back and backpack for a month there. I have the same problem with Yellowstone. I need to go back and do some actual backpacking there. So many cool things to see, so little time. 

Next post: the bike trip.