January-February 2010: Yellowstone

In late January, we flew to Bozeman, Montana, to begin a 10-day winter adventure in Yellowstone National Park. Our major objective was to participate in a service project sponsored by Exploritas (formerly Elderhostel) at the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center, located in the northwest corner of the park at Gardiner, Montana.

The center is a combination library and archive. It contains written, photographic, and cultural items as well as botanical, archaeological, geological and other artifacts of interest to historians and researchers. Like any such facility, the task of organizing and cataloging everything can be overwhelming for the full-time staff, so Exploritas (working with the University of Montana Western in Dillon, Mont.) periodically sponsors a program like ours that brings in people to help out. Fortunately, skill and experience are not criteria; enthusiasm is much more important.

The first visible sign of winter was from our Seattle-Bozeman flight, as we flew over the mountain ranges of Washington, Idaho, and western Montana.

(click on any photo to enlarge)

We landed at Bozeman in mid-afternoon, picked up our rental car (a Chevy Suburban into which, as Marcia pointed out, we could have loaded our subcompact Honda Fit) and headed for our first destination, the Chico Hot Springs Resort, about halfway to Gardiner. We drove east about 25 miles on Interstate 90 to Livingston, and then south on U.S. 89 through the Paradise Valley, paralleling the Yellowstone River.

The 112-degree hot springs at Chico attracted visitors as early as the late 19th century, and the original lodge (lower right in this photo) was built in 1900 to accommodate tourists.

The centerpiece of the resort is an open-air pool fed by the hot springs, which we inspected but didn't take advantage of (foolishly, we didn't bring our bathing suits to Montana in the winter). Marcia said that she never uses a swimming pool that has snow on the lounge chairs, so bringing our suits probably wouldn't have made a difference.

The current owners, who have been there since 1974, have been sparing with updates, helping to maintain the old western character of the property.

One recent addition is the lobby fireplace, constructed of Finnish soapstone.

The accommodations vary from "quaint and cozy" rooms with and without private bathrooms in the original lodge to more modern units in an adjoining wing, to private cabins, houses and chalets up the hill from the main lodge. And there is one very special unit, which is where Tom wants to stay the next time we're in the area.

After leaving Chico, we headed toward Yellowstone. As we drove into the park, we noticed a number of cars pulled over, and photographers training their telephoto lenses on something near the Gardner River. It turned out to be a herd of about 20 bighorn sheep, including several mature rams. This would be the first of many wildlife sightings over the next several days.

Our first destination inside the park was Mammoth Hot Springs, one of two locations in Yellowstone where lodging (operated by park concessioner Xanterra) is available during the winter. We would spend two nights at the hotel there, then travel about 50 miles into the park to spend two nights at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, and return to Mammoth for one night before starting our Exploritas project. In the photo below, the guest rooms are in the four-story wing on the right (built in 1913) while the lobby and public areas are in the newer (1937) section on the left. 

Though it is on the north edge of the park, Mammoth is at a lower elevation (about 6,200 feet) than other parts of Yellowstone. The road along the north side of the park, from Mammoth east to Tower Jct, and the park Northeast Entrance, via the Lamar Valley, is plowed during the winter while other Yellowstone roads are closed to wheeled vehicles.

Snowmobiles are allowed into the park under strict Park Service limitations that currently allow 318 per day, and then only with park-approved guides. However, the standard method of transportation in winter is the "snow coach," a term that covers a variety of vehicles. This is one of the newest variety, which employs a rubber track conversion system. During the summer, the tracks are removed and replaced with standard wheels and tires.

Many of the buildings at Mammoth were built during the period from 1886 to 1916, when the U.S. Army was in charge of the park. Because Mammoth was at that time the principal entrance to the park, the Army located its command post, Fort Yellowstone, at this location. These are the "double officers' quarters," built between 1891 and 1897, and used today to house National Park Service employees.

On our summer visits to Yellowstone, we had often seen elk strolling around the Mammoth area. Late on our first afternoon a group of more than 30 came down from the nearby hills and begin feeding on the snow-covered lawn outside our hotel window. By this time of year, most of the males have lost their antlers, but as the elk fed, there were some who tried to nudge others out of the way, and the attempts at dominance gave us a pretty good idea of which ones were male. One young elk foraged for a time and then found its mother and started nursing. We watched the elk until darkness fell.

The Mammoth area contains a number of thermal features, even though this location is more than 20 miles north of the Yellowstone caldera. But unlike Old Faithful and other thermal areas within the caldera zone, Mammoth is characterized by hot springs, not geysers. Standing at the Mammoth hotel, you can look toward the Upper Terraces area and see a number of vapor clouds created by these springs.

We enjoyed our time at Mammoth. While there were many people using the hotel and the dining room, the numbers of visitors was far lower than in the summer. We went to the visitor center for a ranger talk about wolves, and ended up as the only two attendees, which gave us plenty of time to ask questions. In the evening, Randy Ingersoll, a longtime employee of the lodging operator (Xanterra) gave a talk about the history of the area. Like many other people that we met at Yellowstone, Randy had come to park years ago, fell in love with it, and stayed.

One of the activities that we decided to pursue while we were at Mammoth was snowshoeing. We are not experienced snowshoers, but fortunately that didn't matter. We rented a couple of pairs and drove to the Upper Terrace thermal area, where a loop road is groomed in winter for snowshoers and skiers. We spent some time talking with a group of cross-country skiers from Calgary, one of whom took our picture at Orange Spring Mound.

As the Park Service's Mammoth Trail Guide says, "thermophiles (heat-loving organisms) create tapestries of color where hot water flows among the terraces. Colorless and yellow thermophiles grow in the hottest water. Orange, brown, and green thermophiles thrive in cooler waters. Colors also change with the seasons." This is another view of Orange Spring Mound.

After we had completed our snowshoe walk around the loop, Marcia proudly pointed to the sign to note our accomplishment.

After two nights at Mammoth, we boarded a snow coach at 8 A.M. for the three-and-a-half hour run to Old Faithful Snow Lodge.

At our first stop, a few miles south of Mammoth, we got a view of the pristine, snow-covered Gallatin Range. The morning light was exquisite on the landscape.

After we reboarded the snow coach, we spotted a couple of frosty bison, one of them burrowing through the snow cover for whatever morsels of grass it could find...

... while the other seemed content to rest in the snow. During winter, bison conserve energy and can often be seen simply remaining stationary, unlike summer when they are often on the move in search of good feeding grounds.

As we continued, we traveled along Indian Creek, where the trees were covered in a heavy layer of snow and frost...

... as were these trees along the Gibbon River.

Our next wildlife spotting was of these two trumpeter swans. The swan population is actually higher in winter than in summer, as they are attracted by the relatively warm waters in the vicinity of thermal features.

We made a rest stop at the Madison warming hut, near where the road from West Yellowstone, Mont., joins the Yellowstone loop road, and then took a bypass to see Firehole Canyon, where the Firehole River drops down a 40-foot falls, surrounded by 800-foot lava flows.

Along the edge of the canyon, the sun provided backlight for these frost-covered trees.

We followed the Firehole River for the rest of our trip to Old Faithful, and as we approached our destination, vapor from the thermal features in the Upper Geyser Basin came into view.

We arrived at Old Faithful Snow Lodge a little before noon, and the coach carrying luggage from Mammoth arrived soon after we did.

Many of the tours operating out of Snow Lodge in winter use the older Bombardier snow coaches shown below. However, they require a heavier snow cover on the roadway than the newer rubber-track units. During the time we were in Yellowstone, the snow cover was relatively light, so the Bombardiers were not venturing north as far as Mammoth.

We had the opportunity to ride in three different varieties of snow coach. We found that, overall, the ride was much rougher than that of a car. Even when groomed, the roads develop ruts from other vehicles; the ruts freeze, and the snow coach often has to zigzag along the road to navigate around the biggest bumps. The Bombardiers are sturdy, tank-like vehicles, and seem to be preferred by the drivers we talked with, but they are noisy machines, and earplugs are a useful option for passengers.

Snow Lodge opened in 1998-99, replacing an older winter facility. Inside the lodge, there's wood everywhere; many of the beams are ornamental, not structural. Despite its name, Snow Lodge is open in summer as well as winter.

Outside our room, the icicles created a wintry atmosphere.

The iconic Old Faithful Inn, built in 1903-04, is closed in winter. However, it provides a backdrop for this trail used by walkers and skiers in the Upper Geyser Basin.

After we checked into Snow Lodge, we took a walk around Geyser Hill, at the south end of the geyser basin, close to Old Faithful. As Marcia wrote in our travel diary, "We followed the boardwalk, which had small snow banks on the sides, and a narrow footpath tramped down in the middle....

... The snowy path was several inches above the wooden paths and there was an obvious need to pay attention to where the walk ended and the thermal areas began. When we did meet someone, neither party could step too far off the center one-way area since you weren't sure where the walk ended. We watched Sawmill Geyser erupt for 19 minutes and it was still going when we left. It had a range of behaviors: low and dispersed sprays, then a plume, then splashing which resulted in diamond-like water drops sparkling in the sun.  It was fascinating to watch since we were alone, and it was so close."

Even some of the smaller features, like Pump Geyser, put on an interesting show.

Walking back to Snow Lodge, there was vapor from thermal features everywhere we looked. We had a real awareness of being surrounded by unpredictable, boiling-hot geological forces.

On the first evening we were at Snow Lodge, we took a Xanterra tour called "Steam, Stars and Winter Soundscapes." Our group boarded two Bombardier snow coaches and headed off to a thermal area called Fountain Paint Pot, part of the Lower Geyser Basin.

The idea was to look at the thermal areas in a new way – to focus less on the visual and more on the audible. We walked the loop under the almost full-moon, listening to the sounds the thermals made. The steam was everywhere in the cold dry air, and it made the mud pots, springs and geysers hard to see. It was magical experience, being all alone with the thermals under starry, moon-lit skies. This is a fumarole near Fountain Paint Pot.

After leaving the thermal area, we stopped at Nez Perce Creek to enjoy hot chocolate under the stars. All in all, our nighttime tour was a very cool experience.

The next morning, we took a long walk through the Upper Geyser Basin. Unlike summer, when there can be crowds at almost any time in the Old Faithful area, we were often by ourselves as we walked along the main path, roughly following the west bank of the Firehole River. In the immediate area of the thermal features, the trees were covered with the heaviest frost we have ever seen – they looked like commercially flocked Christmas trees.

At the Visitor Center, there was a board showing estimated eruption times of the more predictable geysers in the basin. A mid-day eruption was estimated for Riverside Geyser. When we got there, a couple was sitting on a bench across from the geyser. They said they were from from Alexandria, Va., and had been there for more than an hour, waiting for it to erupt.

They had to leave to catch a snow coach to Mammoth without seeing the geyser erupt. We soon got discouraged, too, and began to walk back to Snow Lodge. After we had gone several hundred feet, we looked back to see Riverside erupting, so we returned and watched it for more than 10 minutes.

Earlier, we had passed Grotto Geyser, a short distance from Riverside, and while it was generating a lot of steam, it wasn't doing anything significant.

On our return trip, Grotto also began to erupt. Fountain geysers like Sawmill, Riverside and Grotto spray water in multiple directions at one time, unlike cone geysers (such as Old Faithful) which tend to shoot water in a straight line many feet into the air.

On our second day at Snow Lodge, Tom took an early walk through the geyser basin. In the 12-degree air, the thermal features on Geyser Hill produced an enormous amount of vapor...

... as did other features along the Firehole River.

As he passed Castle Geyser, it began to erupt. The only other person out that early was a ranger, who took a picture of Tom in front of the geyser.

One source says, "The oldest geyser in the world is thought to be Castle Geyser, which is located only a short walk from Old Faithful. The size of its cone, in the shape that reminds people of a castle, indicates that it may be somewhere between 5,000 and 40,000 years old. Despite its age, Castle still gives spectators a good show by erupting every 10 to 12 hours for almost as long as an hour."

On our last morning at Snow Lodge we walked up to Observation Point (elevation gain: 250 feet) where we had a nice overall view of the Old Faithful area. Marcia noticed that people had gathered to watch Old Faithful erupt, and after a wait of about 20 minutes, it did just that. The walk up to Observation Point was not an easy one – we were both sweating when we got to the top, partly from the exertion at the 7,300-foot elevation and partly from being in the warm sun.

During our entire time in Yellowstone, we were surprised at how warm the daytime temperatures were (generally in the 30s) and at how little snow there was. Apparently, thanks to El Niño, the entire Pacific Northwest and nearby areas have been drier than usual, while other parts of the country have gotten record-setting snowfall.

We boarded the snow coach at 2:00 P.M. for the return to Mammoth. Along the way, we stopped again at Fountain Paint Pot, which was very a different experience in daylight than it had been on our night tour.

In the paint pot, heated mud bubbles up constantly.

As we watched, mud bubbles actually started to erupt from the pool...

... and at a certain point the bubbles would disintengrate.

Shortly after leaving Fountain Paint Pot, trouble struck. Our coach began to lose power, and the engine started to overheat. Our driver, Victor, remained calm, but asked everyone to leave the coach for their own safety. It turned out that the engine's serpentine belt had failed, so Victor radioed his dispatcher to request a replacement coach from Old Faithful. That's one of our fellow passengers, Tom from Oregon, trying to help out with the engine problem.

We were very fortunate that this incident occurred where it did, between Old Faithful and Madison, a stretch of road used not only by Xanterra but by various tour operators from West Yellowstone. If we had had a similar problem between Madison and Mammoth, we could have had a long, cold walk or a very long wait. As it happened, two of the West Yellowstone vans picked up our group of ten people within a few minutes and took us to the warming hut at Madison, where we waited for an hour or so before Victor came along driving a replacement coach. We made it back to Mammoth about 90 minutes later than expected, but we had a positive experience getting to know the other passengers better. And as we approached Mammoth, we watched the full moon rise over the horizon.

The next day we took a morning drive into the Lamar Valley, about 25 miles east of Mammoth, in search of wildlife. We had hoped to see wolves (more about them later), but the closest we came were groups of wolf-watchers. What we did see were bison....

... a coyote walking along the road, with what appeared to be a morsel from his latest meal hanging out of his mouth...

... and lots of animal tracks in the snow.

It was time for us to head to Gardiner and prepare to start our week-long Exploritas project at the Heritage and Research Center.

This is the view looking into the park through its north entrance, via the Roosevelt Arch, constructed in 1903 to provide a formal entryway to Yellowstone. This photo was taken from the Heritage and Research Center, which stands in a small valley just below the arch.

In 1903, most people reached the park by train, and this is an artist's impression of the North Entrance as it looked when Northern Pacific Railway's Gardiner station stood near the arch.

After arriving in Gardiner and checking into our lodging (a Super 8 motel) we joined the other 11 members of our group on Sunday evening for dinner and a get-acquainted session. There were a few other Exploritas newbies like us, but some people had been on many prior Elderhostel programs (one man had been on more than 30!).

On Monday morning, we boarded our shuttle bus and headed for the Heritage and Research Center. The building was completed in 2004. It stands next to the Gardiner High School, whose athletic field is used as a feeding ground by elk and other animals.

The HRC's public lobby has several exhibition cases displaying artifacts of Yellowstone's history.

We got a warm welcome from Colleen Curry, the center's Supervisory Museum Curator, and her staff, all of whom were glad to have some enthusiastic volunteers to help with the never-ending tasks of organizing, cataloging and rehousing the center's resources.

After an introductory tour of the facility, we got started on our projects. Marcia's first assignment was to help inventory more than 50 boxes of reports on fish counts and water data in Yellowstone's creeks, rivers and lakes, covering the 1950s through the 1970s, which had been donated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Meanwhile, Tom worked with another member of the Exploritas group to go through hundreds of aerial photographs and insert them into protective mylar sleeves. Some people helped organize projectile heads (from arrows, spears, etc.) for the HRC's archaeological staff, while others helped inventory boxes of old postcards and photographs.

Later in the week, the two of us worked together on another fishing-related project. For many years, anglers would mail in voluntary reports of their success (or lack thereof) in fishing at Yellowstone, which helped the Park Service gauge how well the fish population was doing in various sections of the park. These cards fill many boxes in the HRC library. Our job was to give the boxes a consistent organization (creeks first, then rivers, then lakes) and to relabel them. This involved perusing the cards themselves, many of which contained candid comments by the anglers, often expressing their negative views of Park Service fishing regulations and the quality of fishing in their chosen spots. However, one happy angler reported, "Didn't catch any fish, but did land a keeper with an engagement ring."

We spent three-and-a-half days on our tasks; although nothing required specialized training, the staff was very appreciative of our help in organizing the materials. We were impressed that the HRC was closed to the public during the time we were there, in order for the staff to support our efforts. We both enjoyed our work there and will return to volunteer when our schedule permits.

We traveled to restaurants in town for most meals. At lunch one day in a restaurant next to a Best Western motel, we found this mother and young elk nibbling along the edge of the driveway.

We often saw elk in the vicinity of the research center, as well as an occasional pronghorn.

Each evening during our four-day work project, we had an evening lecture on Yellowstone by a different specialist. The first evening, the park's historian, Lee Whittlesey, talked about the top ten events that have shaped the park as we know it today. Next came Hank Heasler, the park's geologist, who gave an excellent overview of Yellowstone's geology, with an emphasis on the thermal features.  He also devoted a lot of time to discussing the earthquake swarm that began in January (he had to check his pager several times because of incoming quake notifications, including one of a 3.1 quake). He also discussed what's being done to monitor the Yellowstone caldera for any signs of impending volcanic activity.

On the third evening, Leslie Quinn, the historian for Yellowstone concessioner Xanterra, talked about the history of winter transportation in the park. On the last evening, Steve Sherman, the leader of another Exploritas group that was studying the wolf population in Lamar Valley, gave a show of his excellent Yellowstone photos. The HRC staff also took us on a tour of the park's historic vehicle collection, which does not yet have a public facility. And on our last day, we had a walking tour of the Upper Terrace area at Mammoth, with a ranger whose specialty is leading school groups. She was excellent at explaining the operation of Yellowstone's thermal features in simple, understandable terms. P2HEW, for example, is the acronym for Pressure & Plumbing, Heat, Earthquakes & Water= Geysers.

After we completed our projects at the research center, we boarded our shuttle bus for a trip to the Lamar Valley, hoping to see wolves. Wolves had been eliminated from Yellowstone in the early 20th century in the belief that these predators were harmful to other species such as bison and elk. Over time, as the elk population grew to an unsustainable size, biologists began to believe that a healthy ecosystem required a balance between predators and prey. In 1995 and 1996, 31 wolves from Canada were brought to the park. Since then the population has grown to more than 100 animals.

We went with a volunteer from the Wolf Project, a group that attempts to monitor the park's wolf population through field observations, radio collaring of some wolves, and ongoing study of the impact that wolves are having on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. That's our Wolf Project volunteer, Nate, in the green jacket standing near the door of our bus...

... and this is the spotting scope that he set up at a spot in the Lamar Valley where other Wolf Project members had reported a sighting.

There were several wolves in this area, and with the help of the spotting scope, some members of our group were able to see them while others (like Tom, with his 20/200 eyesight) were less successful. Marcia saw a canine profile through the scope, but at that distance it might just as easily have been a dark chihuahua.

On the way to Lamar Valley Nate described how, the previous day, he had been part of a team that hiked a couple of miles to a spot where two wolves had been tranquilized by darts fired from a helicopter. When Nate and his colleague reached the wolves, they cleaned the dart wounds, gave them antibiotics to deal with any capture-related injuries, weighed and measured the animals, and applied collars with radio transmitters.  The transmitters send out a beep every second (more frequently if a wolf becomes stationary for a long time, indicating possible death). The transmitters help Wolf Project staff identify the location of specific wolves and the packs they travel with. Nate gave us a lot of information – more than we could absorb – about the various packs such as the Mollies, Druids, Blacktails, Silvers, Canyon pack, Agate Creek pack, etc. The Wolf Project keeps close tabs on each pack: its size, health, composition, whereabouts, and interactions with other packs.

Wolf reintroduction remains a controversial subject in the Yellowstone area. The park does not exist in a vacuum – wolves often cross into areas outside the park and kill sheep and other animals. While a compensation system exists, it is clearly insufficient to satisfy everyone. As a 2008 Washington Post story noted, wolves "remain polarizing animals, generating endless controversy and furious litigation."

Still, the consensus within the park is that the Yellowstone wolves have had a positive impact,  not only by reducing the elk population to a more manageable level but also by providing (through their elk and occasional bison kills) new food sources for other animal populations, large and small.

Even without a close-up sighting of wolves, it was a beautiful day in the Lamar Valley...

... and we did see several groups of bison.

Our ten days in Yellowstone were incredibly positive and informative. We would happily go back at any time of the year, but winter is clearly a very special time in the park.

After leaving the park, we headed for Bozeman but we also made a quick visit to the city of Livingston. Thanks to Anthony Bourdain's episode on the Travel Channel about this corner of Montana, we knew that one of the city's landmarks is the Murray Hotel, and we had to pay a visit.

The lobby had the usual western array of animal heads...

... but unfortunately the Murray Bar was closed. We'll have to go back sometime when it's open!

Across the street from the Murray is Livingston's Northern Pacific Railway station. An adjoining building is now home to a breakfast-and-lunch spot called the Northern Pacific Beanery, while the station itself is a museum and community center. It wasn't lunch time, so in addition the Murray Bar, we'll also have to stop at the Beanery the next time we're in Livingston.

We arrived at Bozeman in mid-afternoon and spent a happy couple of hours exploring the city's vibrant downtown. That evening we went to a very nice tapas restaurant where we had (unexpectedly) authentic Maryland blue crab cakes that were as good as any we ever had when we lived near Baltimore.

After driving our rented Suburban more than 300 miles on roads where four-wheel drive was not at all necessary, we finally got a chance to use it on the eight-mile drive to the airport at 5:30 A.M. for our flight to Seattle. It had snowed a little the previous evening, but the forecast was for it to stop by midnight. The forecast was wrong – there were several inches on the ground when we awoke. It was finally snowing in Montana! We carefully made our way to the airport, dropped our keys at the rental car counter, and boarded our flight. We took off an hour late, thanks to deicing...

... and the fact the the little tractor that was supposed to push our plane back couldn't get traction in the snow. The ground crew finally found some sand to help with that problem, and eventually we were on our way. Our flight from Seattle to San Francisco had also been delayed, so we had no problem with our connection, and by 1:00 P.M. we were back in California.

For anyone who has made it this far, congratulations to you for your perseverance. We know this was a long report, but there was a lot to pack into it. There is always a lot to do in Yellowstone and southern Montana, but winter is a magical season there.

Text and images ©2010 Tom and Marcia Murray 

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