3/7
On last year's road trip Liz and I took a break from skiing between Big Sky and Salt Lake to take a snowmobile tour from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful. This was during the last week Yellowstone is open in winter. This was Liz' first time on a snowmobile and my second after Lutsen. Yellowstone has a notoriously cold winter microclimate but it was sunny and maybe low 30's and very comfortable, vs. my snowcoach trip from Jackson in January 2006 when temps never got out of single digits. We shared an Arctic Cat snowmobile from Three Bear Lodge http://www.threebearlodge.com/yellowsto ... ctivities/ .
Wildlife tend to be nearer the roads and rivers in winter than summer. Here's an elk about to climb out of the Madison River.
The snowcoach and snowmobiles usually have to stop once or twice a day for bison to cross the road.
We also stopped at the Middle Geyser Basin.
On a short boardwalk we saw the Red Spouter.
By late summer this dries out and becomes a fumarole.
We arrived at Old Faithful for lunch, and while Liz had done just fine on the road, she tipped the snowmobile into a bank driving into the parking lot.
Old Faithful
We also walked the Upper Basin boardwalk
We recommend this winter tour to Old Faithful. The distance is shorter and the interim stops more interesting coming from West Yellowstone than from Flagg Ranch north of Jackson. It's also more fun on the snowmobile than inside a snowcat. I feared the cold in Jackson but we were provided very warm one piece suits, gloves, boots and helmets, and the snowmobiles have heated seats, handles and footwells. We liked sharing the driving too, as you can get forearm cramps from driving too long at one time.
6/23
After skiing Gardiner Headwall on Beartooth Pass in the morning viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11013 we drove to Cooke City for lunch and finally through Yellowstone's northeast entrance in mid-afternoon. Bison with calves in Lamar Valley.
We had a few scenic stops between Roosevelt and Canyon, including Tower Falls here:
We took the same south rim drive as admin to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Upper Falls:
We also walked those Uncle Tom's trail stairs to view the Lower Falls:
At ~7PM the latter pic was directly into the sun, so I shaded the sun out with my hand, then cropped the hand (slightly evident upper right). Notice the snow patch, which is a buildup of "snowmaking" from the mist of Lower Yellowstone Falls
Views from Artist Point.
We stopped in the Hayden Valley for wildlife viewing but it was at binocular, not our camera distance. We spent the next 2 nights in cabins by the Lake Hotel.
6/24
Yellowstone is not as well set up for extended hikes as some parks like Glacier. There is no shuttle bus and nearly all of the famous thermal features are road accessible. But we had a guidebook and decided to hike 3 miles to Fairy Falls and Imperial Geyser.
About 1/4 mile along a bike trail, we scrambled up a steep hillside to get an overview of Grand Prismatic Spring, often considered Yellowstone's most beautiful thermal feature.
The view from the nearby boardwalk is often obscured by steam.
Fairy Falls
There were 10-15 people at Fairy Falls, but surprisingly few continued on the extra mile to Imperial Geyser.
We ate lunch here, with never more than 2 other people nearby.
Late afternoon we spent in the Old Faithful area. Liz needed some time online so I found out expected eruption times for some geysers and took a book to read while waiting. Daisy erupted 8 minutes before its estimated time.
Liz joined me to wait for Grand Geyser. Grand has a less certain window and erupted at 6:35PM, 15 minutes later than predicted.
Grand is actually a group of 3 geysers. In the last picture Vent Geyser is erupting diagonally to the left. Turban Geyser is between them, smaller and obscured by steam. Grand is as tall as Old Faithful and its eruption lasted for 11 minutes vs. 3-4 for Old Faithful.
It started raining just as Grand was winding down. The Upper Basin was quite active as we retreated to the car and then drove back to the Lake Hotel for dinner.
6/25
We had a fairly easy day stopping first at Black Sand Basin where Cliff Geyser was active.
Next we drove Firehole Lake Drive and had lunch by Cone Geyser.
We spotted this wolf on the other side of the geyser.
He was on the move before we could get the binoculars out. We watched sandhill cranes with them at much greater distance.
Mid-afternoon we stopped on Firehole Canyon Drive. This area was a madhouse with no parking when I had been here in July 1995, but perhaps the cloudy and threatening weather deterred many people this time. There are so many hot springs upstream on the Firehole River that it flows through this canyon at a delightful 75-80 degrees.
We spent this night in West Yellowstone and visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.
This was a huge Kodiak bear from Alaska.
6/26
On our last day we drove first to the Norris Basin and spent an hour on the boardwalks there.
Our final Yellowstone stop was Mammoth Hot Springs.
Leaving the park at Gardiner.
Double rainbow a bit later.
We had dinner in Bozeman and spent the night in Helena on the way to Waterton and Glacier parks.
Yellowstone is a big place, tough to do in a whirlwind day like admin this August. It was very busy during our time but manageable. Lodging was full and it took some persistence over the previous 3 weeks or so to get those 2 nights in the Lake Hotel cabins. Parking lots for sightseeing were typically 3/4+ full. Road traffic moved OK except for when wildlife was close by. You can get some solitude on longer hikes away from the road as Adam and I did one day in 1995. Liz had only been here for a day as a kid and wanted to concentrate on the thermal features. These are Yellowstone's unique attractions, and we got our hiking/wilderness fix on the final leg of our trip in Waterton/Glacier.
On last year's road trip Liz and I took a break from skiing between Big Sky and Salt Lake to take a snowmobile tour from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful. This was during the last week Yellowstone is open in winter. This was Liz' first time on a snowmobile and my second after Lutsen. Yellowstone has a notoriously cold winter microclimate but it was sunny and maybe low 30's and very comfortable, vs. my snowcoach trip from Jackson in January 2006 when temps never got out of single digits. We shared an Arctic Cat snowmobile from Three Bear Lodge http://www.threebearlodge.com/yellowsto ... ctivities/ .
Wildlife tend to be nearer the roads and rivers in winter than summer. Here's an elk about to climb out of the Madison River.
The snowcoach and snowmobiles usually have to stop once or twice a day for bison to cross the road.
We also stopped at the Middle Geyser Basin.
On a short boardwalk we saw the Red Spouter.
By late summer this dries out and becomes a fumarole.
We arrived at Old Faithful for lunch, and while Liz had done just fine on the road, she tipped the snowmobile into a bank driving into the parking lot.
Old Faithful
We also walked the Upper Basin boardwalk
We recommend this winter tour to Old Faithful. The distance is shorter and the interim stops more interesting coming from West Yellowstone than from Flagg Ranch north of Jackson. It's also more fun on the snowmobile than inside a snowcat. I feared the cold in Jackson but we were provided very warm one piece suits, gloves, boots and helmets, and the snowmobiles have heated seats, handles and footwells. We liked sharing the driving too, as you can get forearm cramps from driving too long at one time.
6/23
After skiing Gardiner Headwall on Beartooth Pass in the morning viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11013 we drove to Cooke City for lunch and finally through Yellowstone's northeast entrance in mid-afternoon. Bison with calves in Lamar Valley.
We had a few scenic stops between Roosevelt and Canyon, including Tower Falls here:
We took the same south rim drive as admin to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Upper Falls:
We also walked those Uncle Tom's trail stairs to view the Lower Falls:
At ~7PM the latter pic was directly into the sun, so I shaded the sun out with my hand, then cropped the hand (slightly evident upper right). Notice the snow patch, which is a buildup of "snowmaking" from the mist of Lower Yellowstone Falls
Views from Artist Point.
We stopped in the Hayden Valley for wildlife viewing but it was at binocular, not our camera distance. We spent the next 2 nights in cabins by the Lake Hotel.
6/24
Yellowstone is not as well set up for extended hikes as some parks like Glacier. There is no shuttle bus and nearly all of the famous thermal features are road accessible. But we had a guidebook and decided to hike 3 miles to Fairy Falls and Imperial Geyser.
About 1/4 mile along a bike trail, we scrambled up a steep hillside to get an overview of Grand Prismatic Spring, often considered Yellowstone's most beautiful thermal feature.
The view from the nearby boardwalk is often obscured by steam.
Fairy Falls
There were 10-15 people at Fairy Falls, but surprisingly few continued on the extra mile to Imperial Geyser.
We ate lunch here, with never more than 2 other people nearby.
Late afternoon we spent in the Old Faithful area. Liz needed some time online so I found out expected eruption times for some geysers and took a book to read while waiting. Daisy erupted 8 minutes before its estimated time.
Liz joined me to wait for Grand Geyser. Grand has a less certain window and erupted at 6:35PM, 15 minutes later than predicted.
Grand is actually a group of 3 geysers. In the last picture Vent Geyser is erupting diagonally to the left. Turban Geyser is between them, smaller and obscured by steam. Grand is as tall as Old Faithful and its eruption lasted for 11 minutes vs. 3-4 for Old Faithful.
It started raining just as Grand was winding down. The Upper Basin was quite active as we retreated to the car and then drove back to the Lake Hotel for dinner.
6/25
We had a fairly easy day stopping first at Black Sand Basin where Cliff Geyser was active.
Next we drove Firehole Lake Drive and had lunch by Cone Geyser.
We spotted this wolf on the other side of the geyser.
He was on the move before we could get the binoculars out. We watched sandhill cranes with them at much greater distance.
Mid-afternoon we stopped on Firehole Canyon Drive. This area was a madhouse with no parking when I had been here in July 1995, but perhaps the cloudy and threatening weather deterred many people this time. There are so many hot springs upstream on the Firehole River that it flows through this canyon at a delightful 75-80 degrees.
We spent this night in West Yellowstone and visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.
This was a huge Kodiak bear from Alaska.
6/26
On our last day we drove first to the Norris Basin and spent an hour on the boardwalks there.
Our final Yellowstone stop was Mammoth Hot Springs.
Leaving the park at Gardiner.
Double rainbow a bit later.
We had dinner in Bozeman and spent the night in Helena on the way to Waterton and Glacier parks.
Yellowstone is a big place, tough to do in a whirlwind day like admin this August. It was very busy during our time but manageable. Lodging was full and it took some persistence over the previous 3 weeks or so to get those 2 nights in the Lake Hotel cabins. Parking lots for sightseeing were typically 3/4+ full. Road traffic moved OK except for when wildlife was close by. You can get some solitude on longer hikes away from the road as Adam and I did one day in 1995. Liz had only been here for a day as a kid and wanted to concentrate on the thermal features. These are Yellowstone's unique attractions, and we got our hiking/wilderness fix on the final leg of our trip in Waterton/Glacier.
