Keith's & Karen's Photos: Yellowstone in Winter

Our trip was with a group organized through Friends of the UW Arboretum and led by Door County Nature and Travel.

Near the top of Mammoth Hot Springs

If you have visited Yellowstone in the summer, you know to stay on the boardwalks in the geyser basins. Step off, you are told, and you risk breaking through the thin crust into the hot water below.

In areas where you see no steam or hot water--just dry soil and green ground cover, you feel confident of the solid ground beneath your feet. The warnings seem silly.

Visit Yellowstone in the winter, like Keith and I did last week, and you will gain a new appreciation for the extent of thermal activity throughout the park.

Patches of bare earth exposed by melted snow occur at random spots where the soil is too warm for the snow to accumulate. These spots, not visible in the summer, sometimes occur hundreds of yards from the nearest geyser, hot spring, fumerole (steam vent), or paint pot (bubbling hot mud hole).

Summer visitors strolling on this asphalt
sidewalk wouldn't realize how hot it is.

In random spots the earth is warm enough to melt the snow.

Knowing that summer visitors have no clue to the spots of relatively thin earth would make me nervous, except for another thing the snow reveals about Yellowstone: Every square foot of that park must feel the footfall of a bison, elk, and mule deer at least once a year. Less than 24 hours after every new snow that fell while we were in the park, animal tracks were already visible around almost every turn in the road.

Notice the animal tracks all over the fresh snow.
In winter, it's easier to appreciate how much wildlife is in the park.

Our guide Karen told us that this thermal spring opened just
a year ago when the weight of a bison punched through
the surface. You can see how far the thin warm ground
extends from the spring itself.

In contrast, look how deep the snow is close to the edges
of this VERY hot spring in the Biscuit Geyser Basin. This hot water
must be rising through a straight-up fissure in solid ground.

Not to scale, obviously.

Yellowstone National Park owes its dramatic terrain, thermal features, variety of rocks, breathtaking canyons, and other unique features to a dome of magma 4 to 5 miles below the surface. This dome has exploded into a supervolcano equal to 2,000 Mt. St. Helens eruptions several times in the past 4 million years, when it tossed entire mountain ranges miles into the air. As the dislodged earth fell back to earth and mixed with the new volcanic material, it resettled into a caldera (bowl) filled with a wild mixture of rock types and formations. The terrain around Yellowstone still experiences more than 2,000 small earthquakes each year. Rainwater seeps into fissures in the ground and returns to the surface as geysers, hot springs, and steam vents after it is heated by the magma dome below.

Keith and I went on a two-and-a-half hour snowshoe hike off the trails
with a guide one afternoon. We saw several thermal features back in the woods
with no boardwalks or trails around them. In the summer,
you wouldn't know how close you could safely walk.
In the winter, it's this obvious.

Icicles on a tree branch hanging over a pool at Mammoth

The frost gets pretty heavy on trees in the path of the steam.

At the top of the trail going down Mammoth Hot Springs

The People of Yellowstone
Karen, our snowcoach driver and guide, told us a Kiowa story. The Great Spirit didn’t make a homeland for the Kiowa when it created the earth. While other tribes got forests and plains, the Kiowa found themselves in a desolate volcanic place, scorched and infertile. The Great Spirit told the people that better land would be given to them if one of them would dive into a steaming pool. Only one, Kahn Hayn, was willing to brave the hazard, trusting that the Great Spirit would not mislead them so badly. He dove into the pool, was scorched, and lost consciousness. His fellow Kiowas pulled him from the water, and when his eyes opened again he saw the land around him was transformed: It was covered in forests and streams, and overflowed with wild beasts.

Keith and the snowcoach that took us through Yellowstone.
It was not a quiet ride at all, but had a yacht-like sway
that put us all to sleep after lunch.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see much evidence of the Natives, though archaeologists say they had been in Yellowstone for going on 12,000 years before the Shoshone ceded the territory in 1868 (okay, before the US stole it in a bogus treaty it would not honor.) Karen told us that early European park residents found large flat stones arranged like benches around some of the thermal features including Old Faithful, so it’s quite possible geyser-gazing was just as amusing to the Natives as it is to the immigrants. The 1988 fires that reduced one-third of the park’s trees to ashes revealed previously unnoticed prehistoric obsidian mines, probably the source of the raw material for Yellowstone obsidian arrowheads that have been found in pre-Columbian sites as far away as Arkansas and Ohio.

Obligatory Old Faithful eruption shot.
There are other regular geysers--my favorite is Riverside, which
goes for about 20 minutes every 5-7 hours--but I never get used
to how convenient it is for tourists to have one geyser go off for
just a few minutes every 90 minutes or so.

The Park Service offices at Mammoth Hot Springs tell the history of Europeans in the area, so we got that story on our way in and out of the park. In 1805, Lewis and Clark passed north of Yellowstone and did not see the area. One of their party, John Colter, peeled off from the expedition during the return trip and found Yellowstone in 1807 while exploring on his own but no one believed him about what he saw. In fact for the next 60 years no one believed the stories told by the many ragged mountain men who said they too had seen "Colter's Hell."

Midway Geyser Basin at sunset - probably typical of
the tall tales Colter was accused of.

It wasn't until private expeditions in 1869 and 1870, one including Montana's surveyor general, documented their own observations did white folks begin to believe the tales of sulfurous steam, boiling mud, and spouts of boiling water. Photographer William Henry Jackson went along with the Hayden Expedition of 1871, and that settled it. The next year President Grant had signed a law creating Yellowstone as the first national park.

Teddy Roosevelt laid the cornerstone to this entryway arch in 1903, when the park was coming into its own as a protected natural area more for tourists than poachers. The top of the arch quotes the legislation that created the national park in 1872: "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People."

The park's first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, was appointed in 1872 but served without salary, funding, or staff so the best he could do to protect the park was to document the lawlessness and degradation of the area for Congress. The hunting rights promised to the Shoshone in 1868 were never respected, but profit-seeking poachers pretty much had their run of the place. The Northern Pacific was eager to pacify the area for the benefit of its tourist trade, so in 1886 the park was put under the control of the US Army.


Visitors entering and leaving the park had to stop at the Army's guardhouse. Among other things, visitors' guns were sealed with wax, since it was illegal to discharge a weapon in the park.

Under the Army's protection and President Teddy Roosevelt's stewardship, management of the park as a natural area finally took shape and tourism increased. The army's buildings are still used by the National Park Service, which took over from the Army in 1918, and modern-day ranger uniforms retain some of the features of turn-of-the-century US Army uniforms.

Officers' quarters for Fort Yellowstone, built in the 1890s.
Many of the buildings the army constructed while it managed the park (1886-1918)
are still used for park service administration and as residences for park staff.

The old enlisted men's barracks now serves as office space for park researchers and naturalists. We received an informative talk from Doug Smith, the Wolf Project Leader, in the meeting room here. This is Chuck Pils, one of the organizers of our trip, on his way in.

Gardiner, Montana is the only year-round entrance to Yellowstone and
was the only entrance during the park's first decades as a tourist destination.
Visitors began arriving by rail in 1883 and boarded stagecoaches here to enter the park.

The Lamar Buffalo Ranch was created in 1907 by army personnel who,
ahead of their time, realized they needed to stop killing bison and start preserving them.
True, they waited until there were only 28 bison left in Yellowstone, but still.
This might be the place that saved the American bison herd from extinction.

All structures in the park belong to the park service;
concessionaires operate the guest facilities.
This is a stairwell in the Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge, built in 1936.
I love the vintage grandeur of the park's older guest buildings,
which were top-of-the-line luxury when constructed but now are rather rustic,
with things like hot-water radiators and push-button light switches.

The architecture of the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful, where we stayed for two nights,
reflects elements used in the nearby famous Old Faithful Inn,
which is closed in the winter because it is not insulated.
For example, the Snow Lodge's lobby contains these timber uprights--
more than needed to hold the place up--to quote the lobby of the Inn,
in which tall lodgepole pine timbers give the feel of a forest.

Western-scenery-silhouette light fixtures are all over the place in park buildings. This newer model is in a hall at the Snow Lodge, which opened in 1999. When my family first moved to Idaho Falls, we stayed in a motel while the parents located a house. I remember being enchanted by the lamps, which all had scenery-silhouette lampshades. Seeing them now, whether vintage or new, makes me feel like a kid again.

Two things you won't see in summer.
Above, can you imagine what would happen if every summer visitor to the ladies' room at Canyon Village had to pack out her trash?
Below, a photo of the intersection where vehicles enter the Old Faithful complex from the main road. Not even a footprint in the snow. We walked by on snowshoes.

All of us in the travel group were impressed by the camaraderie evident among people who work in the park during the winter. We talked with several guides--Shauna, the wolf expert who took us around north Yellowstone; Karen, the snowcoach driver who took us to and from Old Faithful; Crystal, the snowshoe guide who manages the Yellowstone Lake marina in the summer; and Doug Smith, Wolf Project leader--along with a number of other staff, such as the ski-shop people who rent the equipment and the people who work in the hotels and restaurants.

The professional guides all seemed to know each other although they worked for different companies--Xanterra, the concessionaire; the Yellowstone Association, a nonprofit educational corporation; the park service; and the Yellowstone Transportation Company, the corporate descendant of the old stagecoach company. For example, as we passed rangers' snowmobiles on our way to and from Old Faithful, Karen would remark about where each ranger was coming from and what he or she was likely doing; when we passed other snowcoaches, she would tell us which drivers had recently experienced vehicle breakdowns (nearly all of them!), etc. And they all seemed genuinely to enjoy each others' company, greeting each other warmly and sincerely when our group would cross paths with another. When we stopped to eat our bag lunches at Madison Junction, for example, I could hear our guide answering the concession staff person's questions about a guide she hadn't seem for a while. (She got another job so she could go back to school.)

Snowshoe guide Crystal leading us into a dense stand of 25-year-old lodgepole pine.
Roughly a third of the park burned in 1988.
The young trees tend to grow thickly; in 1989 foresters counted
as many as a million seedlings an acre in some places.

Snowcoach driver and guide Karen, explaining tree growth near thermal areas.

Wolf expert Shauna explaining the many ways wolf researchers can find wolves in the park.
From a way off, she had noticed ravens swooping in and out
of a stand of trees on the hill behind her.
Sure enough, when we arrived there and got out the binoculars,
we could see a spot where ravens and wolves had been sharing a fresh kill.

The Wolves of Yellowstone

Shauna, the wolf expert who showed us around for a day, told us a story: The harsh wind had driven the professional photographer back inside, but the photography students stayed out in the field. So it was the amateurs who got the video of the animal behavior the professionals had been praying for.

A raven picked up a long piece of grass and hopped around in front of a wolf until the grass caught the wolf’s attention. The wolf lunged at the grass, missed, and lunged again as the raven played keep-away. Just as the wolf appeared ready to catch the prize, the raven let the wind take it flitting away. The raven flew after the grass, caught it, and the game began again, both participants engaged in what was clearly nothing but recreation.

Not my photo. You need to be a real pro to get a good wolf photo;
they're very averse to the presence of humans.

Wolves and ravens, it turns out, are the good friends that Native American folklore has always said they are. Wolves will kill other birds if they get a chance but seem to harm ravens only by accident. By themselves, ravens cannot open carcasses of large mammals dead of natural causes so when they find one, they fly off to their friends the wolves. The wolves apparently understand what the ravens are trying to tell them, so they follow the ravens to the carcass and the friends share an easy feast.

The best wolf photo Keith or I could manage, with Keith's high-resolution camera and telephoto lens. Our guide, Shauna, recognized the black alpha male of the Lamar Canyon pack, sitting up,
and the tawny alpha female lying down a little bit uphill to the right.
You could see better through the spotting scope our guide provided.

Wolves seem to be the attraction in Yellowstone that bears once were--certainly in the winter, there's no contest for visitors' attention. The Park Service reintroduced wolves only in 1995; the last one had been killed in 1926 as part of the park's policy of exterminating predators other than bears. In the wolf-less years, problems that accompanied overpopulation of elk, deer, and bison taught naturalists the value of the "charismatic predators" in the overall ecosystem.

Since their reintroduction less than two decades ago, Yellowstone's wolves have been the subject of intense study. One surprise: how much willow, aspen, and cottonwood trees had been suppressed during the years of elk and deer overpopulation, and how much they are now recovering. We learned more fascinating stuff about wolves than I can hope to relate in this blog. In addition to the raven/wolf cooperation I've already mentioned, other things we learned included:

Wolves live and hunt in highly social packs in which naturalists can observe hierarchies, continuing relationships, individual personalities, task specialization, and evolving roles.From year to year, the packs form, change their membership, and dissolve. Yellowstone wolves have no privacy; the guide told us stories about which wolf was doing what with which other wolf, who gets along with whom, who broke up with whom, etc. etc. Like a big soap opera.
Each pack has its own territory, but the territories evolve from year to year and overlap. Wolves wander into alien territory looking for mates, and when too many wolves are in a given area the pack will seek to expand its territory and fight with the neighboring pack. As a result, the leading cause of death among Yellowstone's wolves is fights with other wolves, and the wolves regulate the size of their own population.
Park rangers manage wolves' interaction with humans differently than they manage bears'. Before 1970, bears were allowed to get habituated to both human presence and humans' food. In the 1970s, rangers got hard-line about enforcing the law against feeding bears and attempted to make bears afraid of people by 'hazing' them--doing things like shooting rubber bullets at bears who came near highways. However, the bears wouldn't be hazed; they learned to recognize rangers' cars and remembered which rangers were likely to shoot rubber bullets. So now the park's policy is to manage humans rather than bears--when a bear gets near a road or a picnic area, rangers show up only to manage traffic and make sure no humans get too close or try to feed the bears.
Not so with wolves. Because of the wolves' enduring public relations problems (none of us ever went to bed as kids with a teddy wolf or watched Yogi Wolf cartoons on Saturday morning), rangers are acutely aware that any mishap between a human and a Yellowstone wolf could have very bad ramifications for the whole wolf population. So rangers are relentless in hazing wolves who get too close to any place humans hang out--making aversive noises, shooting rubber bullets, etc.
Because of their size and their dangerous kicks, bison are harder for wolves to kill than are elk and deer, and these prey sort themselves out in winter. The bison can handle the deeper snow in the southern parts of the park and so stay put. Meanwhile, the elk and deer collect in the northern part where snow is not so deep and more forage remains available. Wolves were introduced only in north Yellowstone but break-away packs established themselves in the southern parts within a few years, where in winter they must feed exclusively on the hard-to-kill bison. Wildlife researchers in the park were astonished to see how rapidly the southern wolves evolved in response to the demands presented by their demanding winter food source. Within one or two generations, the southern wolves were 20-40 pounds heavier than their cousins who stayed in the north.

Random additional photos and observations

Bison graze by using their heads as snow shovels,
pushing the snow to the sides until they uncover the forage below.
These bison are grazing in snow as deep as their legs are long.

Bison really don't mind the snow.

The bison's faces get covered with snow as they forage...


...and then they snort. Keith caught this photo at just the right millisecond!

Our best bighorn sheep photo

Our best deer photo

Not the best elk photo, but I like the ones that are looking straight at the camera.

Our best otter photo

Our best coyote photo. Oh, well; we can get coyote photos at home.
Click on this photo to view it full size and you can see these guys were eating a Canadian goose.

Best eagle photo

Best magpie photo

Not the best duck photo or tundra swan photo, but I like two-in-one wildlife photos.

Weirdest wildlife photo:
Those black specks are flies that live year-round on the surface of some hot springs.
A few days before this photo, the temperature in the park had been -36 degrees.
Add this to the list of life forms I definitely do not want to be reincarnated as.

Our worst weather on this trip.
This is our group Wednesday morning at Biscuit Geyser Basin.
It cleared up later that day.

We got good weather, too.
Hot springs flowing into the Firehole River.

I've always appreciated sage for its smell but never before for its beauty.
When the rest of the winter landscape is white, gray, black, or blue,
the sage added a warm gold that in certain sunlight took my breath away.

People can visit the tourist spots in the winter, but little snow removal is done.
The snow just gets tromped down.
Here I am using the hand rail as I descend the stairs at the Gibbon Falls overlook.
The benches around Old Faithful looked like stepping stones;
their surfaces were level with the snow around them.

I was fascinated by this blue cast that appeared in every footprint or ski pole hole.
I believe it's the natural color of clear, pure water--the same shade you see in the clear tropical sea.
I wonder why I never notice it in Wisconsin snow.

One more snow picture. Bizarre Dr. Suess shapes
that cap the tops of the rocky spires in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.

In my humble opinion, neither Mammoth Hot Springs nor the falls on the Yellowstone River are as pretty in winter as in summer. At Mammoth, you cannot appreciate the size and unique shapes of the rock formations when they're snow-covered. The canyon loses its lovely colors and on top of that, the lower half of the waterfall isn't even visible behind the HUGE ice shield that builds up. I do like the frost on the trees surrounding the waterfall, though.

Now a few photos from our snowshoe hike into the woods.
This photo shows spruce and fir trees--climax forest--growing up in a clearing among the lodgepole pines that was created when a road was removed.

You might need to click on this photo to see its full width. Our guide, Crystal, took us to a place where we could see three stages of forest succession. The spot where we were standing had been burned over in the great fires of 1988, so the trees there were all 25-year-old lodgepole pines, planted when fire burst the seeds from the cones. In back on the right, you can see mature lodgepole pine forest probably last burned between 100 and 200 years ago. Young spruce and fir are slowly growing up among those trees, ready to take over when the lodgepoles die. At the left, you can see climax forest--spruce and fir in an area that hasn't burned for more than 200 years and in which the lodgepole pine all got old and died.

The photo does not capture the breathtaking height of these Douglas fir.

In the old-growth climax forest.

Crystal and her friends tromp around in the woods often enough that they can keep track of where the dead animals are. She showed us the bones of a three-year old bison that died of starvation last winter.