Day of the Bison

January 15, 2009

We had a full day canyon tour today from 8 to 5 that took us around the lower loop of the Yellowstone roadway system. We were excited to get off the road between Mammoth and old Faithful as we've now done that road a number of times. Unfortunately, the full day tour was in a Bombardier which is less comfortable than the snowcoaches. There were 5 of us paying customers, 2 employees taking the tour with us, and our guide. In addition to our vehicle, another Bombardier set out on the same tour.

Today was the first day that we got into some bison traffic on the road. The first time we encountered bison on the road, there was a park ranger on a snowmobile near us, so he gave us some info while the photographers like me popped out of the 3 hatches on top of the bombardier so we could take close up photos of the bison. The bombardier's are pretty neat because they have these hatches so we don't have to get out to take photos or look around. The second time we encountered bison, there were 2 on the road galloping towards us. Thankfully we were in our tank-like vehicle, but I've heard from snowmobiliers that in a small snowmobile the bison are quite intimidating up close. It is odd to see the bison running in the winter. While they can run pretty fast, in the winter usually they limit all their body movements to conserve the much needed energy they need to survive the winter. In fact, it is very important, especially in the winter, to not get so close to the wildlife that they are forced to move away unnecessarily and use those extra calories just to get out of our way. Our third roadway bison encounter included another herd of bison crossing the roadway. In this herd we saw a bison with (for our UT friends) it's horns pointed down. Apparently it's not so rare to see bison with other than the normal two horns pointed up. The employees with us have seen bison with more than 2 horns and horns pointed all different directions.

Our most exciting wildlife encounter was as we were driving through a typical meadow and found 3-4 wolves napping in the distance. We stopped and pulled out the scope to view them. We figured they had probably eaten recently as they were lounging around. They were close enough to show up in my 200mm zoom as wolf-shaped pixels and close enough to notice with the naked eye. So, that was neat. We spent a lot of the trip searching for otter as we drove along a river that had otter in it. In fact we saw many many otter tracks along the river, but never did spot those otters. We saw some eagles, lots of bison, trumpeter swans, Canadian Geese, and other birds. I don't think we saw any elk. The most exciting part was when the sun came out for a good percentage of the time lighting up the landscape with interesting patterns. Sunlight and the shadows that result change the snow-covered landscape drastically. All of a sudden the snow has definition. During a cloudy day, it is so hard to determine what is going on with the snow. Many times we can't even tell if the snow in front of us has a footprint hole or a slope or what. It's like walking on a lumpy blanket in the dark.

We did get to see both the lower and upper falls in the Yellowstone Canyon. The lower falls were about halfway frozen making interesting ice patterns on the sides of the canyon. Actually, when it "freezes," it is really just an ice cover on the waterfall that freezes, at least at these falls. The mist from the falls freezes underneath the falls as a huge snow-covered lump of ice. It is really quite amazing that a force so strong can freeze over. The upper falls had ice cover on the two sides of the canyon, but the majority of the falls in the center was still moving.

We made a stop at Yellowstone Lake, which covers 136 square miles of area and is the largest body of water in Yellowstone. In the winter, the whole lake freezes over! It's incredibly to look at. The difference between Yellowstone in the summer and Yellowstone in the winter is amazing. It's like a whole different park. Shortly after our stop at Yellowstone Lake, and while the sun was setting in the distance, our Bombardier made a strange noise.....emitted a burnt rubber smell....and then stopped. Hmmmmmm. We are still over an hour away from Old Faithful on a road that is not traveled very often. Luckily we had just seen the second Bombardier in front of us a minute ago, so we radioed them to turn around. After a good thirty minute break, they determined that one of the fan blades was breaking off, and the mechanic on the radio told us they'd send a vehicle out to tow us in. Meanwhile, all us paying customers jammed into the working Bombardier and we went back to Old Faithful just a little late. Later in the evening, we saw the employees that had to be towed in arrive about 2 hours after we did. Over-snow-vehicles do not travel very fast, but we guessed that we got all the way up to thirty miles an hour coming in to Old Faithful in the Bombardier. The snowcoaches only go around twenty and many times we are going about ten miles an hour. I think that these slow speeds are the best way to see the park because there is time to look around and watch what is going on outside. I never did get tired of riding in the snow vehicles and just looking outside the window.

Pictured below, you'll see a few of the Bombardiers, bison, and a view of one of the creeks we passed over.

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Skiing on a Lake

January 14, 2009

The snow-covered landscape never ceases to amaze me. Each day can be completely different from the day before depending on how much snow was added, or how it was packed or groomed. Plus, visiting a feature on a cloudy day versus a sunny day is like visiting two totally different features. Even more interesting is the story the snow shows giving me information of what has been here before me. It's very easy to see where the bison were, or where a rabbit had fun hopping around. I can see where a fox or a coyote has been. I can see where a squirrel played happily in a tree. I can tell where people skied or where they walked. Each day brings new tracks and new things to watch and look at.

So, even though we've walked around Old Faithful before, walking around it again is still interesting. This morning we took our rented snowshoes up to Observation Point that overlooks the Old Faithful area. It was only a .6 mile hike up the side of a hill, but in snowshoes, we travel about 1 to 1.3 mph depending on how long we stop for photos. It takes longer to get anywhere in the snow. Even in shoes, it is harder to move around because the surface can be slippery, uneven, have deep bison footprints in it, or have deep places where your foot sinks down to your knee every so often. We followed a well-beaten path up to the point cutting switchbacks every now and then just because we can. With the snow on the ground, we aren't limited to the trail. We can pretty much go where we want. It's so much fun to break new snow, too. At the top we watched Old Faithful erupt from a birds eye view and then headed back to the lodge for the start of our ski trip. Just before we hit the lodge, we nearly walked into a herd of bison moving our way. Luckily they were not on our trail, so after some pictures, we could keep going.

We skied along DeLacey Creek out to Shoshone Lake for our first cross country (x-c) ski. Our group was around 10 people total and all the rest were well-seasoned x-c skiers. Our guide was amazing, though. She was a x-c ski instructor as well, so she was able to help us out on the more technical parts. We had asked the day before if first-timers could make the ski and were assured that we could. Well, the very first thing we had to do was side step up a small hill, and then go down a longer hill. Down should be easy, right? We just came from downhill skiing and this would be a flat downhill if we were on our downhill skis. Well x-c skis are like toothpicks compared to downhill skis. Only the toe of our shoe was attached and the ski was as skinny as the boot. We had no control. Or at least not the control we are used to. So, that downhill felt long and I fell over multiple times getting down. Luckily snow is soft. =)

It was a beautiful day for skiing. We started out in a forest of the logdepole pines. The pines looked like they were sprayed with snow. In fact, to me, they looked very similar to sprayed concrete. Mark didn't relate to that description either. The wind is usually very strong in this area, so the snow is mostly on one side of the tree as it was blown that direction. We fell pretty far behind the other skiers, but that made it neat because it was only us in the middle of nowhere in the snow. It was so silent when we stopped and the landscape was gorgeous. the creek was mostly frozen over, but we saw some wind-blown cornices along the creek every now and then. We didn't see any wildlife except for a few birds and that made it feel even that more remote. Our group had split into about 3 groups and our guide went back and forth between all of us. She gave us a lot of information about snow. We learned that snow is warmer next to the ground and hovers at the 32 degree mark while on top it is the temperature of the air. The small rodents like mice make tunnels along the ground in the snow staying warmer and scurrying around. Then, the foxes walk along the top, listen to the mice and make that signature jump to collapse the mouse tunnel system briefly trapping the mouse, so it can serve as a meal for the fox. We also learned that on a frozen lake, there are 3 layers of snow on top. On top of the ice is snow, then a slush layer, then more snow. So, if you are skiing on a well frozen lake (2 inches or more), you might see that slush layer behind you and become concerned that you are about to fall in. In fact, there is snow under that slush. We did make it out to Shoshone Lake and actually ski around on the lake itself.

We both had a lot of fun on our 6 mile ski adventure. I know why more people ski in the backcountry rather than snowshoe. You can get further faster. However, we definitely need more practice on x-c skis before we go off on our own. We arrived back much earlier than our eight pm dinner reservations, and they were nice enough to seat us early. We had been quite amused at setting dinner reservations months in advance of our trip. we were told that it was needed, but while at Mammoth Springs very often we were either the only ones there, or one of maybe two or three groups. It turns out that many people had canceled their vacations recently due to the recession. At Old Faithful, the dining room was very often filled, so, yes the reservations were needed. Apparently, though, if we showed up at 5:30p, we could get seated early. any other time would have been hard.

We bumped into our friends from our Mammoth Springs and found out that he keeps a travel website too. He's over at johnwise.com. When their vacation is over it'll be interesting to see what kinds of pictures they managed to get.

http://markandjoannatravel.blogspot.com

Below you'll see a picture of us at Observation Point and also one of us on Shoshone Lake.

Back Home

We are back in Houston. It's warm here at 61 tonight and there is no snow on the ground. The air smells like a city as well. I guess we got too used to the clean mountain air. It's good to be home, though. The bunnies had a great time with the bunny sitters, but they were happy to see us again. It looks like everything in Houston stayed the same, pretty much.

I've got a few more journal entries to post and I'll add some pictures to them tomorrow. Hope everyone has a good MLK day.

Old Faithful

January 13, 2009

Our time in Mammoth Springs was short, but sweet. Today we took a snowcoach tour back to Old Faithful. I would have loved to spend at least one more day here in Mammoth, but many of the tours we want to take are out of Old Faithful. For the third tour in a row, we were joined by the couple we met yesterday. In fact we were the only four people in the snow coach again today. We left Mammoth behind in the early morning and actually had partly cloudy skies all the way down. This meant that the sun came out often to give us photographic light and we took advantage shooting off many pictures again today. The wildlife was not as abundant today and we only had a few spottings. However, for most of the way we traveled along the Gibbon and Madison Rivers providing many opportunities to photography the trumpeter swans, dippers, and Canadian geese. Also, the river, fed by thermal water, created many beautiful cornices over the water. A cornice is the shape the snow makes as it hangs over the water with it's shape defined by the wind, water, and steam coming past. Our tour guide quizzed us on information we had learned on the other tours and also provided additional information. Each guide is expected to do their own reading and research for the tours so each guide provides a new tour.

We arrived at Old Faithful at noon, put our luggage on the provided sleds and trekked out to check out our cabin. We are the last cabin in a long row of cabins, so we've got a great view out the window. The summer time accommodations at Old Faithful are not insulated, so we are in the snow lodge and snow cabins. The cabin is surprisingly large. I was expecting a tiny cabin much like the one we stayed at in Mammoth Springs when we were there in 2002. However, we've got a nice long room with a table and dresser even. After lunch we took a small siesta before heading out on our rented snowshoes. The snowshoes here are very different from the ones we rented in Steamboat. I'm not sure which are better for which kind of snow, but these worked great here. The snow is very different than Steamboat as it compacts more and is not the powder that Steamboat has. As a result, we did not sink quite as much into the snow as we snowshoed into the forest on a trail looking for a little hot spring. It was fun to go off road through the trees and we often did. We were out until sunset blazing new trails through the snow chasing animal tracks. The animals were surely long gone, but it was still fun.

Tonight was the first clear night we've seen and we took advantage. After dinner we hiked out to Old Faithful to see it go off in the dark. It turns out that we were 2 of 6 people that decided to go out. Unfortunately the almost full moon did not make a presence (we were too early for moon rise), so I couldn't get a shot of the geyser going off, but it sounded amazing in the dark. I was able to get some star pictures, though.

Be sure to visit http://markandjoannatravel.blogspot.com/

Yellowstone Wildlife

January 12, 2009

I'm not sure which was the more exciting event today, seeing a bull moose up close, the clear skies, or meeting other travelers similar to us. Our first tour this morning was called Wake up to Wildlife and it was wildlife we saw. We met at an early 6:45am so we could be in the Lamar Valley when the wildlife were out at dawn. The sun doesn't rise enough to provide light for pictures until about 7:30, so the first part of our journey was in the dark. We had a very knowledgeable guide who talked the whole time giving us all kinds of information while we drove around stopped for various animals. The first animals we saw were 2 bull elk laying right next to the road. It was too dark for pictures, but they were wonderful to see. One of our wildlife sightings included stopped to talk with Bob Landis on the side of the road as he was out shooting his next video. He's very famous for many of his wildlife videos in Yellowstone mostly about wolves. He's working on a bear video now, but he's out there every day with his video camera just shooting hoping for anything to come along. He had radio contact with some of the wolf watchers and directed us across a turn to a group of wolf watchers. All of them had their scopes out pointed at a very distant group of hills. our guide set up his scope, but while we waited we used someone else's scope who was nice enough to allow us to have a peak. This was definitely nothing I could see with my bare eyes and the scope put the wolves right in front of me.

We left the wolves in search of a moose that someone claimed to have spotted. our guide mentioned that moose were moving down to the Tetons and out of Yellowstone over the past several years so even he doesn't see moose in Yellowstone very often. So, when we rounded a bend and found a moose right next to the road, our guide could not contain his excitement. Well, the whole car load was pretty excited. Not only was it a moose, but it was a bull moose, and it was right next to the road. All the photographers in the van were taking millions of pictures. It was actually pretty funny to hear the click click click click of all the cameras going off. Our guide who is into photography himself was kicking himself for not bringing his telephoto lens, but we were close enough that his wide angle even worked. We parked around a bend, all jumped out and fired off more shots as the moose walked towards us, then crossed the road, then moved into a trio of bison lounging on the side of the road. What an experience! Our guide said, okay, tour over. =) Not really though. The sun was coming out and we found many more places to stop and watch wildlife. On the way back we even found the bull elk next to the road and posing for us as well.

We weren't sure if our afternoon could top our morning. As it turned out, another couple that was on our morning tour was also on our tour to Norris Geyser basin for the afternoon. It was only the four of us, so we were able to cater the tour to our liking. The other couple was very similar to us. He is an avid photographer and they both love to travel as much as possible mostly to national parks to hike, take pictures, and enjoy as much of the vacation outside as possible. They also tend to take advantage of every second of their vacation time to do anything and everything. Sound familiar? =) They were very happy to meet us as they had been scoping out all the guests at the hotel to see who would be on the tour with them. They wanted other active people so that we could all take a long tour of Norris. And that we did. We had time to see just about all of the Norris Geyser Basin with its multiple geysers, hot springs, boiling mud, and thermal activity. There were many ghost trees here too (all iced up and white from the steam drifting through the trees and freezing.) I think next to the wildlife, ghost trees are my favorite subject to photograph. Much of the trail was still unbroken snow, so we almost needed snowshoes. We were hiking on boardwalks that were covered with a couple feet of snow. At one point our guide pointed out a mound of snow and said, "Don't trip over the park bench." We walked over it instead.

It was another wonderful day in Yellowstone and we are still just getting started. I love this park in the wintertime. We find ourselves very lucky to be visiting in a week where the highs are in the 20s and sometimes near 30 as opposed to some of the typical winter weather that gets down to 30 below zero! There aren't many people here at all which makes the park and it's popular spots all that much more enjoyable. The silence and solitude of winter here is amazing.

Be sure to visit http://markandjoannatravel.blogspot.com/

Connected to the internet again

Our trip is nearly over. We had a glorious time in Yellowstone. While we did not have access to the internet there, I still wrote up daily journal entries. Unfortunately, you will have to wait a few more days for me to get pictures posted as I've taken hundreds and have not started weeding through them. We are sitting in Bozeman with internet access and I'll take the opportunity to post our activities from the past week. Here is the first of a few posts.

January 10, 2009

Today was a travel day. We took the Alpine Taxi (shuttle service) from our condo in Steamboat to Hayden Airport, flew to Bozeman with a connection in Salt Lake City, then were shuttled via the Karst Stage Shuttle from the Bozeman airport to West Yellowstone. Luckily all our travel worked out as scheduled and we had no problems.

January 11, 2009

We arrived in Yellowstone today and it is just as pretty as I imagined it would be. The thermal features are steaming in the cold air and all the trees in the steam are iced over with what's called hoarfrost that turns them completely white covered in ice and snow. Now they are ghost trees standing on the edge of boiling mud pits and bubbling geyser basins.

This morning we took the Xanterra express snowcoach from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful. We rode in what's called a Bombardier and is pretty hard to describe. It's almost like a very small and aerodynamic tank that sits on snow tracks. There is a luggage rack on the roof to hold our suitcases, and we sat in side on benches that lined the walls of the interior of the Bombardier. Eight of us fit inside, and we might have been able to squeeze in 2 more if we were forced to, but it was cozy with 8. Since this was an express shuttle, we went straight to Old Faithful with no stops. There were about 4 photographers on board including myself and I was the least equipped. The others had a tripod or two, and full camera backpacks full of lenses. The hardest part of travel for me is deciding how much photog gear to bring and I usually try to minimize it as much as possible because it is less to haul that way. We took photos as our snowcoach bumped along noisily through the park's entrance road. Hopefully I got a few non-blurry shots.

We arrived at Old Faithful just in time to see it erupt so we trekked out to have a look. We took a less-traveled path and ended up thigh deep in snow. Thankfully we found the traveled path and continued in on foot. The day was overcast and the steam was pouring from the blowhole. We could tell there was some water shooting up, but mostly we saw a mixture of clouds and steam. It was still spectacular, but the photo-op was less than perfect. There will be many other opportunities, however. We strolled around the Old Faithful area on the boardwalks finding it easy to stay on the path because of the foot-trampled snow in front of us. There are lots of signs warning us not to travel off the path, but in the winter the boardwalk covered in snow looks exactly the same as the thermal area next to the boardwalk covered in snow. Finally we were cold and hungry, so we went back to the Old Faithful Snow Lodge for lunch. Did you know that the historic Old Faithful Inn that we all see pictures of is not equipped to handle winter guests? Apparently the people who built it figured that no one would be brave enough to come into the park during the cold winter months, so the Inn has no insulation. It's closed. So, we are in the somewhat adjacent Snow Lodge that has winter services. Our next snowcoach was picking us up soon, so we borrowed some books from the little library cart they had and read about Yellowstone while we waited.

The four hour snowcoach ride from old Faithful to Mammoth Springs was excellent. We pulled out and walked around the area of the Painted Pots where we got to see a lot of ghost trees and bubbling mud. We also stopped for any wildlife on the side of the road that we wanted to capture on camera. Our guide was really nice about stopped anywhere for us. We got to see lots of bison in the distance digging their massive heads into the snow. They dig down to the Earth to hopefully find grass to eat. When they rise from their digging hole, their heads are giant white masks of snow. We also saw lots of Canadian geese, trumpeter swans, other ducks, a couple eagles, ravens of course, elk, and of course lots and lots and lots of snow. The snow here is white and untouched and when it blankets an interesting landscape full of rocks, downed trees, thermal features, and more, it is really quite beautiful to look at. Many of the streams here are fed by thermally heated waters so they do not freeze over, but move briskly through the snow-covered canyons and meadows. At the end of our journey it not only started snowing to almost white-out conditions, but it also got dark, so when we spotted a carcass a ways off the road, we could only imagine what it must look like in the non-hazy conditions. There were ravens and even an eagle eating their dinner.

we can't wait for our tours tomorrow when we'll see even more features and wildlife.

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Last day in Steamboat

January 9, 2009

It's another snow day. We woke up this morning to find a winter wonderland outside and the snow was still falling. I would guess that about 5 inches fell overnight. We bundled up for our last day skiing and headed out into the snow. Since we had a day off yesterday, we started out on the Christy Express which goes up the lower part of the mountain. I was a little concerned that after the warm day yesterday, the skiing would be icy, but with all the snow it was fresh powder. In fact on the sides of the slopes it was quite deep. When our skis took us into the embankment, we were about shin deep in the snow. After a couple runs on lower mountain, we got on the gondola to head up to the top to take the 3 mile green trail down the mountain called Why Not. When we got off the gondola, it was almost a complete white out. There seemed to be a little less people on the mountain today and we had a good ski down the mountain. For a change of pace, we had lunch at the base of the mountain at a place called Gondola Pub and Grill where Mark ate on the first day. There was no wait for a table which was nice and we had a glorious meal of hamburgers. The fifth day of skiing this week was taking it out of us and gravity held us to our seats like glue.

Somehow we managed to unstick ourselves and give our table to some other hungry skiers and we went straight up the gondola. It's colder on the top of the mountain, and the first run down Spur Run to the ski lift was chilly. Plus the snow was falling harder and harder. While on the lift that took us back up the mountain to the gondola we started getting a little buried in snow. =) Not really, but we were covered. We did one more run down Spur Run and Joanna started to take some of the steeper sections. Finally it was time for the last run of the day. On the way back to the gondola we entered even more of a white out than earlier. In fact we could hardly see the building we were headed towards. Joanna took a short blue run that linked up with the green run that Mark was headed on. The blue run didn't look so intimidating because in the white out I couldn't see the bottom and see how long and steep it was. Our last ski of the day was through some of the hardest snow we've seen yet and Joanna's hair iced up and froze. We took some pictures of ourselves covered in snow that you can see below.

At the bottom of the mountain the Music Fest that had been going on all week in the evenings was in full swing in the afternoon and we walked through the snow covered crowd and turned in our rented skis and boots. I was very glad to give up those ski boots. Our clunky hiking boots always feel so light and airy after taking off our ski boots. Plus with the hiking books we've got a range of motion in our ankles. =) Imagine if we had tennis shoes! To finish off the day we headed to a cafe for a hot cookie each. The hot cookie was about as big as my hand if I made a jazz hand and it was gooey and yummy and hit the spot after all the day's activity.

The rest of our day was pretty boring as we are just hanging out in the condo watching tv, doing laundry, and being generally lazy. Tomorrow we head out to Yellowstone. We won't arrive in West Yellowstone until late at night and while in the park we won't have any internet unless we are really really lucky. So, we'll go on a posting break and let you know how it all went in a week. We head back to Houston on January 17th. If you can't see the pictures be sure to visit: http://markandjoannatravel.blogspot.com