Mudpots and sleigh-rides...

On our last day in Yellowstone National Park, we travelled towards the West Entrance in a convoy of three Bombardier Snowcoaches ("bombs"), a rather old mode of oversnow transport which will be familar to winter visitors to Perisher Valley in NSW, Australia. They were made in Quebec, Canada, and the 1953 model one we rode in, Chip was named for its likeness to a particular buffalo.

The quickest way to get a good view from a Bombardier Snowcoach was through one of two sunroofs. Love that spare tyre!

Not far from Old Faithful Village is the Black Sand Basin, named from crushed obsidian (volcanic glass) scattered around from an old lava flow. Here we followed a boardwalk to explore an eerie landscape around a huge and steamy hot-spring called Sunset Lake. Interesting features here included frosty or frozen lodgepole pines including many which were burnt out in Yellowstone's worst ever bushfire in 1988 which grew from several "controlled" burnoffs and eventually affected 36% of the park.

Morning sun over the steamy water features of the Black Sand Basin.

Drew Thate, Expedition Leader, sharing the view of Sunset Lake with one of our group.

Stark view of a lodgepole pine skeleton, a victim of the 1988 fire.

Frost covered lodgepole pine near the Black Sand Basin.

Many Yellowstone pines have serotinous cones which need heat to release seeds, thus ensuring their survival after bushfire.

Swirling steam and sub-zero temperatures frosted up our hair!

Prior to the 1988 fire, it was already understood that forests can be regenerated by fire, and the fire was even then said to be "overdue". Lodgepole pines are partly propogated by serotinous cones which only yield their seeds at temperature (when a resin envelope is melted), and we saw that huge areas of Yellowstone forests consist for tall, stark skeletons of old burnt out pines, beside healthy tracts of shorter trees 30 years old.

Our three Bombardiers lined up to study the 1988 fire devastated forest along Tangled Creek.

This is the junction of Firehole and Gibbon Rivers, and it's here in September 1870 that an expedition, marvelling on Yellowstone's wonders, formed the idea of preserving the area for "public enjoyment". In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant established Yellowstone as the first National Park in the world.

A side road goes down the deep and pretty Firehole River canyon and past Firehole Falls just before it joins the Gibbon River to become the Maddison River.

Near a bridge over the Madison River we encountered this bison crossing the road to join its herd.

Bison dozing after foraging in the snow for food.

Coyotes (canis latrans) prey on cattle and sheep (as well as smaller critters), so used to be hunted. Very adaptable, they are now abundant in Yellowstone, aided by decline in wolves.

Past the Basin, we stopped at Fountain Paint Pots, a full house collection of strange and active hydrothermal features including hot springs, geysers, fumaroles and mudpots. Again, to protect us and the landscape, a boardwalk with interpretative signage guided us round keeping us out of the boiling waters. The paint pot colours here are due to various oxidation states of iron in mud, and the name "Fountain" is from Fountain Geyser (40m high, every 4-6 hours except when it goes rogue) in the area, itself named because of its appearance. Uniquely interesting is the Red Spouter which formed only as recently as 1959 as a result of a strong earthquake.

Strange landscape, but we weren't in the presence of spacemen. These two are from a snow mobile tour.

A technicolor hot creek backed by frosty pine skeletons.

The sun blotted out by steam, bubble bubble boil and trouble at Fountain Paint Pots.

Eerie alien appearance of this mudpot at Yellowstone's Fountain Paint Pots.

Drew Rush, National Geographic photographer, admiring Red Spouter, a thermal feature only dating back to an earthquake in 1959.

Frozen pinetree in the Fountain Paintpot area.

This lodgepole pine was probably burnt out in the 1988 Yellowstone fire, and is now a frozen skeleton.

Heat loving micro-organisms like cyanobacteria create the greens and browns seen here.

We exited Yellowstone National Park at the West Yellowstone entrance in Montana, and switched from Bombardiers to a regular coach for an 80km drive (all downhill) to Big Sky, a ski resort in Montana, where we stayed at the Lone Mountain Ranch. The LMR is one of about 50 in the National Geographic's Unique Lodges of the World collection, and it was a treat to stay here, even if only for one night. Each couple had their own very rustic but comfortable cabin, complete with a bed so big it evoked John Denver's song Grandma's Feather Bed, and an honest to goodness vinyl record player, complete with a bunch of C&W albums! After a NatGeo farewell reception, for dinner, we took a sleigh-ride up a hill to an unpowered, oil-lit cabin called North Fork where we enjoyed "family-style prime rib" (mmmm!) and were entertained (in the gloom) by an acoustic guitarist singing her own compositions. And then a brisk sleigh-ride back down the hill!

This is where we were turned around from the park twelve years, but what were we thinking anyway? Winter roads are uncleared!

The front door of our Lone Mountain Ranch cabin, Black Bear.

Can't beat a great big bed and a cozy log fire in a luxury lodgepole pine cabin.

Our Lone Mountain Ranch cabin had no TV but did boast a vinyl record player complete with some great country music albums.

Several sleighs took us 15 minutes up hill on a groomed cross-country trail to North Fork for prime rib dinner.

Playing by oil-lamp, this musician entertained us between course at the North Fork cabin.

We saw much wildlife in Yellowstone, but sadly not a single wolf, not at any distance. Apparently, we were unlucky - "half the time" NatGeo expeditions will at least a glimpse a wolf. We heard from others in our group that a "kill" by a wolf pack of an elk had been sighted only a day or two previously, and saw this information reported on "sighting noticeboards" mounted around the park. There are only about 100 wolves in the park (https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm) in 11 identified packs. Trouble is, wolves and packs are not confined to the park, and can be shot legally in season outside the park. Dan Hartman, who follows the packs closely (http://wildlifealongtherockies.homestead.com/) told us the sad story of the alpha male of the already depleted Lamar Canyon pack being killed legally near his house, a death which will almost assuredly bring an end to the pack.

Stunning and envy inspiring image of Wapiti Lake Wolf Pack, Yellowstone by Barry Judd.

Summer satellite view of YNP showing photo taking locations and density for this expedition.

More Yellowstone images here.

Into Yellowstone...

At last we arrived at the singular purpose of this particular overseas trip, an extended visit to the famous Yellowstone National Park in Winter as part of a photographic outing by National Geographic Expeditions. Yellowstone became the world's first National Park (#2 being Royal National Park in Sydney) when, on 01 March 1872, President Ulysses S Grant signed it into law. The roughly rectangular park is large, at 9,000sq.km, and sits in the northwest corner of Wyoming. Maybe for political reasons, the park overlaps slightly into two other states, Montana and Idaho, and indeed, the only winter entrance is in Montana.

In a heavy snowfall, this sign marks the entry to the park near Gardiner MT.

Our expedition (National Geographic love that word) started at Bozeman airport at a grizzly bear statue (wooden, gratefully, not a taxidermist product). There were 16 guests (all Americans except for us two) plus two guides, both conveniently called Drew. Drew Thate was our Expedition Leader, and Drew Rush was our NatGeo photographer. From Bozeman, we travelled to the park via Paradise Valley (where our Leader lives) in two very luxurious and spacious Mercedes buses which could also negotiate the only park road open in winter which runs for 85km about 10km inside the northern boundary, mostly in Wyoming, from the North Entrance to the Northeast Entrance, both entrances being in Montana.

Heavy snow falling doesn't stop these elk grazing on the edge of Gardiner.

Our group travelled in two of these Mercedes minibuses.

The imposing Roosevelt Arch marks the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner MT. Its cornerstone was laid down by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. An inscription "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People" confirms the fundamental purpose of this, the world's first National Park.

Our accommodation for this phase was in a motel in the town of Gardiner immediately outside the North Entrance, and our room looked right over the gushing Yellowstone River, which (although flowing north through the park), eventually winds up in the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. We must have been on the east side of the continental divide! Inside the park, at Mammoth Hot Springs, there is a splendid looking hotel which is NatGeo's preference, but it was undergoing major renovations. Come back in 2020 if you want to stay here, by the look of it.

Our motel in Gardiner while the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel is being renovated.

A few vehicles making their way along the only cleared road in Yellowstone.

Subzero temperatures greeted us on Yellowstone's high plateau.

This road runs from Gardiner, through Mammoth Hot Springs crosses the Blacktail Deer Plateau, then at Tower-Roosevelt it drops down into the Lamar Valley and along Soda Butte Creek until it passes the Northeast Entrance to the tiny town of Cooke City. It was a spectacular drive in almost non-existent traffic and along the way we saw small herds of American Elk, Pronghorn, Longhorned Sheep and the odd bison and distant moose, not to mention glorious mountain scenery.

Bison burrow through soft snow in the hunt for meagre nutrition, thus the snowy visage!

Seen through the softening haze of a heavy snowfall, these pronghorn deer are among 5,000 in Yellowstone. Their main defence is that they are the fastest land animal in North America.

As close as we got to a moose in Yellowstone, Bull moose shed their antlers for winter to help them conserve energy.

Heavy snow on rocks in Yellowstone's Soda Butte Creek resemble marshmallows.

A distant mountain goat was visible in this field using a high-powered telescope, but you can't see it in this shot through a 560mm lens.

The slopes of Barronette Peak exhibit some very pretty icefalls.

Relatively rare (only about 160 inside Yellowstone) but easy to find, bighorn sheep enjoy grazing on steep terrain.

Elk (cervus canadensis) are Yellowstone's most numerous mammal, with up to 20,000 in summer, but most winter outside the park, leaving less than 5,000 behind. These are females - bulls have antlers.

Cooke City is a tiny town (pop 140). Apparently it had great ambitions to be a railway stop, but that development never eventuated. In winter, the only access is via Yellowstone, being hemmed in by mountains and all other roads are snowbound and uncleared. We saw Cooke City to be very popular as a destination for snow-mobilers, and we had lunch there at a joint called Buns N Beds. Our "crowd" was obviously expected, but it nearly overwhelmed this tiny place, and the very helpful server really had her work cut out for her, what with a lot of special instructions for the chef.

Downtown Cooke City is a very snowy place.

We had a real pleasure and that was to visit the very cute cabin and studio of Dan Hartman, a renowned photographer and videographer who earns major commissions from National Geographic and BBC, for example. Dan, and his wife Cindy, live in Silver Gate MT, a tiny tiny town on the north eastern border of the park, and made a presentation to us in their cosy living room on his experiences filming rare and elusive wildlife in Yellowstone (his own backyard) and elsewhere. Dan has mastered the techniques of identifying key locations and installing fixed cameras, coming back for them later, sometimes much later, to see what he had captured. Only a small fraction of his footage has ever been actually aired by his employers, and he showed us amazing scenes which had never been seen publically. The Hartman's have a bird-hide, and there we saw plenty of Clark's Nutcrackers and a few Hairy Woodpeckers, and got nice close-ups of each.

The path leading to Dan Hartman's house and gallery.

Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), or a woodpecker crow, is a common high-altitude bird in the Rocky Mountains, and is particularly keen on seeds from whitebark pine which it helps to propogate.

In his living room, Dan showed us examples of his extraordinary photography and videography.

Common in deciduous forests throughout North America, the hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) lives on insects, fruit, berries and nuts.

After a long day exploring the northern fraction of Yellowstone. To go deeper into the park, we would have to trade in our Mercedes buses.

More Yellowstone images here.

YNP Staging Post...

We'd never heard of the city of Bozeman, Montana before planning for this trip, but we came here, and stayed a few days, because it was to be the staging post for our Winter expedition into Yellowstone National Park. Bozeman has a population of nearly 50,000 and is the fourth largest city in the state of Montana. We arrived at BZN, the city's substantial international airport. We think most visitors arriving here were planning to ski at the nearby Big Sky mountain.

Old poster on display in Bozeman's Museum of the Rockies. We travelled in much more comfort!

This statue combines two evident passions of Bozeman.

In the 1860's, John Bozeman established a branch off the old Oregon Trail leading to the mining centre of Virginia City. A town was founded (1864) to take advantage of fertile soil.

Pocket park on Main Street backed by a shop-side town mural.

Beautiful light in Main Street at dusk.

Bozeman is a delightful town, covered in snow and pretty in an "old western town" kind of way. The residents that we met spoke with a friendly cowboy drawl, and always went out of their way to welcome or help us. We stayed at the Element Hotel in downtown - other hotels we considered were out of town a few kilometers for guests with cars - and were thus able to enjoy walks along Main Street. The street is populated with restaurants and bars plus expensive art, craft and fashion stores. Apart from Ace Hardware and a cute deli, the street seemed to cater to students and well-heeled visitors, rather than local residents, who must mostly shop at nearby malls.

The Element Hotel in downtown Bozeman was a very pleasant place to stay.

View of Bozeman's backdrop as seen from our hotel room.

Back from Main Street, we walked around a snowy grid of very pleasant residential streets, some of which featured houses of historical significance, judging by plaques mounted nearby. For more substantial trips around town, Bozeman has 3 or 4 free bus loops, which should be a boon for locals and visitors alike, but most people seem to just drive around town. The only people who knew anything about the bus routes seemed to be the bus drivers!

Historical cottage on N Tracy Ave, just off downtown.

Historical photograph of Crow encampment in the Bozeman region. The Crow were mostly displaced by other tribes which had earlier and better access to guns, and eventually negotiated a sizeable reservation near Billings, Montana.

Bozeman is the seat of the University of Montana whose campus is just out of downtown. The University established the Museum of the Rockies which has a fabulous exhibit of dinosaur skeletons including the biggest Tyrannosaurus rex skull ever found. Apart from paleontology, the museum has great exhibits devoted to Yellowstone National Park, and the lives and culture of local Indian tribes (but not too much on their sad demise).

Statue of #BigMike, cast from a mould of the bones of a T-Rex discovered in Montana in 1988 by a local rancher.

Volunteer palenontological work on display in the Museum.

A truly magnificent display of Tyrannosaurus Rexes at this Museum.

We had no trouble finding good espresso coffee in Main Street, the barista in one cosy coffee shop (Zocalo) remembered our unusual order after just one visit! To keep off the slippery sidewalks at night, we mostly dined at The Squire attached to our hotel where the food was excellent, and where we met a most friendly manager and a server who had worked in a horse ranch in Western Australia. Even given that these people work in the service industry, we were most impressed with the country style friendliness we encountered in Bozeman.