Towards Old Faithful...

Yellowstone National Park is visited by over 4 million people a year, the vast majority in summer, when a mere glipse of a critter brings gridlock in the traffic. Winter was our preference for this reason. Even in winter, when most roads are closed to all but over-snow vehicles, there were still a good number people and vehicles about, and our accommodations were surprisingly quite crowded with guests.

The hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs was closed for overnight guests, but we were able to go into the lobby areas and even buy a cappucino!

To venture more deeply into the Park, we had to travel over unploughed snow covered roads. At Mammoth Hot Springs we swapped our Mercedes buses for two huge Ford over-snow trucks, very luxurious inside, with gigantic underinflated tyres which are, apparently, more efficient than tracks. Many of the concessions within Yellowstone (and elsewhere) are operated by privately owned Xanterra as part of their Travel Collection, and these two vehicles were from their fleet of 30 or so. Xanterra provided a capable driver cum knowledgeable guide for each vehicle.

Monster trucks took us into the unploughed snow of Yellowstone.

Our Ford snowbus driver and guide was Laura, here showing a map of the park printed on a teatowel.

On our convoluted path to Old Faithful, high up on the Yellowstone Plateau, we encounted many bison, in small family sized herds. The park's bison are special and precious. The park is the only place in the USA where they have lived continuously since prehistoric times (https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/bison.htm) and have not been contaminated by inbreeding with cattle. After being hunted to near extinction (for sale, for sport and to starve the Indians), the population of the Yellowstone herds now nears 5,000, supposedly something like their pre-whiteman levels. Bison come down from the highlands to the plains during winter for nutrition which they find by burrowing in the snow, but they are apparently pretty undernourished during this season, and, to save energy, are loathe to move much.

These bison are seemingly unaware of the spectactular late afternoon vista behind them, sunset plus hydrothermal steam.

The bison we saw behaved as predicted, always either lying down resting, or standing and burrowing in the snow, or moving very slowly. We had been warned to stay away from them, but on one scary occasion they approached us in a herd of maybe a dozen when a group of 6 of us were following a boardwalk in the Old Faithful geyser basin, and we couldn't back away. When he was very close, the alpha-male gave us the evil eye and communicated quite clearly which way we should go. We obeyed! The sequence of 5 photos below shows how the herd approached us, then led by the boss, trampled over the boardwalk exactly where we had been standing, and proceeded down to the Firehole River.

As we drove south into Yellowstone, we gained considerable altitude, and it got colder. Put simply, Yellowstone is mostly an elevated plateau averaging 2,400m above sea level (higher than Mount Kosciuszko) surrounded by ranges of the Rocky Mountains up to over 3,000m. It is split by the North American continental divide and is dominated by a supervolcano caldera which encloses about a quarter of the park. The last major eruption was 600,000 years ago, but the underlying heat powers what is now the world's largest field of hydrothermal activity, hotsprings, geysers (hotsprings which periodically erupt to relieve accumulated pressure), fumaroles (a steam vent which does not erupt), mudpots (hotsprings acidified by volcanic gases, like hydrogen sulphide, dissolving rock into mud, aided by micro-organisms) and travertine terraces (type of carbonate limestone precipitated by flowing mineral springs).

View of the travertine terraces at Mammoth.

Our first sighting of hydrothermal activity was before we left Mammoth Hot Springs which is home to steamy but spectacular travertine terraces, including Canary Spring and other named features, so many that we were not quite sure which one was which. But, of course, the real favourite in the hydrothermal department was to be the world-famous Old Faithful Geyser but we had a lot to see before we got there.

Boardwalks approach these steamy terraces with safety.

A terraced waterfall at Mammoth Hot Springs, the multi-colours from agae and bacteria.

Named in 1871 and long extinct, this inactive spring sits in front of Canary Terrace.

Beguiling colours in this hot spring at the top of Canary Terrace at Mammoth.

Our two Drews from National Geographic clearly knew how to get the best from this expedition into Yellowstone - Drew 1, the local resident and expert, and Drew 2, the NatGeo photographer who positioned us precisely for superb landscape shots, and the best views of wildlife like trumpeter swans - we even saw an iconic bald eagle.

Snow blowing on high as we look towards Mary Mountain from the Grand Loop Road.

Listed as endangered, the bald eagle (haliaeetus leucocephalus) raptor is the national symbol of the USA. It likes to nest near Yellowstone Lake, feeding mostly on fish and waterfowl, this one hunting in the Gibbon River.

Once nearly extinct thanks to hunting and habitat loss, the large Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) has been saved by conservation measures with 50,000 in the Lower 48, but there are still only about 30 in Yellowstone NP which is a marginal environment for this species.

Enchanting sunset view in Yellowstone's Lower Geyser Basin.

We passed the world's tallest active geyser, Steamboat which is located in the Norris Geyser Basin and near the Gibbon River. Its eruptions are huge, up to 90m in the air, but they are extremely irregular, the intervals between successive eruptions being days (typically) or years (in 1991 and 2013 eruptions broke nine year droughts, and there were none at all between 1911 to 1961). Strange plumbing underneath, it would seem. No predictability here, and we certainly didn't see Steamboat go off, but our snowbus guide Laura said that she was camped nearby for a long period during her undergraduate study years and was lucky enough to see it go up. Steamboat's last eruptions was only a few days before our visit, at 12:35 on 25Jan2019. Images of Steamboat eruptions can surely only be got by patient or lucky photographers!

Great shot of Steamboat's eruption in August 2018 by BPNJensen (from Wikipedia)

Deep in Yellowstone, there are few public facilities and restrooms, but luckily our guides knew where they all were. Secreted in the back of our snowbuses were packed lunches that we had ordered several days previously (so what we got was a surprise), and we ate them at locations like Canyon Village and Madison, both intersections in Yellowstone's sparse road system.

This team of local characters are apparently fully occupied removing accumulated snow off YNP rooves.

Just off the Grand Loop Road, near Paintpot Hill, one of a multitude of hot springs in Yellowstone.

Near Canyon Village is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the river that gives its name to the National Park and is itself named for the colours of rocks in the river or sandstone in the bluffs nearby. Here, the Yellowstone River flows and falls in a spectacular gorge, and from the appropriately named Artist Point, offers a fantastic view, summer or winter. The Yellowstone River which actually starts in northwest Wyoming is, at 1107km, the longest undammed river in the "lower 48". Quite separate to the Yellowstone River but still east of the Continental Divide is the Gibbon River which runs into the Madison River, then the Missouri River near Three Forks, MT and eventually the Mississippi River near St Louis, MO.

From the aptly named Artist Point, a spectacular view of the Yellowstone River.

Not the grim reaper! Updrafts from the Yellowstone Canyon below chill visitors walking to viewing points.

The headwaters of the Yellowstone river proceding towards the falls and canyon.

We saw many snowmobile tours in Yellowstone, all were quiet and orderly no doubt as enforced by guides and rangers.

Known by 1872, the falls on the Gibbon River are upstream of its junction with the Firehole River.

At dusk on day three of our expedition we finally arrived at the Upper Geyser Basin, on the Firehole River and the site of Old Faithful. See our next blog post for that story.

Summer postcard of Old Faithful and a hot spring. Not like this for our visit! And where are the people?

More of our 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.