A Bucket List Trip
Part 2. Interior Yellowstone – Day 1.
I have lost count of how many times I have been to Yellowstone National Park. I have been there in the spring, summer, fall, and once a cursory drive by in very late winter, but it has long been on my bucket list to make a trip to the interior of the park in winter. This winter I was able to be part of a week long, small group photography tour of the park. Our group was composed of two professional photographer guides and six tour guests. We spent seven days exploring the park – four in the Mammoth and Lamar Valley areas and three full days in the interior of the park. The road between Gardiner and Cooke City remains open to vehicular travel all winter, but visitation to the interior is limited requiring snow coaches or snow mobiles operated by park approved concessionaires.
Follow me and my camera to explore the interior regions of Yellowstone in the winter.
This post will cover our first day of exploring the region of the park that is accessible only to specialized snow machines during the winter months (purple highlighted area on map). One of the very nice things about our tour was that we were not on a specifically ordered itinerary. The places we went, and when, evolved as each day progressed. Clicking on photos throughout this post will enlarge them if you would like to see more detail, particularly of some of the animals. If you missed it, you can read the first installment of this series, Winter in Yellowstone: Part 1. Northern Yellowstone.
This is one of the two snow cats (short for snow caterpillar) that transported our tour group for three days of exploring the interior of the park. It is a refurbished vintage Bombardier. These were the traditional snow machines used throughout the park in the past. Each of our vehicles carried the driver and guide in front with three tour guests behind in the main coach area giving us plenty of room to stretch out. These snow cats are owned and operated by Caldera Tours whose drivers were incredibly knowledgeable about the park and wildlife.
On the first interior day, we drove above Mammoth Hot Springs with our luggage to meet the snow cats where the road ends for auto traffic. All of our gear was loaded into a trailer attached to the back of the cat for transport to our new lodging. Originally, we were scheduled to stay at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, but the park decided to not open that facility during the winter of 2021. Instead, we stayed in the town of West Yellowstone. Interestingly, West Yellowstone leaves snow packed on the street surfaces, and the snow cats were able to drive us directly to and from our lodging. The only minor disappointment of the trip was not to be able to do night photography at Old Faithful since we were not lodged in the park. However, that was probably not a bad thing as this was an activity packed adventure. Each day we were on the road before sunrise so we could enter the park when it opened and be at a desired location to photograph during the early morning light. We did not return until evening so we could photograph through the sunset into the blue hour. No one wanted to fall asleep in the snow cat during the day for fear of missing something. Not going out for night photography was probably a good thing!
Although the snowfall within the park had been less than normal everywhere, there was quite a bit more snow in the interior than where we had been touring. While we had our must see list of animals, photographing the landscape had greater attraction here than it had on the previous days in the Lamar Valley region. One of our first stops in the interior was the Norris Geyser Basin.
According to the National Park Service, the Norris Geyser Basin “is the hottest, oldest, and most dynamic of Yellowstone’s thermal areas.” Geothermal features have existed here for 115,000 years and are constantly changing. The highest temperature in the park has been recorded at Norris, and few of the hydrothermal features in the basin are much below the water boiling point (which is 199 oF or 92.8 oC at this elevation). Temperatures below the surface as high as 459 oF (237 oC) have been measured. The water here is acidic including that found in geysers. Acidic geysers are considered rare. The basin contains all of the types of geothermal features – fumaroles (or steam vents), hot springs, mudpots and geysers including the tallest geyser in the world, Steamboat Geyser.
The Norris Geyser Basin is composed of two subunits, the Porcelain Basin and the Back Basin which are quite different. The Porcelain Basin has a lot of barren ground in a range of colors and few living trees. This area is explored via a 0.75-mile trail system composed of ground trail and boardwalks. The Back Basin is much more heavily vegetated and explored by a 1.5-mile trail of similar type. We hiked on trails covered with varying amounts of snow. The photo on the right shows that it was pretty hard to get off the trail!
Mudpots are one of my favorite geothermal features. I can watch them for long periods of time! They are formed from rainwater collecting in a depression that is underlain by clay that does not allow the water to seep far into the ground. This forms mud which is heated by the thermal water below causing the mud to bubble and burp. They are better captured by video than still photos. The photo on the right shows mudpots in the foreground.
Hot springs are the most prevalent and colorful of the hydrothermal features in Yellowstone. They are formed when rain water percolating down through the bedrock is heated geothermally and then rises to the surface through an open pipe vent. The convection currents within the hot spring release heat at the surface and keep the water from superheating and erupting like a geyser. The hot springs tend to be quite colorful. Yellow colors are sulfur deposits. Red, orange and brown are from minerals that contain iron, and the greens and blues are from thermophilic microbes that flourish in the different temperatures and pHs of the water here.
Geysers are the rarest of all the geothermal features. They are hot springs that, rather than having an open pipe plumbing system, possess a constriction in the vent somewhere close to the surface. The constriction limits the scope of the convection currents in the system which causes the temperature and pressure to build up in the depths of the column of water. This increasing pressure prevents the water from boiling thus superheating it. Eventually, some of the surface water splashes out of the geyser decreasing the pressure on the deep superheated water causing violent boiling. The huge amount of steam that is generated propels a column of water from the vent in a geyser eruption. Yellowstone possesses a larger number of geysers than any other place on earth.
After spending the majority of the morning exploring the Norris Geyser Basin, we devoted the afternoon to hunting wildlife. While cruising along in the snow cat, our guides saw some distinctive tracks in the snow, so we stopped, and the photo to the right was the view although it was less magnified with the naked eye (the photo was taken at 600 mm). If you look carefully at the left side of the photo, there is a lump…
The lump turned out to be one of the animals on our wish list – one there was only a small chance of spotting because it is small, white and moves very quickly. The long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) is one of the seven weasel species found in Yellowstone. People often call them ermine, but technically the ermine is a short-tailed weasel (Mustela erminea). To be able to see the weasel, the photo to the right has been highly magnified by severe cropping.
Both weasel species are brown with white or pale yellow bellies in summer but molt and become all white except for a black tail tip in winter. The most notable difference between the two species is the length of tail. Ermine have tails that are about one third the body length; long-tailed weasel tails are about half the body length. When tracking the long tailed weasel in the snow, the tracks often appear as two sets of two small feet that are together with a line between the paired feet from the tail striking the surface of the snow.
Long-tail weasels are known as ferocious hunters. They are carnivores eating anything up to rabbit size. Their thin bodies allow them to chase their prey into burrows. They will also kill any available food when they find it and store what they cannot eat at the time. It was truly special to see one of these animals which are hard to spot because of their winter camouflage. I can’t believe our guides spotted it out in the meadow. I had trouble finding it even when the location was pointed out to me!
Next, we went in search of bobcat. We searched an area known to be frequently visited by a bobcat but did not find our quarry. There were tracks, but they were hours old. However, we did spot this bald eagle with its dinner fish.
This group of bison at sunset was the last subject of the day before leaving the interior of the park for our night’s stay in West Yellowstone.
Stay tuned for more of my adventure into the interior of Yellowstone in the winter.