Coyotes 101

On my Animal Sightings in Yellowstone post, I made mention of coyote sightings. We were likely enough to see 5 coyotes (or maybe 3, then 2 of that same party later on) all very busy doing coyote stuff, playing, fighting and eating. Adam got some great shots of them. Here are some scenes:

Coyote staring us down.

Walking around. I love this photo- untouched snow
except for the lone coyote's footprints.

Close up, he's paying attention to us and his fellow coyote now with his ears back.

Then his friend joins him.

After playtime, they get ready to rumble. Look at his stance!

They rolled around fighting for a while. At first we didn't know if it was
play-fighting or serious fighting. But what we saw next showed that
they were fighting to see who would get to eat first.....

The victor is gnawing on an elk carcass. You can see the outline of this vertebrae in the snow. Through the binoculars
we had a very clear view. It was like the Discovery Chanel or Planet Earth but live!

We had a great time watching these guys for a while. You never know what cool animal behaviors you'll see between skis in Yellowstone!

Animal Sightings in Yellowstone

This was my 5^th trip to Yellowstone and the animals did not disappoint! As you may have gathered from reading or even just glancing at my blog site, I love bison. I think they are just the coolest animals around. They appear stoic, inactive and to many folks downright boring, but if they want to, they can really turn it on. For example, an adult bison can high jump 5-6 feet without  a running start. They can horizontally jump 15 feet. They can run up to 30 mph (maybe even faster), and they can stop on a DIME without slowing down. They have lots of other cool behaviors especially related to the rut and fighting for mates. They are very protective of their young- Adam and I once saw a group of 5 bison surround a baby bison to shepherd it across the Firehole River. 

We had the opportunity to see many of these behaviors up close and personal on the snow coach ride from Mammoth to Old Faithful. As I mentioned in the Snow Coach Adventures post, the majority of the roads in Yellowstone are closed in winter so we took a 4 hour snow coach ride to and from Old Faithful. Since the large mammals tend to use the road to save energy during transit, we had many chances to get very close all from the safety of our snow coach. Most excitingly, we were able to be smack dab in the middle of a bison stampede!


We saw hundreds of bison along the way (there are 3500 in the park), and one group of about 30 decided it was time to go for a run right as we drove by them. They seemed to be running just for the joy of it (which I like to believe),  though it's likely that one of them got spooked for no good reason and the others followed. Bison are known to run for miles and miles at a time in response to perceived or actual threats. They do this less often in the winter because they need to conserve energy but Yellowstone, like the Midwest, is having a very mild winter so the young males were full of energy jumping on and fighting with each other. And running like the dickens. It was so so cool. Interestingly, it was virtually soundless because they were running on snow. I can only imagine how loud such a run would be in the summer!

Off they go! Coming towards the snow coach.

Taken through the windshield. We're surrounded by running bison at this point.

The bison on the left was hauling it, moving so fast, directly at
the snowmobilers. He ended up jumping around them aggressively
but no one was harmed. (I guess our bison friend dislikes snowmobiles
in Yellowstone as much as we do- NOISE POLLUTION.)

In addition to the bison, we saw plenty of pronghorns (the best marathoning animals in the world- no other species can run faster over the 26.2 mile distance, but humans are faster at ultra distances), elk, coyotes and even a small red fox.

The red fox was astutely spotted by my dad, it's amazing that he was able to catch it. The fox found a nice nook, walked in a circle, sat down, yawned, and then sat down for a nap. Like a cat, really.

A final comment about Yellowstone animals in the winter. While Adam and I have always had great luck spotting animals (we've seen at least 5 wolves in 3 different sightings) the snow cover in winter really emphasizes how many and how active the animals in the park are. There are footprints everywhere! You can get a good sense of who travelled where and how long ago which is fun to see. We called sites of particular activity a "wild rumpus". Yes the rumpus usually involves no more than large mammals eating grass but hey that's all the excitement they want in the harsh winter!

If you want to see more animal pictures or more Yellowstone pics in general, click on the Yellowstone 2012 slideshow in the upper right hand corner of my blog homepage. Enjoy!

Skiing Adventures in Yellowstone

My Dad, Adam and I are not the type who like to vacation sitting down. No sir, we skied every day of our trip except for the last which we officially dedicated to lounging:) Just in case my posts entice anyone to foray into the Winter Wonderland of Yellowstone, here are a few words about some of the skis we did.

Around Mammoth:

Upon arrival, we were quite travel weary (we got up at 3:30 am for our 6 am flight) but figured our options were nap, which would only make us more groggy, or ski! Thankfully, we skied! We did the short (1.5 mile) Upper Terrace Loop, which passed many beautiful thermal features.

Sisterbison....skiing with the herd

The next day we headed out for a ~ 5 mile ski along Tower Canyon. Last time Adam and I were here we had a really cool wolf experience. As we were skiing along looking at beautiful views, appreciating the silence, elated by our close bison encounter just a few minutes earlier (well, I was elated, Adam was likely just humoring me), we noticed the silence had been broken. By howling. Unmistakable wolf howling. We grabbed the binocs and looked around but didn't see a thing. A few minutes later, however, we turned a corner and the wolves were in sight!!


I, of course, ripped off my lobster mitts, threw down my poles, and got out my camera as I barreled over to the cliff's edge. Just in time I realized my wolf sighting would be short-lived if I didn't get it together and STOP before going over the cliff and I managed to slow myself down.

Here is a picture from this year:

Dad and I at Tower Canyon

We were in EXACTLY the same spot 3 years ago (albeit with more snow last time):

And we saw THIS:

The howling continued, and we stayed to watch. There ended up being three wolves in sight though we suspect the rest of the pack was around as well. They put on a show walking around and interacting. It was so great! We were sorry we weren't able to produce a repeat performance for my Dad, but alas, the wild is unpredictable!


Later that day, we headed over to Blacktail Plateau and did some more skiing. We were greeted with sweeping vistas and plenty of snow- you can barely even find Adam in the photo below.

Around Old Faithful:

Our longest ski was over 11 miles up to Fairy Falls. We didn't actually make it to the falls- figured they'd be frozen anyway, but it was a nice long ski with plenty of bison to see along the river. Here are some scenes:

The Firehole River with bison in the distance.

On Valentine's Day, Adam and I headed over to Black Sands Basin. The clouds parted exactly when we arrived in the basin which was wonderful because we were able to get shots like this:

Ridiculous, right? There are plenty more where that came from. I'll put up on a slide show on my blog home page in the next few days so check back!

Snow Coach Adventures

Our snow coach with 'Mattracks' named after
the inventor's son, Matt.

In the winter the majority of the roads in the Yellowstone Park Interior are closed to cars. They are not plowed, rather they are intermittently "groomed". So the only vehicles that can get through are snow coaches and snowmobiles. Snow coaches are vehicles like cars, mini-buses and the like (see picture) that have either matttracks (like tank tires) or ski/sled thingees on the front so they can grip and steer in the snow. So to get anywhere in the park beyond Lamar Valley and Mammoth in the north, you must be on one of these vehicles. On our 3rd day in the park we traveled from Mammoth to Old Faithful via a 4 hour snow coach ride. In additional to getting to see the stunning beauty of Yellowstone in the winter, and hearing the commentary of the tour driver about the geology, biology and history of the park, we get up close and personal with the animals. Many of the larger animals use the groomed roads for easier transit. This was the case with the bison stampede we we a part of, my 2nd favorite park moment on this trip. Stay tuned for the upcoming Animal Sightings post for details of the stampede!




On our way South, we stopped at the Roaring Mountain which is a hill with numerous fumaroles, which are superheated steam vents. They are the hottest thermal features in the park with steam upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit! One of the neat things about Yellowstone is that it is constantly changing. New fumaroles pop up, geysers turn to hot springs and hot springs that were thought to not erupt (hence called springs, not geysers) suddenly shoot water hundreds of feet into the sky! We drove past a mountain that was unremarkable until 6 years ago when 5 fumaroles broke through and now it is a steamer. Crazy stuff.

Adam, Me and Dad in front of Roaring Mountain

Us again on the road back to Mammoth.

On our way back from Old Faithful to Mammoth, we saw more interesting sites and wildlife but we also had a completely unplanned adventure. When we were about 1 hour (15 miles) outside of Mammoth, getting tired, hungry and ready to be home, we got a call from the snow coach behind us. Their driver was asking our driver for a tow. What????

Us: the coach squarely in the middle of the road.
Them: the van mired in a snow drift.

Yes, indeed, the snow coach got too up close and personal with the snow and got stuck. Stuck! Lest you should think this is a common event IT IS NOT! The snow coaches are very safe- in fact our driver has never been stuck in over 10 years of driving in the winter. But, nonetheless, we are out "in the wild" so to speak so anything can happen. And clearly, we needed to go rescue them. We first tried to tow the coach out from behind, but when this failed our driver needed to find a safe place to turn around to make a second attempt from the front. This is where things got dicey.




The sun was going down and it was getting COLD! We mostly had our cold weather gear on (I guess my mom's admonishments that "you should always dress for the weather even if you're driving" turned out to be true) so it was tolerable but one older lady only had a thin fleece jacket, gloves and no hat! Immediately, people tried to give her a hat, scarf, their coat etc but she refused, I think because she didn't want to ruin her hair. Oh my.


Our driver had to drive many miles to get to the turn around so we were outside for a while. I started to worry because the stuck vehicle was not nearly big enough to hold all of us if we needed to get in for warmth. I figured Adam, Dad and I could walk/run back to Mammoth if we had to but all these other folks? Another good reason to stay fit. But we remained optimistic and entertained ourselves in the meantime. We even tried to be useful:

The team trying to pull the van out from the snow. If you look closely
you will see Dad, Adam and me in the middle.

Eventually our driver did return (boy was I happy to see those headlights) and the 2nd tow was successful. I think we scared away all the animals in a 10 mile radius with our whooping and hollering as we ran back onto our warm snow coach with our very capable driver;)

Valentine’s Day 2012

I mentioned in the previous post that our daily mile runs were overall my third favorite experience of the trip. What about numbers one and two? Number one took place on Valentine's Day......and had nothing to do with hearts or candy.

We spent all 5 of our days in the park cross-country skiing- either ½ day or full day skis. We then would be sufficiently wiped out that after dinner, early bedtimes were in order for all. But on Valentine’s Day, we headed out on a head-lamp driven post-dark jaunt around Old Faithful.  Since pictures would not do this experience justice, we only took one (above). But the stars! The incredible number of stars! And the total silence! The only noises we heard were the hisses of the steam from the geysers and fumaroles. No animal noises- human or otherwise- whatsoever. Occasionally, a small gust of wind would make its way to us, with us hearing it many seconds before we felt it. I lay on my back in the snow and just stared at the stars. I think the last time I saw that many stars was on a trip to the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota back in college. No significant ambient light for miles and miles. If I could bottle those sights and sounds I might be able to remain a city dweller forever. But since I  can’t, I look forward to living out where the stars and the silence own the night rather than the cars and the city lights……

Running Our Daily Miles in Yellowstone National Park

About to start on a run. Do you see my bison horns?

As we do at the end of each vacation, Adam and I catalogue our favorite moments from the trip- this time our 2nd winter trip to Yellowstone National Park.  Interestingly- though not entirely surprisingly- my 3^rd favorite experience of the trip was our daily one mile runs. Since I have ran at least 1 mile a day since December 2010, clearly no exceptions would be made during this journey!

However, it required no small amount of mental fortitude to drag ourselves out for our snowy, cold 1 mile runs especially after a long day of cross-country skiing. But each and every time I was smiling pretty much the whole time and honestly wished I could go a while further than a mile each time (though I never did). Here are some of the highlights for me:

Beehive Geyser

On a run at Old Faithful, Beehive Geyser went off. Beehive spouts water over 200 feet into the air with an erratic eruption “schedule”, going off every 5 to 12 hours, so if we hadn’t gone for that run exactly at that time, we wouldn’t have caught it!

On a solo morning run, I was the very first human out amongst the geysers, though I wasn’t the first animal as evidenced by this coyote footprint next to mineJ

On my last run at Old Faithful I witnessed a beautiful sunrise over the trees. The yellow poles on the right indicate the side of the road, so as you can see, no surface is left untouched by the huge amounts of snow. And this is a a low snowfall year! At one point during a ski, Adam stepped off the trail and sank up to his waist in snow! For some reason, he didn't want to stay in that pose until I got the camera out...can't imagine why not! :)

Other times, we enjoyed snowfalls, a coyote running across our path about 5 feet away, an Old Faithful eruption and always the wonderful smells of fresh Montana and Wyoming air.  Experiences like this are one of the reasons I plan to continue my Daily Mile as long as I am physically able. Sometimes you just need that nudge to get out there and experience life, even when a comfy chair in a warm lodge with an adult beverage beckonsJ

Adam and I during one of our runs.

Adam with Old Faithful to the left.