I grew up mostly in Connecticut and Wisconsin, and I moved to Northern California more than twenty years ago largely to escape cold weather. I don’t like snow, and I despise ice, which made the sidewalks and roads of my childhood impassible, broke branches off my favorite climbing trees, and knocked out electrical service for days at a time. The mere sound of wind whistling past the window gives me goosebumps, and a radio announcer reading out the wind chill numbers in predawn darkness brings back the worst memories of my teenage years. My extended family still lives in and around Madison, Wisconsin, but they have gotten used to not seeing me during any month that snow might fly.
They’ve also gotten used to my predilection for chasing wildlife all over the world. So they were not surprised to hear that I was planning a vacation to Yellowstone National Park. They were not surprised to hear that my main objective was to spy upon and if possible photograph the wolves that were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 and 1996 with great international fanfare and more than a little protest.
They were a little surprised by the time of year I was going, though. “January?” My grandmother asked on the phone after a pause, perhaps wondering if she had heard me right. “But, Jen, what about the snow?”
It had taken my friend Trish, who is usually my “wingman” on land-based wildlife-themed adventures, a couple of years of talking to get me past the snow. The wolves of Yellowstone, it turns out, are best seen in snowy conditions. They don’t particularly like getting close to people, so the more people there are – and there are apparently a lot of them in Yellowstone during the non-winter months, judging from the photos of traffic tie-ups on the main park roads I saw – the less visible the wolves are. Their coloring, which varies from white to gray to black to brown to gold and sometimes combines all those shades in one pelt, helps them vanish into the background of the magnificent Yellowstone countryside. They stealthily move through the lush and thick tree and brush cover from spring through fall.
Couldn’t we go in really late fall, I had countered when she showed me the catalogs of black wolves staring majestically down from what looked like 20-foot high snowbanks, when the leaves had fallen off the trees but the snow was not yet on the ground? Or maybe really early spring, when the leaves were still curled in their buds?
But, no, more research revealed that Trish had it right: our best opportunities to view wolves in the wild would be when the park was shrouded in snow and there were only a few really dedicated researchers and really crazy wildlife watchers on the ground. So I signed up for the tour and booked my flight to Bozeman, Montana. Then I trekked off to REI to buy out their long underwear department, hit up another sporting goods store for a pair of insulated ski pants that made feel like a Michelin woman, and found waterproof, double-insulated snowboots, quilted gloves, and a matching parka at Lands End.
And so on the afternoon of January 21, 2006, Trish and I stood at the window of our hotel room in Gardiner, Montana, staring across the Yellowstone River at an elk walking down a neighborhood street. It meandered through one yard after another, browsing brown-looking tufts of grass or sticks that poked through the snow pack, ducking its huge antler rack to go under a clothesline here or maneuver around an ornamental tree there.
Gardiner is a little city just outside of the North Entrance of Yellowstone National Park, and Trish and I and the dozen other tourists who comprised our tour arrived there by shuttle bus from Bozeman in the fading afternoon light. Between the early darkness, the freezing weather, and the fact that Trish was in the throes of a horrible cold-flu bug (which I of course would get as the trip unfolded), we were not inclined to do much exploring. The glimpses I caught through the bus and van windows as we shuttled through the little town showed buildings with a very Wild West look to them, and there were some inviting-looking galleries and restaurants that I hope to return to sample during warmer weather someday.
That night, the lone elk was the only sign of life I saw outside of the Wild-West-Saloon-Style restaurant where our naturalist guides, Peg Abbot and Ellie Van Os, took us for our getting-to-know-you dinner. We sat around eating warm and welcome comfort food and introducing ourselves, talking about where we lived and worked and comparing notes about other natural history tours we had enjoyed.
Our group was fifteen travelers, three of them men, mostly from surrounding western states. The exception was James from Scotland, who charmed everyone in the group with his accent and his helpful ways. The next morning we began our wolf hunt after a 6:30 breakfast. We divided into two large white vans that each had three bench seats in addition to the driver’s and front passenger’s bucket seats. All of us were dressed as the literature on preparation for the trip had suggested, in layers of long underwear, jeans, turtlenecks, sweaters, snow pants, and parkas, topped off with warm hats, scarves, gloves, and mittens. Although the benches were wide enough for three people who weren’t bundled up for winter survival, we were glad to be sitting only two to a bench! I was worried that I’d overheat inside the van and end up feeling travelsick, but we stopped and got out of the van so often that the heater never really caught up with us.
As we eased out of Gardiner that first morning, it was clear and cold. We turned into the park and drove through the lovely stonework arch that forms the North Entrance. A herd of bison had been there recently enough to leave a trampled snowy field dotted with piles of dung. “They drive the custodians for Gardiner’s school sports fields nuts during football season,” Peg said.
The roads through most of Yellowstone are closed during winter, but the main artery running through the park from the North Entrance to Cook City just outside of the Northeast Entrance is plowed, and this is where we would be looking for wolves. “We don’t have to leave the road to see them,” Peg and Ellie had explained during our orientation meeting the night before, which had included a post-dinner showing of an old movie about Yellowstone’s natural history. Some of the most successful packs live in and around Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the park, which the plowed road runs right through. Wolf researchers and tourists alike set up their spotting scopes in parking lots and pullouts up and down the road.
“We’re not looking for wolves, really, we’re looking for signs of wolves,” Peg explained as she drove us through the Park Headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs, which we would come back to explore later. “Keep your eyes open for black birds congregating around anything out in the snow – magpies, ravens, and vultures are usually our first indication that there’s been a wolf kill. The wolves usually make their kills and do most of their feeding at night around here, but then they often rest not far from the kill, and some of them may come back to the kill to carry away a haunch or whatever. So we may be able to track them from a kill to wherever they are resting.
"The other thing to look for is parked vehicles with people staring into the distance using binoculars, spotting scopes, or cameras. Chances are pretty good they are watching wildlife, and if we’re really lucky, they’ll have found wolves.” She held up a handheld two-way radio and explained that she knew a lot of wolf researchers from her years of working in the park when the wolves were first being reintroduced. If we weren’t having any luck, she could monitor the chatter of wolf researchers and check in with them for good wolf-viewing locations, as well.
As we wound down into the Lamar Valley, passing hillside after hillside swathed in snow that was a day or two old, I marveled at all the animal tracks that the white stuff had preserved. I could see the deep, narrow marks in the snowbank where elk had crossed the road and clambered up. They contrasted with the plowed-out paths left by bison whose bodies were like small bulldozers. Then there were small coyote tracks that barely broke the surface, and the delicate foot- and wing-prints of birds.
Peg parked us in a small pullout and led us up the road a short distance, saying, “We saw a lone wolf along the river down there yesterday, and he was coming in this direction. I think I see the tracks where he came up from the river and crossed the road.” She pointed to a narrow set of depressions that ran in a wavering line up from the river valley, and sure enough, we found several clear prints in the thin snow near the road’s edge. I pulled off my glove and spread my fingers above one of them, and was stunned to see that the print was bigger than my palm.
We loaded back into the van and went on, stopping to view a couple of old kill sites – places where wolves had brought down a lone elk some time in the week or two before. All that was left was a skull, a few rib bones, and a curve of spinal column sticking starkly out of the snow. Even the magpies had given up on the site, since it had been stripped of every bit of meat, gristle, sinew, skin, and even fur by the usual succession of visitors to a kill: the wolves who killed the elk as a coordinated group and then ate until their stomachs bulged; followed by coyotes, vultures, and even bald eagles, who would fight over the remaining choice scraps; followed by the ravens and the magpies, who hovered over the kill and darted in to steal scraps from the stronger, fiercer animals as they became satiated. Foxes might sneak in for a bite if they were in the neighborhood at the right time. The coyotes and birds would return again and again, removing the less and less choice bits, until all that was left were bones.
The entire story lay there for the reading in the snow itself, packed down by one wave of scavenger after another. The marks of running elk pursued by loping wolves vanished into a packed-down area formed by falling, rolling, struggling bodies. Blood stained an area where a wolf had pulled away a good-sized chunk of meat and retreated from the pack to eat it in peace. The scattered bones of a rear leg marked where a pair of coyotes had dragged a relatively intact haunch to feast upon. Wolf and coyote and bird tracks overlapped, and the snow was bloodstained, pitted and packed from being trampled repeatedly by every type of scavenger in the park.
We got back into the van and a few curves later came upon a snowy hillside that told a different story: the pell-mell flight of a small band of elk, the faltering steps of one of its members, blood and compressed snow, and then a drag mark leading to a stand of trees.
“That could be a cougar kill,” Peg said as we looked at the marks with binoculars. “That’s one difference between the canids and the big cats. The wolves can eat until they literally look like they’re going to burst – they pack pounds of meat into their bellies in one sitting and have to waddle away when they’re done. The big cats can’t eat like that, they have to eat just a little bit at a time, so they cache their kills, hide them away in a spot like this and guard them, and come back again and again to eat small meals. One kill might last a cougar a week or two if it can keep the carrion from being found by the birds. Once the birds find it, it’s all over with, because they broadcast the news to the world.”
We made a number of other stops along the road that day, pausing to talk to researchers, other wolf-watchers, and filmmakers. We saw coyotes in the distance, several small herds of elk, and a few bison as well. But although we scanned the trees and ridges with our binoculars and spotting scopes, we didn’t come across any wolves before we had to exit the park at the Northeast Entrance and make our way to our motel in Cooke City.
Snowflakes were flying by the time we bundled up for our short walk to dinner at a nearby restaurant, but I didn’t mind. Seeing the stories told by the tracks had given me a new perspective on snow, and I went to bed eager to see what stories a fresh blanket of the white stuff would have to tell me in the morning.
