Yellowstone Beyond Winter's Gates

Rarely seen beauty

Each year before winter sets in, the Park Service closes the gates on most of Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road. If you want to venture far beyond those gates, you must hop on a snowmobile or climb into a snowcoach—a van that navigates unplowed roads on huge tires. A friend had booked a snowcoach and asked Mary, me, and some others to join him and chip in on the cost. We jumped at the chance. 

Before sunrise our coach with nine passengers left Mammoth Hot Springs and was soon beyond the winter gate. At our first stop, the sun was up but hidden by clouds. When I stepped from the coach onto the snow-covered road, my breath rose into frigid air. I stomped my feet in a little warming dance. Then I looked at these bison mothers and calves resting, and seemingly comfortable, in a steamy thermal area. That dusting of last night’s snow on their fur attests to how well insulated their winter-slim bodies are.

Standing there, I could hear the whisper of nearby Roaring Mountain, no longer generating its namesake sound since the steam and vents that once created the roar have changed. But whether roaring or whispering, it’s still humbling to listen to a mountain. 

We climbed back into the coach and continued on. The morning clouds had vanished by the time we entered Norris Geyser Basin for a rare experience: a visit with few other visitors. Mary and I descended into the basin past tall conifers sagging with snow.

On the boardwalk, I stopped to savor the sulphurous scent and the hissing and bubbling of this geologic wonder. Mary kept going, and I watched her moving along the boardwalk toward steam from thermal features that would soon swirl around her in an other-worldly scene.  

By lunchtime, our coach was deep into Hayden Valley. We passed a much-photographed lone conifer, stark against white rolling hills.

On one of those hills, a thick-furred fox, red-orange against the white of sky and snow, sauntered by, its lightweight body never breaking the snow’s crust. On the opposite side of the road, a coyote stopped diving nose-first into snow in search of lunch and watched our coach roll past. The sun glinted off its curious eyes.

An hour later, along the shore of frozen Yellowstone Lake, the sight of two powerful male bison struggling to uncover a meager meal of dried grass buried beneath deep snow awed me. For reasons of their own they had chosen to stay in Yellowstone’s harsh interior instead of migrating to the lower—and less snowy—Gardiner Basin.  Perhaps they knew of the capture and hunt that occurs there when snow drives bison from the interior.

From Yellowstone Lake, we began our return journey. The coach rumbled across a bridge above the Yellowstone River, its green water flowing around islands of ice.

We applauded the sight of a sleek otter climbing from the frigid Yellowstone to rest on the ice growing ever so slowly from the bank. Watching two seldom-seen trumpeter swans float downstream past the otter delighted me.

We reached our last stop as the sun settled toward the horizon. Mary and I wandered to a view of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, where the river leaps from an ancient lava flow, plummets more than 300 feet, and creates the park’s tallest waterfall, that day a mix of waters frozen and flowing. The river’s V-shaped canyon was blanketed with snow pierced by dark conifers and jagged yellow rock. 

There, in the fading light, listening to the river rushing by far below us, we stood in silent admiration of this canyon and the wildlife and wild lands that await beyond Yellowstone’s winter gates. 

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