Yellowstone Winter Questions

From Bozeman to Mammoth in the winter you will need to go via Livingston. In the park the only road normally kept open all winter is the Mammoth to Cooke City route. I'm not familar with a snowcoach from Flag Ranch to Old Faithful, but I understand it is possible to make the trip. I'd stick with the Bozeman flight rather than Jackson.

We spent 10 days in Yellowstone this past February. After tons of research here and other places, we decided our best option was fly in and out of Bozeman. Our original plan was to use the Karstage shuttle from Bozeman to West Yellowstone (with snowcoach into the Park) and then from Mammoth to Bozeman (with pick-up at Mammoth) but Delta kept changing our flight times so we opted to rent a car in Bozeman and drive to Mammoth. Turned out to be ideal for us.

Our rental was an all-wheel drive Subaru which handled everything we encountered quite well. The "worst" was some ice which formed overnight in the parking lot at Mammoth and a bit of black-ice in patches along the road between Mammoth and Cooke City. And neither of these were an issue - no slipping, sliding, or wheel-spinning. We were, however, careful to keep all four tires on the road, unlike one poor fellow in a huge SUV who ended up with the passenger side of his car basically buried in the snow about half-way up the doors. The roads from Bozeman to Mammoth were pretty much kept snow-free during the times we experienced them.

We just left our rental at Mammoth for the nights we were down at Old Faithful. I'd been assured by the nice people at the Mammoth Hotel that there would be someone around to give us a jump start if our battery was dead when we got back. Turned out to be a non-issue. The car started right up even though the temps had dipped to near zero while we were gone.

At first my husband thought it would be a waste of money to have the car just sitting for almost half the trip. But it would have cost us almost as much to have ridden the shuttle and their schedule, especially to Mammoth, is quite limited. Also, we really enjoyed having the option to drive ourselves as far as we wanted to venture toward Cooke City and to the upper parking area at Mammoth.

I suppose it would be possible to do it without a rental car if you flew into Jackson, but you'd need to leave yourself a cushion on time since I believe the snowcoach schedules are not flexible and rather limited. If you were delayed in getting into Jackson, then your whole trip could be thrown off. And I've heard, but have no first-hand knowledge, that you might be more likely to have flight-issues using Jackson.

Lastly, check to see if there are still openings for Christmas. When I was planning our trip last fall, Christmas for 2008 at Old Faithful Snow Lodge was already booked.

I keep planning to write a trip report but since February I've been on 3 trips of a week or more, helped plan my son's wedding (that went off without a hitch two weeks ago) and had extended house guests twice. With any luck I'll be to get a few short trip reports done soon. In the meantime, please feel free to ask if you have specific questions.

My husband, who is a Florida native (like me) still raves about our Yellowstone winter and wants to go back. He even went so far as to say he missed the snow! Yellowstone is always a wonderful place but in winter we found it to be truly magical. I'm jealous. Have a great time.

Oh, this is Christmas next year 2010 not this year. The more I look and read the more I think I will do it the way you did. I think I will rent a car and drive to Mammoth. I will have a car because it just would be better to drive to Cooke than to do a tour. I would probably take a snowcoach or snow mobile and spend one night at the snow lodge, and probably two nights at Mammoth.

Oops, sorry, I missed that 2010.

Although they won't have schedules for 2010 up yet, be sure to check the website to see what the timing is for things this year. The Xanterra people told me things don't change a whole lot from one year to the next unless the Park Service wants them to. Getting a feel for how long it takes to get from Mammoth to the Snow Lodge and vice versa, as well as any tour you might want to do while at the Snow Lodge, will help you decide how many days you'll want to allot total for the Park and at each location. I urge you to plan as many days as possible.

Due to our flight schedules we were actually in the Park for only 8 full days and 7 nights. I say "only" because we would have loved to have had more time. Now that my husband has retired we want to go back and spend a couple of weeks so we could do a few things outside the Park as well as do some things we didn't get to do before and repeat a few we did do.

Fran, We would only be there for 4 days. Do I want to do 2 days at Mammoth and 2 days at Snow Lodge? or 3 days at Mammoth and 1 day at Snow Lodge? might have 1/2 day coming and/or going as an extra day.
Basically, just wanted to snowmobile or snowcoach to canyon
drive looking for wildlife towards cook city
snowmobile or snowcoach to Old Faithful and watch the geysers there.
what else do I want to do?

It's really hard for me to answer. DH and I are avid amateur photographers and so we wanted to take the one-day photography tour from Old Faithful. We had to schedule the rest of our trip around when that tour was offered.

Since you mention wildlife, I'll tell you what we saw, where.

Female and young (anterless) elk are everywhere at Mammoth. And I do mean everywhere. Outside your window, grazing next to the restaurant, lying about on the "lawns". For the bull elk we saw we had to drive halfway, or maybe a bit more, toward Cooke City. Each time we did this we saw at least one grazing within 50' (or less) of the road. On the way between Mammoth and Gardiner we saw even more elk, although I don't recall any being bulls, as well as pronghorns and mule deer. Also saw a coyote up near the terraces. The only bison I remember seeing at close range here was when we walked up to Tower Falls. (I snow-shoed, DH walked with his YakTrax on.)

In the Old Faithful area it was mainly bison, bison, and more bison. Not right up near the lodges, like at Mammoth with the elk, but any snowmobile or snowcoach tour/ride was sure to produce tons of sightings. We took our snowmobile tour to Canyon from here and in addition to the bison saw swans, ducks, eagles, a coyote hunting in the snow, and young and female elks.

We didn't see wolves at either place, although others did when we were at Mammoth. They weren't a priority for us so we didn't take the offered wolf tour. I had wanted to see some bighorn sheep, which had been spotted way over toward Cooke City. The day we planned to go that far it began to snow pretty hard and we decided to turn back since we don't get too much experience driving in the snow here in Florida.

When we were there the snowcoachs ran between Mammoth and Old Faithful once each day. The trip took about 4 hours and was 8:00-noon from Mammoth to Old Faithful and 2-6 PM from Old Faithful to Mammoth. It's possible to transfer between Mammoth and Old Faithful (either direction) via snowmobile. This takes pretty much all day so I don't know if includes going to Canyon or not. Snow mobile tours to Canyon from either Old Faithful or Mammoth take all day (8 1/2 - 9 1/2 hours).

We enjoyed the Steam, Stars, and Winter Soundscapes night tour at Old Faithful. Our free time there we spent YakTraxing around the geyser basin and up to the overlook (name escapes me at the moment). At Mammoth, in addition to what I've already told you, we YakTraxed our way around both the Upper and Lower Terrace areas, doing the Lower one once at night under an almost full moon.

Yellowstone is always a wonderous place to me, but it has a magic in Winter that's impossible for me to put into words. There's just something about seeing diamond dust sparkle and shimmer in the sunlight, watching bison use their massive heads like snow plows to dig for those last blades of dried grass, or stopping your snowmobile atop the Continental Divide, killing the engine, and listening to silence so complete it's like having gone deaf.

Whatever you get to do, I can't help but believe you'll enjoy it. As you continue your planning, do take advantage of the great folks at Xanterra. All of the ones I dealt with were friendly, knowledgable, and fantanstic at helping me figure out how to cram as many of the things we wanted to do into the time we had.

Hope this helps a bit. Ask me if you have more questions and I'll do my best to answer.

DH just told me last night he wants our next trip to be to Glacier NP and the nearby Canadian Rockies. Got to get busy planning, I'm already behind, I'm sure.

We have our reservations for Glacier at the end of July, so we are looking forward to that. I am self-employed and time is far more of an issue than money for our trips. It seems like you can either have time or money, but not both at the same time. About 5 days is about as long as I can be away. However, 4 or 5 days is usually plenty for us. Things start running together and we don't remember it as well on the occasions that we have been gone longer. We usually manage to go 3 or 4 places each year and feel very fortunate to be able to do that and we really enjoy it. We discovered National Parks about 5 years ago (up to 21 of them now) and it has been somewhat of a life change for me. I never really had a hobby until then. My parents took me to a couple of parks when I was 10 and 12, but we didn't "really do them". A wild cave tour in Carlsbad in 05 is how I discovered what all you can do in the parks. We went to Yellowstone in June 2007 and the places you describe wildlife is pretty much the way it was in the summer as well. I don't know that Yellowstone was my favorite(don't think I have a favorite), but it is one I certainly want to make several trips back.

I understand the getting away part. I'm self-employed, also. Never could get away for more than a week - if that - until I went into partnership, about 8 years ago, with another residential contractor I trust who shares the same business ethics. He and his wife can get away for a vacation of more than a few days and my husband and I can do the same.

When my husband retired in May we had figured we could travel more, but as you said about time and money.... Now that we have the time, money may be an issue until the home building business picks up again. We may have to limit ourselves to a couple of smaller trips or one biggy a year. Although I told him I have no desire to die with a sizable nest egg in the bank and regrets of where I wish I'd gone while I was healthy enough to enjoy it.

We "discovered" National Parks in 2002 with our first trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons. (I don't count the many trips with family to Smoky Mt NP since we had relatives in the area and the Park wasn't our real destination.) You've been to far more of the NPs than we have. We've only hit 15, with repeats at a few of them, as well as several National Monuments, and various state parks.

I thought I had seen your name in a thread about Glacier when I started researching it. Have a great time and be ready for me to ask you some questions after you get back.

spirobulldog,

Since you have visited Yellowstone before, you may have an idea of your favorite sights in the park. Personally, I would spend more days at the Snow Lodge than at Mammoth. I find the geysers fascinating. Wildlife and the geothermal features are my favorites in Yellowstone. Don't care much for the Mammoth area. But - I think it depend a lot on what snowmobile tours you might want to choose.

Have fun!

Mammoth was my least favorite when there in the summer.

spirobulldog,

You might consider a day or two in Montana's Paradise Valley, just out the north entrance. It's gorgeous and there is cross country skiing and wildlife there too.

Lots of wonderful places to stay and not too far of a drive into the park. Fabulous scenery. Let me check the web site of the B&B I stayed in (just for one uplanned night). They are great people, beautiful home and they also have full size log homes for rent nearby. Right on the Yellowstone River.

I spent a week in the valley two summers ago and just loved it. I could easily live there - if I was a millionaire!!

It's the Paradise Gateway B&B in Emmigrant. Check out their web site. Carol and Pete are the owners, lovely people and Carol cooks an awesome breakfast!

I too have some questions, and am new to this forum. We would like to see both Grand Teton and Yellowstone NP's in December '10, whilst also skiing at Jackson. I believe the road between the two parks is closed in Winter, but is there oversnow transport available between them? We would probably base ourselves in Jackson, and try to spend a few days in YNP, especially to see Old Faithful. Any hints? thanks, Karen

We skied and did a Yellowstone snowmobile ride. We stayed in Teton Village at the Alpenhof Lodge. The snowmobile ride was one of the most amazing things we've ever done. They will pick you up at your hotel and take you to Yellowstone (you stop and get outfitted on the way). While there is loads of bison near Old Faithful the trip does more than just that spot. Really remarkable, breathtaking scenery.