Yellowstone in Winter (Feb 2024)

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Day 1 Feb 15, 2024

HOU-BZN

This is the year that Rebe turns 40, and just like for my 40th we thought it would be a good idea to do a trip to somewhere nice or fun.  Last year I picked San Diego as it was one of the largest cities in the US that we had yet to visit, and being such a lovely place it was definitely worth the visit. This year it was Rebe’s turn to pick place and of course she couldn’t make her mind up so I suggested Yosemite National Park, now sure it was her decision but she couldn’t decide and I thought I would assist with a favorite of my own.  Well Rebe was on to my antics and countered with Yellowstone National Park, which was actually on our list of things to do in a winter, just this time in happened to coincide with her birthday.

We took off on Thursday the 15 for Bozeman, Montana with a layover in Denver.  Landed around 330pm, got our bag and SUV and headed south to West Yellowstone, Montana. West Yellowstone is the gateway to the west entrance of the park.  After checking into our hotel we had dinner at a local pizza joint, which was slammed by the way.  After dinner it was back to the room for the night. 

Day 2 Feb 16, 2024

First day in the trip consisted of snowmobiling into Yellowstone, during the winter the park mostly shuts down due to the sheer amount of snow that the area receives. And with so much snow most of the public does not visit and most of the area hotels close down.  But for the adventurous there are two ways you can see the park (at least some parts of it) and the first is snowmobiling. We booked a snowmobiling tour with an operator just down the street from our hotel in West Yellowstone, we met them at 8am, got our gear and were on the road by 930am.  Most of the delay was because they had 6 other snowmobiling groups going leaving at the same time, as you could imagine getting that many people sorted with winter gear and snowmobiles is quite a task.

Before the ride

Once all sorted we were on the road, literally the snow covered road, and heading into Yellowstone National Park.  We stopped at the gate to show our park pass and carried on into the park, the park only allows tour operators to enter the park at this time of year so either you are on a snowmobile with a guide or on a snowcoach with a guide.  I believe you may be able to enter the north entrance by car, but you can’t get to the heart of the park due to the amount of snow on the roads.

We made our way through the west entrance of the park, which is very tree lined, and like most mountain roads it follows a river (Madison River) through the woods.  Our destination for the snowmobile was Old Faithful, along the way we would stop a few times to catch some bison by the river.  

Bison by the Madison River

We also stopped at Firehole Falls

Firehole Falls

A rushed trip to Old Faithful. 

Water and hot air from Old Faithful

If you know anything about Old Faithful is that it is pretty consistent in when it will erupt, thus the name.  But of course getting there exactly when it is going to erupt is just a matter of luck.  Well today was our lucky day, as we pulled into the Old Faithful area the geyser was amping up, and our guide pulled us in to the parking lot and instructed us to run over the the geyser and it was literally just about to start.  So the entire group (9 snowmobiles, 15 people) trudging through the snow just to watch this hole in the earth spew sulphuric water into the air.  And just like that after all the running and 5 minutes of watching the water and steam go, it was over.  We all walked back to our rides to grab our lunch and sit down and take a break from the 30+ miles (50km) we had just endured on the back of a snowmobile. 

We next made our way down to Kepler Cascades before starting our return trip to West Yellowstone. 

Kepler Cascades

The big stop on the way back was at the Fountain Pot Trail, where the park has all of the famous thermal features and just our luck we happen to be there when the Fountain Geyser was erupting, it’s one of the geysers that is totally unpredictable but pretty impressive when it goes off.  Even our guides were really excited to see it erupt.  Also along the trail are the famous mud pots.

Mudpots

Fountain Geyser

The last stop for the tour was a quick detour to Riverside Drive along the Madison River, by this time in the day the clouds had cleared and the sun was out and just shining beautifully on the river and snow covered landscape. 

Riverside Drive along the Madison

After turning our snowmobile in we went down the street to the Yellowstone Beer Company for dinner, where we (the royal we) had some delicious beer and some decent food.  Then it was hottub time and g’night. 

In true Matt and Rebe fashion and in accordance with former Yellowstone visit requirements we ran to the grocery store and got a half gallon of huckleberry ice cream to have a late night snack everyday.  This was something we did the first time we visited Yellowstone and thought we should keep up the tradition. 

Day 3 Feb 17, 2024 - Matt’s Birthday 

Today was snowcoach tour day, imagine a passenger van on 48” snow tires and that is exactly what a snow coach is.  We booked a snowcoach for the 2nd tour just in case snowmobiling wiped us out from the first day, I think I could have handled a second day of snowmobiling but it was nice to be driven around today though at a much slower pace.  The giant truck picked us up a little after 8am and after scooping up the rest of the tour group we made our way into the park. 

Snowcoach

Along the way we again saw more bison and bald eagles, but today the destination was the Grand Canyon of The Yellowstone, instead of a repeat trip to Old Faithful.  Snowmobiling to the Grand Canyon is quite a bit further than going to Old Faithful so it was probably worth taking the snowcoach.  Snowmobiling on traveled roads, especially with a large group tends to lead to grooved roads and snowmobiles love to follow the tracks of a previously traveled path.  If the person’s path you are following isn’t straight, well you are going to be following the same zig zag path. Our first big stop was at the Norris Junction for a bathroom break and to get some hot chocolate, I guess I should have led with the morning temperature…

That's -28C for those of you who don't like freedom units

After Norris we continued on Gibbon Falls, an obvious stop if you’ve ever driven through Yellowstone as it’s right on the main road and an easy quick stop to add to your list. 

Gibbon Falls

Next was the long drive over to Canyon Village, where we took another quick bathroom break and got the lunches out.  While we were there we killed a little bit of time to see the exhibit about Yellowstone in the Visitor’s Center which is one of the best places to learn about the geological formation of Yellowstone.  Hopping back in the coach I thought we were about to make a quick shot over to the Grand Canyon but our guide kept on driving all the way through Hayden Valley with a stop down at the Mud Volcano.  This was a place that Rebe and I visited on our trip into Yellowstone previously and was one of the first places we actually walked around.  It was much different the snow because the majority of the boardwalk to the upper thermal feature were covered in two feet of snow. And while I’m all for an adventure, I’m also not trying to end up on the news like Pierce Brosnan. 

Boardwalk in the Mud Volcano area

We then headed back towards Hayden Valley where we saw many more bison (or at least the same ones we passed on the way to Mud Volcano) and then a pair of coyotes decided to stroll by our bus like we weren’t even there.  We just parked and let them stroll by.

Ain't he cute

Then to the main event of the tour, THE GRAND CANYON. First I must lead that I think that this is one of the most majestic parts of the park and seeing it in the summer/fall time when you can see all the grand colors of the canyon it’s simply one of my favorite memories of Yellowstone (along with Rebe and I taking a hike to the bottom of the same canyon at night, only to be disappointed in the view as it was dark).  With all that said, seeing it in winter was nice but probably not as grand.  The majority of the lower waterfall was frozen over and you couldn’t really see all the colors that make the canyon special. I guess I’ll show you images of fall versus winter.

Grand Canyon - September 2015

Grand Canyon - February 2024

We also stopped at the Upper Waterfall and another viewpoint of the lower fall.

Upper Falls

And maybe another great view of the river before it goes over the upper fall.

View of Yellowstone River above the Upper Falls

Quick stop at Beryl Springs

And then a long ride back to West Yellowstone, though we did spot a few more coyotes out in the fields. 

Dinner was at Bullwinkles, I’d def skip this joint for something better in town, it wasn’t bad but for the price I’m sure we could have found something better. Except the cheese curds with huckleberry dipping sauce, that was excellent. 

Then another hot-tub time and more huckleberry ice cream. 

Day 4 Feb 18, 2024

For our last day we decided to do something slightly different, well at least for us, and that was to do a bit of dog sledding. Rebe found a spot just outside of town that was hosting dog sled tours, basically you show up and let the dogs pull you around and after a brief introduction that’s exactly what happened.  The owner of the company gave us the run down on all the commands, “let’s go, easy, whoa, ha and gee” also known as go, slow, stop, left and right.  We pulled into the location at around 10am, did the intro and then they sent us off with a sled of 5 dogs.

Rebe rode shotgun most of the time while we were sledding and the dogs just love to run, any time we would stop due to an issue a few of them would start jerking the sled as to say “why are we sitting still LET’S GO!”  During the first lap of the property, we were making our way down a slight incline into a right hand turn and at the base of the turn there was a person lying face down in the snow.  Now I thought this was a photographer who had fallen over while taking pictures or just some random person making face down snow angels, but it was in fact the lady who was operating the sled in front of me and now the dogs were running without her and he son was sitting alone just getting pulled along by the dogs. Luckily the guide sled was able to slow the dogs and we were able to get the lady back to her sled for the rest of the afternoon. 

Not to say that I was without fault, but the dogs caught me daydreaming and decided to take the wrong fork and then 3 groups behind me decided to follow my mistake.  They told us to carry on the path and we could just slide back into formation. 

The dogs themselves were really sweet and were very talented as in to say that could poop and pee while running.  All in all it was a great experience that I would recommend to anyone visiting the area. 

After the dog sledding we still had half a day to kill, since we had so much fun snowmobiling on the first day we thought maybe we could rent one for half a day and toot toot through woods on our own.  We stopped at the place that did our tour on the first day and they were sold out of rentals for the day, they recommended a place right around the corner and they did have a sled for us to rent but they (and the original shop) didn’t do half day rentals and while we could have paid the full price it just didn’t seem worth the time and effort.  So no more snowmobiling :-( 

Since snowmobiling was out, we drove across town (2 mins) to the Grizzly and Wolf Center.  This is a rescue-like center where they house grizzlies that had gotten into too much trouble and instead of euthanasia they are given a place to live out the rest of their life. The facility has 6 grizzlies and 6 wolves on site in addition to 5 or 6 otters in house too. 

Dinner was at the Buffalo Bar, I had a good a buffalo country fried steak and Rebe had a buffalo meatloaf.  Both were very tasty.  That was it for the night, hot tub time and late night huckleberry ice cream of course.