Winter Adventures in Yellowstone: Old Faithful & the Geyser Basin

The next day found us venturing deeper into the heart of Yellowstone, heading south from Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel toward the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, at the opposite end of the park.

The road is closed to regular traffic from November to mid-April, but Off The Beaten Path hires snowcoaches outfitted for travelling over snow and ice (picture an antique eight-passenger PT cruiser with skis for front wheels and back wheels that look like a tank’s). Riding in the odd-looking snowcoaches was one of my daughter’s favourite parts of the trip, and I loved the dual sunroof, which allowed two people at a time to pop out of the top and snap photos without ever leaving the vehicle.

Impressive sights along the way were many, from the smoke-covered hills of Roaring Mountain and the picturesque scenery of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to numerous waterfalls and a mud volcano. But our two favourite sightings of the day came simultaneously. Our tour group’s other snowcoach spotted a red fox just ahead in Hayden Valley, and we got there just in time to watch the bushy-tailed beauty pouncing in the snow on a hunt for rodents. At the same time, the sun emerged fully for the first time in days, brilliantly illuminating the mountains of the central plateau.

Our last two days in the park were spent exploring the geyser basin, the most famous feature of which is Old Faithful. The famously reliable geyser was both timely (erupting every 90 minutes) and impressive, but we found the eruptions of nearby geysers such as Anemone, Beehive and Castle equally intriguing. We bumped into a National Geographic crew filming bison in the Upper Geyser Bison, and nearly stumbled onto a coyote on our way to go sledding behind the Old Faithful Snow Lodge.

The snow had finally stopped for good by the time our last day in the park rolled around, providing spectacular “Big Sky” views of the Lower Geyser Basin (where we witnessed three geysers erupting at once), National Park Mountain and Gibbon Falls. We were more than a little wistful as we left Yellowstone National Park to make our way to Chico Hot Springs, especially when we saw a small herd of bison and two mule deer in the road, almost as if to bid us farewell.

In the end, wintertime in Yellowstone National Park was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Our Winter Wonders Tour offered a refreshing taste of a wild, rugged, relatively unspoiled America, showcasing the very best of our nation’s historic environmental conservation efforts.

http://www.travelandescape.ca/2013/01/winter-adventures-in-yellowstone-old-faithful-the-geyser-basin/