April Visit to Yellowstone National Park: Days 1 and 2

Learning more about watching wolves in Yellowstone and enjoying just watching them (instead of getting good pictures) are hallmarks of our April 2019 trip to Yellowstone.

DAY ONE

We arrived in the afternoon on Sunday, April 7 and on our drive through, we saw no one spotting and very few people in the park--and no wolves. We saw the usual two moose east of the Lamar Valley but that was all. Tired from the drive, we decided to head to our accommodations in Cooke City to unpack. 

DAY TWO

We slept in until 6:00 Monday (which is 5:00 to us since we're in the Pacific Time Zone) and headed out again. John dropped me off at Slough Creek and headed west to scope for the Junction Butte pack at a pullout east of Boulder. I was rewarded with the excitement of seeing a black grizzly bear on a bison carcass. I went to where another photographer was and set up my camera on the down slope of Bob's Knob. I approached as quietly as I could, having read in a previous wolf report that the grizzlies are quite sensitive. The bear did not seem to notice my presence, and I happily photographed him. 

A good sized black grizzly bear feeds on a bison carcass at Slough Creek at around 8:15 am. Prior to his meal, there were two brown grizzlies (their usual color) feeding that I missed. Only the male bears are out the second week of April, as the females with cubs are still in their dens.

Side note: I couldn't believe I was actually LOOKING FOR A GRIZZLY BEAR and walking toward it. Always, always carry bear spray in bear country, and practice spraying with an expired canister. It's not fair to the bears otherwise.

The photographer next to me retrieved an item from his pack and using the zipper caused the bear to look at us. Within seconds, he left the carcass and circled around toward the Secret Passage to the Lamar Valley. About the same time, a tour group showed up--loud and unaware--which destroyed any chance of the bear remaining in my view.

John and I had radios so we could talk to each other, and I had him pick me up. We drove west as far as Nature Trail (which was a location we wanted to confirm). Again, few people were in the park so we went back to Cooke City to take a nap and have dinner.

We went out after dinner to find Round Prairie, where we had read on Yellowstone Reports that there had been sightings of the Lamar Canyon wolf pack. It's always a challenge to locate the various place names mentioned in the reports, and this was a new one for us. We scoped at Footbridge, and then headed east to the next pull out. 

While there, a man (who we later realized was wolf watcher Bill) kindly stopped to tell us there were moose at Round Prairie. We had seen the moose on the drive west, so we excitedly drove back to where we knew the moose were and confirmed the exact location of Round Prairie east and west. We waited there until the darkness stole our vision as we scoped the treeline, around 8:15. I thought I saw something on the gentle snowy slope directly across from east Round Prairie pullout, but it was getting so dark, I couldn't be sure. The next morning in the bright light, we realized that what I thought I was seeing was a snowy patch in the trees; however, we also saw that there were tracks leading up the hill, just about the right size for wolves. While we scoped for wolves, we saw the two moose, of course, as well as the one of the resident foxes. He was mousing in the snow, and it was a delight to see him (or her).

The moose looked like they were laying down, but really they were walking either in or on the bank of Soda Butte Creek, so they were below the depth of the snow.

We've seen these two moose, who I think are a cow and her yearling, each time we've come to Yellowstone in the last four months.