A Small Stroll in the Snow
Earlier in 2022, Yellowstone experienced a very severe flood when high amounts of snow melt and heavy rain met each other in a deluge of water into the river systems with the Yellowstone Rover peaking at 51,000 cubic feet of water per second compared to its annual average of 13,000. For my antipodean readers, 51,000 cubic feet per second is 1.4m litres of water per second or approximately 6 times more than what goes over the Huka Falls. Why does this matter to our holiday? Well we had booked to stay in Mammoth Hot Springs at the North Entrance to the park however the aforementioned flood unfortunately interrupted that plan. Yellowstone is a volcanic landscape so filled with canyons which the rivers flow through. These are also the same pathways the roads and services such as electricity and sewerage tend to take and the floods had washed out the road into Mammoth Hot Springs. The Park service had worked really hard to re-eatablish an alternative way in so the park could open for the winter but unfortunately couldn’t get the sewerage infrastructure in place before winter and our accommodation got cancelled. Instead we found accommodation 5 miles north in a small town called Gardiner which turned out to be a good thing as we got to experience the personality, charm and quirkiness of a small town rather than what can sometimes be a more impersonal experience when dealing with corporate entities. All this is a long way of saying that nature did us a favour when she created the conditions that changed our plans. Interestingly, those floods had very little impact on the animals of the park - it was humans that were impacted the most.
So our day started with a drive from snowy Bozeman to snowy Gardiner and up into the park proper for a guided trek through the Norris Geyser Basin. This is the most active and hottest basin in Yellowstone even when covered in 11 feet of snow. The trek started with a drive south of about 90mins in a snow coach with tracks on to get to the Norris Basin passing by obsidian cliffs, wide open valleys filled with bison and through the Golden Gate - a very vertiginous canyon with a road that hangs out over the edge of a sheer cliff.
We had been told before we set out that we were the first people into the basin for the season so we would be cutting tracks which would be ‘exciting’ and ‘fun’. Living in countries where the snow is predominantly ‘wet’ snow, we had absolutely no idea what was in store for us cutting tracks through some of the driest snow on the planet so when we were told ‘fun’ and ‘exciting’ we took this at face value.
We were also told to drink lots of water because that dry snow was the product of very dry air and, combined with the extreme cold, meant that you dehydrate very quickly. It doesn’t take very long at all to realise that this is indeed very true and for our entire stay in Yellowstone we were all constantly feeling thirsty as well as a couple of other side effects from the elevation.
But back to the excitement of cutting trails…..we exited the snow coaches in the carpark area and our three guides pointed to the innocuous looking start of the trail and said that they wouldn’t be taking snowshoes as the trail looked like it was going to be not too deep but it was up to us if we wanted to or not. Never having snowshoed or broken trail before, our thinking was that if the guides didn’t need them then we should be fine. We did however decide to take poles as a good walking pole always makes life easier, snow or no snow.
So off we set down the path which wound past a little log hut and down to a stone entrance way. So far, excellent and fully justified in not taking the snowshoes. Lulled into a false sense of confidence and well-being we followed behind the guides as the snow got ever deeper and they got progressively slower. After about an hour or so, we got asked if we’d like to take the lead breaking trail to which the answer was a cheerful ‘of course’. Well, to quote Captain Alberto Bertorelli from ‘Allo ‘Allo, what a mistaka to maka. Wading through hip deep untouched powder is not for the faint hearted or weak hip flexors. It was brutal. Every single step required a high lift of the leg and the plant down of the foot would sink its own unique distance so every step was both a physical challenge and an unpredictable obstacle. That is fine for one step or even two but step after step after step for an hour does start to take its toll. Going second behind the lead trail breaker wasn’t that much better either as you would land a step only to break further through the snow with a lurch. However we’ve all inherited some extremely stubborn DNA from somewhere so there was zero chance that we were going to admit that this was difficult, hard, exhausting or any such other thing and so the trail breaking continued for another hour. You’ve never seen three people more glad to see a carpark and I think we were the tiredest humans on the planet by the time we finished.
However, with time and distance from the pain and suffering, it was an amazing way to start our Yellowstone adventure!
The Weather Report
Driving Days weather report
