Bison almost killed us- video and Yellowstone

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Liz posting:

Well it has been over a week since our return to Yellowstone and I think we are almost recovered from the near-disaster we avoided only by the grace of the free-ranging American Bison we encountered. We have fully briefed our families and, while concerned, they are glad that we are back in safe quarters at the "ranch" in Jackson. However, let me start from the beginning.

A couple blogs ago Mark mentioned that we hoped to make it to Yellowstone during the winter season. From about December 1st to April, the park is closed off to vehicular traffic and the only ways to get in and out of the park is via Snow coach or snowmobile. We booked the least expensive trip possible through the company who runs the facilities throughout the park- Xanterra. Our trip was to start at Flagg Ranch, the southern most tip of the park and an hour and a half drive straight north from Jackson. One of the few days we have had thick snow, the drive was a bit disappointing because we couldn't see further than 100 yards in any direction. The drive boasts breath taking views of Grand Teton National park, including the vista made famous by Ansel Adams picture of the Grand Teton and Snake River. We did manage to see about ten moose, a bald eagle, elk and a coyote hunting, though.

Arriving at Flagg Ranch a little early, we were able to wait for our coach and have a nice, warm snack. As a side note, for those who have never been to Yellowstone and/or driven through Flagg Ranch, it has an incredibly interesting history. It is believed that the area was first used by natives as a fishing and hunting camp due to its flat topography in the generally mountainous region; it was eventually set up as a Calvary encampment to guard the southern part of Yellowstone in the late 1800's. By the early 1900's the Calvary was gone and the left over camp was used as a resort for weary travelers, who were mostly trappers and mountain men. Flagg Ranch gained the reputation as an outpost that hosted gambling and encouraged heavy drinking. Eventually the tides changed and the ranch was eventually converted as a successful family-friendly resort, which it still remains as. Can you imagine what that places has seen in the last 150 years! I digress...so our Snow Coach was eventually loaded and we were ready to go.

Our SC was designed by Bombardier in the 1940's, though the exact model we rode in was built in the 1960's. There is bench style seating and it could uncomfortably hold up to twelve people. All of the luggage was secured on the top of the vehicle and inside there was very little room for anything else except bodies. As we traveled down the groomed roads of Yellowstone, we had to wear ear plugs because our ride was loud! It was a really fun experience, warm and we got to know our fellow riders a bit. I was thrilled because they allowed us to bring in beer for our stay and just strapped it up top. Now that's customer service! We made a few stops along the way and all in all our trip to Old Faithful took about four hours.

One of my favorite stops was at the West Thumb Geyser Basin, and not just because there were restrooms. Nestled alongside Yellowstone Lake (the largest fresh water lake above 7,000 feet), the basin has all four types of thermal features- hot springs, geysers, fumaroles and the rare mudpots. The well known, and at one time most popular feature of the park, the Fishing Cone is in West Thumb. Also known as "Hook and Cook," when fishing was still allowed, fishermen could catch a fish in one direction and in another direction cook the fish over the geyser without changing positions. There was also a warming hut with a huge fire and incredibly knowledgeable ranger. Among other things, we got a great update on the wolf packs of Yellowstone, while extremely controversial, were reintroduced to the park in 1995. This is still a heavily debated issue and, sort of, plays into our story later in our stay. As a result of the reintroduction, we even have wolves in the area we live in Jackson, but not many.

Ok, I'm going to TRY not to get hampered down by history and facts here.

We arrived at the winter hotel, the Old Faithful Snow Lodge , which is relatively new and extremely cool! While it would have been neat to stay at the original Old Faithful Inn, it isn't open in the winter due to old plumbing which freezes. Thirty minutes after arriving, we caught a lucky break and were able to see Old Faithful erupt, along with a geyser that only erupts once every seven or so years. Having spent many a summer vacations in the park- I would estimate at least seven- it was an incredibly special experience to see Old Faithful with out 10,000 of my closest friends around. In fact, there were never more than fifteen people around when we saw O.F. go off. By chance, our visit over lapped one day with my aun'ts girls weekend so we met up with them and had a fabulous dinner in the dining room. After dinner, and a few drinks, we laced up and went for a late night skate on the hotel's rink. Under a full moon and with the geyser's going off in the distance, it was a sort of surreal experience. I should mention here that the hotel does not provide tv's in the rooms or anywhere in the lobby. We were essentially electronics free while we were there and it was great. The Snow Lodge does lend out board games, which people do borrow and sit in large groups in the lodge playing.

Our trip was three days and two nights. Since the first and last days are essentially travel days, our only day to experience the park was now upon us. After a hearty breakfast, we set off to rent snow shoes for half the day and then planned to cross country ski the other half. Xanterra keeps the rental prices low, so it was no big deal to do both sports in one day. Even though the park is suffering the same fate of Jackson- very little snow- we were still able to set off for our first snow shoeing trip ever. We spent about three hours out hiking and even made it all the way to Observation Point which over looks Old Faithful and, by chance, showed up in time to see another eruption. Also, Mark spotted a bison in the woods laying down by himself. This was probably the highlight of the day so far-we'd been talking about bison since starting off the day before! We had even made our "fact of the day" that bison can run up to 37 miles per hour. So through the trees and down a hillside, we found the enormous bison. Unfortunately, the big guy- and I mean HUGE, they can get up to 2,000 lbs and it wouldn't surprise us if he was up there- was by himself. Usually males who have lost breeding rights and dominance in the herd will wander off by themselves and are known to be very aggressive, even in non-mating times of the year. We kept our distance and set back for the lodge to get our ski's and planned to take an easy trail where a herd of bison usually hang out.

This is was my first time on cross country skis and Mark's second. We both picked it up easily and had a great time. We even happened upon Castle Geyser which has an eruption cycle of about 10-12 hours and shoots a vertical column of about 90 feet. Staying to watch for a few minutes, we continued north as we heard that the bison were near.

I met a very nice man skiing (Mark was zooming ahead because of the promise of bison) who counseled me that one of the most spectacular geysers- Riverside Geyser- would be going off soon. Scheduled for 4:00, the geyser is notoriously early or late by about thirty minutes. A short distance from this geyser, we found what we were looking for- BISON! Tracking back, we arrived at the Riverside viewing area, a short oxbow shaped detour from our trail, at about 3:45 and met another couple waiting as well. Here was our "its a small world reality check" of the day- the couple was from Stuttgart, Germany- where Mark and I met. We had plenty to talk about as we waited what turned out to be forty five minutes. A group of 70+plus year old ladies joined us as well and we all jovially waited together. Toward the end, I was getting very anxious to start back skiing as it was getting late. The geyser finally decided to show its true power and we were back on the trail heading north.

How we almost died: About twenty five minutes later, as dusk was approaching, we decided that we should head back the way we came instead of completing the loop trail. This was the turning point of our day. Earlier Mark had noticed the bison moving from opposite side of the river we had been paralleling to the trail side. As we approached the area where we had seen the bison an hour before, we began to see groups of hoof marks in the snow, but no bison. At that moment we were standing on the south side of a bridge and were about 100 yards north of the entrance to the Riverside Geyser area we had come to know so well earlier. Mark was on an elevated, narrow portion of the trail, while I was on the wider, lower portion. Mark was looking down at the tracks with his camera ready. I happened to be looking up and saw one of the most frightening things- out of the Riverside trail- approximately ten bison were rounding the corner and running at a fast pace directly towards us. I called to Mark and he started a video. I hurried to get off the main path they were running on and managed to get my skis off and scramble up behind Mark. We thought we were out of their way, but they continued closer to us, and started to cross the bridge. The first three angled straight towards us- full speed ahead at US! Still coming towards us. Still coming towards us- and we had no where to go. Still running DIRECTLY towards us. At the last second, the head bison looked straight at Mark and took a 45 degree turn away from us. In the video, Mark puts the camera down and moves back. We later measured that the first three bison came less than three feet from us. Breathing heavy and (me) slightly whimpering, we were both shocked. What the hell were we supposed to do with ten bison running straight at us?

To add to this, there was NO ONE around the area and when we had left there was a healthy number of people on the trail. After checking to see if we peed our pants (we didn't!), we headed to the area where they had come from to see what had stirred them up. After seeing over twenty run past us, and waiting a couple minutes, we assumed that there were no more left up there. Well we were wrong. We thought maybe a wolf or two had stirred up the herd and were hoping to see one. What we saw, instead, was the other half of the heard peacefully grazing and we were right in the thick of them. Though they were unaffected by our presence, Mark and I continued to be terrified around the animals. We successfully crept by the beasts and rejoined with the trail and headed home. We did see a very wily coyote on our way who stopped and starred at us as he was on the hunt.

Talking to a ranger the next day, we found that bison are not aggressive during the winter. During the summer, breeding time, its a completely different story. Generally bison are on a sliding starvation through out the winter and rarely move fast in order to save calories for the important last weeks before the thaw. A few hundred calories wasted early in the winter could mean death days before the grass shows up in the Spring. Also, they are very rarely territorial. Something must have spooked half of the herd, but it was not obvious to us. We found ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bison have very poor eye sight it was probably the case that they did not see us. At the last minute, the first one did, and changed his course. Thank god for that.

The rest of our night was spent warming our cold limbs, eating and drinking the fear away. Oh wait, that was really me. I'm really glad we had those beers. We played cribbage and had great conversations with some employees who were enjoying not working.

The next day we left on a Snow Coach at 9am and were back at Flagg Ranch by noon. Our guide on the way back, Josiah, who was spending his first winter outside of Texas, was really a walking encyclopedia and made the journey extremely interesting.

While we were in Yellowstone, the park area was going through a period of seismic activity. We didn't realize it until we left and looking back, were not sure if we felt anything, but can come up with a couple instances that maybe we did. The swarm is a natural occurrence that happens every so often and produced hundreds of small quakes, though fourteen of those were over 3 in magnitude. From a good article about it: "No earthquakes were recorded on Feb. 3 and the morning of Feb. 4, through 6 a.m. This parallels the slowdown in seismic activity around the globe; in addition to the Yellowstone swarm, tectonic shifts were thought to be responsible for the Haitian earthquakes as well as earthquakes around the globe, including an earthquake in Oklahoma that was more severe than any earthquake reported in Yellowstone."

So many things on this planet are connect. Food for thought, I suppose.

The Youtube version of the bison parade:

Also, many more beautiful pictures of our Yellowstone adventure can be found on Mark's Facebook page.

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Photos

Lewis river
A small contingent of the Lewis and Clark expedition broke with the group on the way back East and came to explore Yellowstone. Though neither Lewis nor Clark came to the park, a river, lake and falls we given Lewis' namesake.

Unknown geyser
We passed this one as we were snow shoeing

Old Faithful from above
You can get a really great sense of the size of the caldera from here.

The earth friendly soap
The hole in the middle is supposed to eliminate any wasted soap when it gets to the end.

This stuffed bison was put in our room
It was supposed to promote conservation. On our last night there, we just thought it was mockery.

Comments

[Wendy]

Wow!!
I loved this blog. Great job Liz. The pictures are awesome too. I'm so relieved that you both made it out alive with your encounter with the bison. They are huge even in the video. Great job taking the video Mark. We just love hearing about all your adventures. Keep them coming! xo