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Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 1996
Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 96


April 1997 Trip Report




We made our first early spring trip to Yellowstone the weekend of 18/20 April 97. We headed for Yellowstone about 2:00 pm Friday. We arrived at West Yellowstone at 7:00 pm and headed into the park. There is plenty of snow to go around and although it was overcast, it was not storming. We had a nice drive through the park from the west entrance to Madison, to Norris to Mammoth and then to Gardiner. After checking with a friend on bear and wolf sightings, we headed to the Best Western Motel where the kids wanted to get in some swimming before going to bed. We checked in and hit the pool. It was a nice way to relax after a long 6+ hour, 430 mile drive.




Signs of Spring - Return of the Sandhills by John W. Uhler - April 1997
Signs of Spring - Return of the Sandhills
by John W. Uhler - April 1997

19 April 1997 - Saturday


We were up at 4:50 am and about 5:15 am we were headed into the park and for Lamar Valley. We saw Canada Geese, Mallard Ducks, some others we will have to identify when we get the film developed. The weather was overcast with light sprinkles on and off all day. We stopped at most of the turnouts in Lamar and did some glassing and talking to anyone who was there on any sightings. No one had seen the wolves so far today. We met an outfitter by the name of Kevin also known as the Bearman, he also has a page on the net by the same name, very nice guy. Some of the park wolf volunteers were trying to get telemetry readings on the Druid Peak Pack but could not tell where the signals were coming from as they could of been bouncing off the rocky mountain walls. We were at the turnout just north of the confluence of the Soda Butte Creek and the Lamar River. We watched a bald eagle and ravens feeding on a kill, and then a dark wolf looking animal walked out on top of a ridge. It turned out to be a wet coyote that wanted to look like a wolf but we had his number, thanks to Kevin's zoom multi-powered spotting scope.


I got some nice shots of some large bighorn sheep that were just a little ways up the hillside from the road just before this turnout. They posed and butted heads a few times to give us a nice early morning thrill. After spotting all morning, we did not come up with any bears or wolves. We were told that the Druid Peak Pack had killed five elk on Thursday from early morning until about 2:00 pm. This was unusual as they did not feed long on any kill. The elk were just moving down into the valley so this might have been the reason, but only the wolves know for sure.


We went back to the motel and the kids went to the pool and we rested and then ate supper and got ready to head back to Lamar. We saw a pond full of Trumpeter Swans east of the Yellowstone Picnic grounds. Then we continued down the road towards Lamar. We saw a vehicle pulled over so we stopped to find out what was up. We met a couple from Idaho Falls, Ray had emailed me about a month earlier. Ray and his wife Jo had seen a griz on a south hillside that had apparently gotten to close to a coyote den and two coyotes were escorting it out of their area. The griz was upset and tried its best to swat the coyotes but they were too fast for it. We had just missed the action by about five minutes... timing is everything when it comes to grizzin and wolfin (with a whole bunch of luck).


Just then Bill (a fellow wildlife spotter from Pocatello, Idaho) came cruising up the road towards us, he recognized me and made a quick stop and said they had just spotted the Rose Creek Pack at the Slough Creek campground turnout and they were headed towards the ridge they utilized as part of their home range last year. We jumped in our cars and headed towards the second turnout from the Specimen Ridge Trail sign and parking area. When we arrived, Bill and another couple, Frank and his wife (from Shelly, Idaho) had the wolves in their spotting scopes. We setup our scopes and spotted six wolves of the Rose Creek Pack (there are eight wolves in this pack). There were four black and two gray wolves. The pack just kind of milled around for about 15 minutes. There was a large group of elk on the hillside just above the wolves. The pack split up and started heading towards the elk, who by this time had bunched up into a large herd. As the wolves got closer, the elk herd split up and half headed north and other headed south on the ridge. Two wolves singled out a lone elk and took off full tilt after it. The elk, for everything it was worth headed down hill and left the wolves in it's dust, he or she was really motivated. I then moved my scope back up the ridge and watched two black wolves take down a cow elk. Once it was down it was all over as the rest of the pack joined in. This happened around 6:00 pm Saturday evening and the wolves stayed on the kill until after 8:00 pm. We watched the wolves and exchanged stories with Ray and Jo, and Frank and we were joined by the head ranger from the Tower Ranger Station. She watched the packs through our scopes and joined in the stories of our experiences in Yellowstone. What a thrill to see the wolves again, I was getting the feeling that I was going to be headed home without seeing a bear or wolf. This was Ray's first wolf sighting and he was thrilled as we all were no matter how many times we have the chance to watch the wolves. We all loved to watch the pack and share the experience and time together. Ray had filmed the griz and coyotes and was kind enough to let me watch the action he had taped, what a neat experience to see and film. They were the only people I met that had seen a bear this weekend.


My family and I went back down the valley to see if we could spot the griz, but we did not have any luck. So we headed back to the pool and motel.




Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 1997
Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 1997

20 April 1997 - Sunday


I did not hear my alarm go off at 5:00 am, I think it was sabotaged. But I was up at six and out the door. Light sprinkles again today. Carlene and the kids were tired (too much swimming I think), so I headed out to Lamar alone. I watched along the way, but couldn't turn any of the black tree stumps into bears as hard as I tried. I went back to the same turnout where we had seen the pack on Saturday evening. A park naturalist was there with the telemetry gear trying to get a good reading, but could only pick up two very weak signals. We talked and I told him about the kill on Saturday. He made some notes and I tried to find the kill for him, but they made the kill in the sage brush and it was easy to find with the black wolves on it, but now, without the wolves, I couldn't pinpoint it. We spotted for a while and then we headed down to the Slough Creek turnout, nothing at either turnout. I then headed up the hill and down into Lamar. I drove down to the Lamar Ranger Station and noticed Bill's (the guy from Pocatello) car a little ways down the road. There were several vehicles parked along the road so I knew something was up.


I parked my van and made my way to Bill. They had just watched the Druid Peak Pack kill a cow elk on a hillside just a few hundred yards off the road. The only wolf still there that I was able to see was a black female the wolf researchers there were calling female #42. This wolf stayed on the kill a short while and then headed east down the valley towards Soda Butte. We got in our vehicles and followed the lone wolf down the valley and back to her den area. It was fun again to see another wolf, this was the first time I had seen any of the Druid Peak Pack. I met some new friends along the way and had fun on our wolf following jaunt. Two young ladies from Idaho Falls were there for another visit and had never seen a wolf before. It was fun to watch and see the excitement in their faces with this experience of seeing their first Yellowstone wolf!


When the wolf disappeared, I turned around and headed back towards Gardiner, stopping along the way to check the hillsides and meadows for any spring bears, with no luck. When I got back to the motel, we packed and headed to Old Faithful. As we climbed out of the Mammoth Valley and just entered the large meadow at the top, a bald eagle did a low flying flyby and thrilled us all, what a sight!


Last year our timing was great as we arrived at Old Faithful just in time to see it erupt, and as we were talking in the Visitor Center, a park naturalist there said that Beehive was about to go off. We went out on the boardwalk and watched a spectacular eruption that out did Old Faithful easily. This year we arrived at about 12:30 pm and Old Faithful was getting ready to blast off again. It was raining so I ran into the visitor center to check on Beehive. The naturalist said the indicators had been going off for about a half hour and it should be going off any minute now. I ran back to the van to get my family.


We headed out into the rain and we were treated to a rare experience of watching Old Faithful and Beehive go off simultaneously at approximately 12:40 pm. It was a thrill to stand between the two and watch them go. When Old Faithful was done Beehive was just getting a full head of steam and all the folks that were watching Old Faithful walked down to Beehive and enjoyed the thrill. What luck, I don't think it will happen again in our life time, to hit both eruptions on the same weekends a year apart. We were excited!


As I was filling out a wolf report in the Old Faithful Visitor Center, a young man was standing by the counter. The naturalist asked me my name and how to spell it. The young man walked over and looked at my name and said, you have a page on the Internet. I surprisingly said yes, as Ray had surprised me on Saturday the same way in Lamar. He said he was David Monteith. We had been corresponding for over a year via Email and he had given me the info for the Geyser Page. It was great to meet him and we talked about the joint eruptions of Old Faithful and Beehive and our weekend trip. Then David had to run as he had to be back in Spokane, WA for supper, so he was going to be flying low and we took our leave of another great weekend in Yellowstone that we will treasure forever. It was great to meet two friends that I had met on the net and their wives and others. It was a blast! I can't wait to head back next month!


Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 1997
Signs of Spring - Spring Griz by Sylvia Medina - April 1997

We saw - Antelope, two Bald Eagles, Bighorn Sheep, Buffalo, Canadian Geese, Coyotes, Deer, Ducks, Elk, Red-Tailed Hawks, Sandhill Cranes, a Muskrat and the Rose Creek Pack and one of the Druid Peak Pack.




Signs of Spring - First Spring Calf by John W. Uhler - April 1997
Signs of Spring - First Spring Calf
by John W. Uhler - April 1997




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