End of era for Yellowstone as snowcoaches retired

With an unceremonious trip from Old Faithful to Mammoth early on Tuesday morning, a form of winter transport in Yellowstone National Park motored into history. The 18 clattering yellow Bombardier snowcoaches were officially retired.

“Some of us are a little sad about it,” said Ashea Mills, a Gardiner, Montana, resident and a former Xanterra “Bomb” driver for seven years.

At one time Xanterra Parks and Resorts – which operates lodging facilities in Yellowstone National Park – operated what was proclaimed the world’s largest fleet of the rugged, tank-tracked snowcoaches. The 18 vehicles were part of a larger fleet owned by the National Park Service, which provided the coaches to Xanterra to transport guests from the North Entrance at Mammoth, Wyoming, into Old Faithful and on tours around the park’s interior in winter.

“They have definitely served us very well,” said Rick Hoeninghausen, director of marketing and sales for Xanterra in Yellowstone. “They can handle some pretty drastic snow conditions.”

The hardy coaches with skis on the front were invented by Canadian Joseph-Armand Bombardier in the 1930s. His company went on to create Ski-Doo snowmobiles.

For travel in Yellowstone in the winter, the Bombardiers proved to be a dependable and easy-to-fix form of transportation.

“I referred to them as a large Tinker Toy,” said Zac Finley, who drove Bombs for Xanterra for six winters. “The Bombardiers were unique in that you could work on them in the field without a mechanic.”

Mills agreed. “You can fix a lot of things on a Bombardier with duct tape and zip ties,” she said.

Phasing them out is a sign of the times:

–Less snow on the route from Mammoth to Old Faithful makes the cleated metal tracks of the Bombardiers less practical.

–Small in size, they haul fewer passengers than larger and newer vans.

–The Bombs are noisier than wheeled snowcoaches that are being tested for possible use, and without costly upgrades they wouldn’t meet Yellowstone’s standards for “best available technology,” meaning quieter and less polluting.

Xanterra’s bright yellow fleet is destined for the auction house. Some have already received new lives in other cold places, but perhaps will never be operated in an area as iconic as Yellowstone.

“Winter in Yellowstone is the best time – the most interesting, the most challenging, the most fun,” Mills said.

“Every day out there is a great day,” Finley said. “There was never a time when you were not looking forward to going to work,” even though it meant getting up at 5 a.m. in 20-degree-below-zero temperatures to warm up the vehicles.

Mills credited her visit to Yellowstone in the summer of 1995 for transforming her life. She met her husband while working at Old Faithful. And Finley proposed to his wife, who also worked as a Xanterra snowcoach driver, at Old Faithful.

“It was a very unique situation,” Mills said. “No one else in the world was doing what we were doing.

“It really has had a huge impact on a lot of us.”