Snow Place To Go If You Want To Learn About Snow, Try Yellowstone Institute

I stepped out of my tent one midnight in the middle of Yellowstone National Park, bracing myself for the sharp slap of a cold February night. But the falling snow felt soft, as if a thousand goose-down pillows were being shaken loose far above. I pulled off my cap and let the tiny crystals kiss my cheeks and eyelids as they melted.

My fellow travelers were asleep in their warm tents; the park was mine. I strained to hear the Upper Falls a mile away, but the air was silent save for the almost imperceptible murmur of falling snow, sifting another foot onto Yellowstone’s 20-foot-deep winter blanket.

This was Yellowstone as I’d never experienced it before: no crowds, no commotion, no RVs queuing up to see the grizzly bears as if at a drivein zoo. Instead, I had thousands of acres of geysers and bison and elk and stately spruce and fir, laid out for me on a snowy tableau that turned the tiniest fumarole or most furtive transit of a pine marten into a drama.

“Yellowstone is large in summer and small in winter,” said Steven Fuller, a photographer who has spent the past 23 winters in Yellowstone as a winterkeeper. “In winter, the animals are driven into a few concentrations, mostly along the thermal areas and catch basins. One of the pleasures for visitors is the chance to see large concentrations of animals up close and accessible. And the geothermals really come into their own.”

Seven of us had come to see for ourselves, on a four-day snow ecology course offered by the Yellowstone Institute, a nonprofit foundation. We were provided with expert instructors and accommodations at Yellowstone Expeditions’ yurt camp at the Canyon area, the only place to stay deep within the park short of skiing in with a backpack, no easy matter at 40 below zero.

Arden Bailey, owner of Yellowstone Expeditions, had met us at Mammoth Hot Springs with his “snow coach,” a van mounted on tracks. This was far better than using snow machines, cousins to the snowmobiles that have become so prevalent that on some weekends more than 1,000 of them converge on Old Faithful, generating noise and pollution worse than even summer’s onslaught of humanity.

Arden spent his first winter in Yellowstone in 1979, and like Steven has never quite left. Now he works as a research geologist in the summer, and in winter runs the yurt camp, serving as backcountry guide, chef and dishwasher.

During the two-hour snow coach ride south from Mammoth to Canyon, Arden and Don Nelson, director of the Yellowstone Institute and our snow ecology instructor, talked familiarly about Yellowstone’s transformations, much as the rest of us recount the doings of a fabulously eccentric aunt.

Don the biologist talked about how winter narrowed wildlife’s already slim survival margin. “You can really see the screw factor in action here,” he said, pointing at the wind-driven snow that veiled the van in a mini-blizzard, even though the sun was shining. His reference was a scientists’ mnemonic for how winter’s variables - snow, cold, radiation, energy and wind - “tighten the screw” of survivability. Change any one of those factors a tiny bit, and life becomes precarious.

Winter gives Yellowstone’s animals three choices: They can move, adapt or die. The motion was easy to see. Trumpeter swans and white pelicans had fled, and bull elk huddled on bare spots melted by geothermal activity. The dying was easy to see, too. At Swan Lake Flats, we spotted three coyotes and a half-dozen ravens converging on the carcass of an elk whose stores of fat, laid on in summer, ran out before winter did.

We adapted by bringing cross-country skis, and traveling proved easy, even for those in our group who had just taken up cross-country. Staying warm was more complicated. We had packed duffels full of polypropylene and pile clothing as instructed, and carried extra layers at all times. It helped, too, that Arden had outfitted our tents with propane heaters and thick sleeping bags, and that the main yurt, where we gathered for meals, had a wood stove and a constant supply of hot water for washing and making hot chocolate.

Yellowstone’s grizzly bears adapt to winter by hibernating until March. But many other animals thrive, or at least survive, through temperatures that drop to 40 below. In the lodgepole pine forest near camp, Don showed us the yard-wide track where a bison had bulldozed its way to reach the grass below.

It’s easy to become caught up in winter’s big show: the bison so close, the geysers’ luxuriant steam. But the snow itself offers an extraordinary performance, creating a minute three-dimensional saga that experts decipher for clues to weather patterns, animal behavior, even the risk of avalanches.

Beneath the surface, the snow contains the history of the entire winter. On our first full day at camp, we set off into the woods armed with avalanche shovels. “Dig,” Don said, and we did, taking turns carving into the snow until we hit bare ground, 48 inches down. Following his instructions, we swept the sides of the pit with wallpaper brushes, revealing the layers of every snowfall, winter’s torte. Scraping at lower layers with popsicle sticks, we found dense granules far different from the top’s fluffy stellar crystals.

“This place is teeming with life right now, underneath the snowpack,” Don said, pointing at the seemingly lifeless ground. Small animals such as voles, mouse-sized rodents, spend the whole winter under the snow, eating dried plants and insulated by the snow from predators and frigid air. Insects carry on, too, and some plants even photosynthesize under the thick blanket.

On Sunday morning, it was raining when we left camp and snowing by the time we’d reached Dunraven Pass, 1,000 feet higher. It was the kind of day that made hot chocolate back at the yurt sound good, but Arden convinced us that we could handle a side trip to Washburn Hot Springs. Down we went, traversing and kick-turning our way gingerly down the slope.

The forest was quiet, but with Don, Arden and his partner Erica Hutchings as guides, we soon realized it was a very busy place. We could read the tracks of a pine marten, two mouse-sized paws hitting the snow together. Then a moose, walking apparently unbothered by six feet of snow. Then a coyote, its feet cutting a foot into the surface, no easy travel. Then an ermine, tracing a zigzag path; and a bison, plowing the ground bare. The history of every creature’s movement since last night’s snowfall was written here, a frozen record whose uncontestable veracity would be admired by any jury.

We could see where a bison, tempted by the steam, had walked too close to a mud pot and had broken through over its fetlocks. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant bath. Arden used pH paper to read the springs’ acidity, and they tested at 2, on a par with battery acid.

Back at camp, it was time to pack for Monday’s trip back to Mammoth. We needed to demolish the quinzhee shelter, lest it prove a hazard for others. Jesse and Ken climbed on top. Nothing happened. They jumped. Still nothing. It took 10 of us, jumping together, to crack the dome of tiny crystals.

Mammoth offered showers, telephones and chardonnay, but we deferred those pleasures for one last fling with nature. Just off the road we followed a well-worn path to the Boiling River, where a stream of steaming-hot water pours into the Yellowstone River. It’s the only place in the park where swimming in thermal water is permitted, and I’d been there in summer. But it was magic to strip off our sweaters and wool pants and step into nature’s hot tub, basking in the contradictions of a Yellowstone winter.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go Overnight accommodations within Yellowstone National Park are available only at Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful, but there are many motels and restaurants in the gateway towns of Gardiner and West Yellowstone. Call their Chambers of Commerce for a list of facilities. Gardiner: (406) 848-7971. West Yellowstone, (406) 646-7701. Yellowstone’s winter weather ranges from T-shirt temperatures to 40 below zero. Good winter clothing is essential and several lightweight layers covered with a windproof shell of nylon or Gore-Tex are better than an arctic-weight down parka. Cotton jeans and shirts are worse than useless. Don’t forget camera and film and a good book. Reserve at least six months in advance for rooms at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge; it’s often easier at the Mammoth Hotel. Both have rooms with baths for $61-$200 a night. For a list of outfitters offering winter tours of Yellowstone, contact the park’s information office at (307) 344-7381.