“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Those words, often credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson, are my motto.  The experiences I enjoyed journeying to and from Yellowstone National Park last weekend demonstrate the truth of those words.

Our journey experiences began on the way to Yellowstone as I drove through a gauntlet of elk, deer and bison along Hwy 89, south of Gardiner.  Most of the wildlife was north of Yankee Jim Canyon.  We passed elk by the hundreds, mule deer by the dozens and one group of bison that was bedded on the shoulder of the road.  Then, right outside of Gardiner, we came upon a battle scene.  Two very large bull elk were engaged and battling in earnest — locking antlers, pushing each other back and forth.  We’re not talking the casual “mock battles” that you might see in early rut or among young bulls.  These two big veteran bulls were SERIOUS.  We watched for 1o minutes or so until they had mostly moved out of the light cast by our headlights and were in the dark of a moonless night. Perhaps a nearby cow was in a late 2nd or 3rd estrus?

Saturday morning, under a warm sun in bright blue skies with only whispy clouds, we headed through the Arch.  Yes, I said warm.  Yes, this is a January Yellowstone Trip Report.  It was WARM.  30′s in the afternoon.  What’s more, there was no wind.  I got a sun burn instead of a wind burn this trip.  Really!  Yeah, I wouldn’t believe it, either.

There were bison and elk everywhere, but mostly either too far for my wimpy lens or too close, as in the case of this bull that was unwilling to move off the the road and into neck-deep snow. He made cars go around him.

Many of the animals are finding travel and foraging difficult.    The snow is deep but a very soft pack.  The soft pack is a good thing for elk and bison when it comes to pushing snow to get to grass beneath, or would be except the snow is so deep and so soft that it makes travel difficult.   Animals that move off the beaten track quickly find themselves up to their necks in snow. What’s more, that soft snow caves in around them. I don’t have any photos of that, as we don’t stick around to add stress when an animal is in that situation.

While there weren’t many wildlife photo ops for me (though there was a red fox curled up sleeping on a boulder west of the Ranch, a coyote across from Ranch, rams at the Confluence and more across from Hitching Post), I thoroughly enjoyed the blue sky, the whispy clouds, and the glitter on the snow.

We traveled on to Cooke City before turning back west. There is a bit of snow there in Cooke.

We stopped at Hitching Post on our way back west and played with Retta (my sister’s almost 1 year old daughter) in the sled and, while there, talked to a YA Guide who told us about an injured doe at Confluence. He thought she’d been attacked by a mountain lion due to the placement of her injuries (more on the head end than the hind end — cats for for the front, canines the rear, typically). We stopped at the closest pullout to wait for drama to unfold. Then Bob Landis showed up and I said “This doesn’t bode well for us. Nothing every happens when we are at the same place as him. I know stuff happens around him because I see it on TV, but nothing ever happens when he’s at the same place as us.” Sure ’nuff. We waited a couple hours before moving on to check out the pretty wolf that several people had told us about.

And a pretty wolf it was — silver, gold & black with a two tone face (dark upper, light lower) and shades of silver & gold fur with streaks of black. It was bedded down and occasionally howling when we first arrived. Now and then I barely picked up an answering howl from the east. After a bit, it got up and slowly headed east. Normally, a wolf doesn’t move slowly, even in deep snow. Normally, they can pretty much lope right over the snow. Not so in that soft snow. Every couple steps it sunk in neck deep and the soft snow caved in on it and it had to lunge out. It was working and panting hard for every yard gained. The howls increased in frequency and volume and, at the risk of anthropomorphizing, I’ll say that the howls sounded like howls of frustration.

The next day was mostly more of the same, though we did witness a confrontation of sorts.

This elk wanted to cross the road.

Eventually it decided to have words with the driver of the Suburban that was blocking the “intersection.”

It spared a few words for the passenger, too.

It wasn’t pleased to have to walk around the Suburban blocking the intersection with the trail where snow was packed down.

(what was that about anthropomorphizing?)

Bison were headed west for the North Gate and past Gardiner by the hundreds — as we are all reading in the news this week.
The herd with the late calf that’s still a lil red doggie was among them.

Not much else to report for Sunday. Like I said, pretty much a repeat of Saturday, at least until we got to Anaconda. Then we had a harsh change. Yellowstone was warm, with temps in the 30′s and still air. Anaconda was COLD with temps around 5 degrees and howling wind driving biting dnow (so wind chill undoubtedly below zero). After unloading Dad’s van and getting my gear back in mine, I headed for Lolo. I didn’t make it far before turning back, though. Visibility on Hwy 48 between Anaconda and Warm Springs was getting close to zero and I was debating turning back but thinking I’d see if it was better on I-90 past Warm Springs (it often is) when Stacy called and said that the state road report website showed I-90 closed between Garrison and Drummond. So, I turned back, called my husband to let him know our son and I would be returning home the next morning and called my boss to let him know I’d be late for work.

As it turns it, we were VERY late for work and school Monday as a migraine got us going late. For once, though, I’m glad that the migraine altered my plans. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had the right timing for the best experience of the return journey. A first for me. I spotted a bobcat while going 80 MPH on I-90!

I slammed on the brakes, pulled over, backed up along the shoulder looking for it and didn’t find it. I then drove slowly forward along the shoulder and was just about to give up when I caught a bit of movement in the grass which was, by that time, concealing the cat quite effectively. I got off a double handful of photos before it disappeared. I stayed in the car as it was well aware of me and I didn’t want an attempt to exit the car and get any closer to spook it and ruin any chance of getting at least a couple photos. They are ID/Documentary photos only (these are enlarged 30% and cropped about 60%) but definitely made my day!

Meanwhile, my son, Bridger, was protesting,  “Mom! I’m late for school, you’re late for work, we don’t have time for this!” I explained that I was 35 years old and had never seen a live free bobcat and it was worth being an extra 10 minutes late. When I showed my boss (who was a wildlife biologist before he became an entrepreneur) the photos, he agreed absolutely and enthusiastically. I’m sure Bridger’s teacher would, too.

On Saturday, I went for a drive with my Dad and husband south of East Fork Reservoir up the Carp Ridge Road up to the  Maloney Basin trailhead  (now labeled Co Rd 5141 — why oh why must we replace names with numbers — but that’s another story).  The area has enjoyed plentiful rainfall this year allowing wild flowers that are often dead and gone by mid-July (on a good year) to still be flourishing in August.  We saw lupine, paintbrush, sulfur buckwheat, field pussytoes, praire smoke, sticky geranium, gaillardia, bog orchid, sitka valerian, shooting stars, mountain death camas — and mariposa lilies.

Mariposa lilies at Carp Ridge will always be tied in my mind to a day in July of 2006 when I was photographing mariposa lilies on Carp Ridge.

On Saturday July 15, 2006, my great uncle (in his seventies at the time), married his high-school sweetheart.  My sister, a professional floral designer, created their floral pieces for the wedding.   Southwest Montana enjoyed plentiful rain that summer, too, and so there was still beargrass (the grass, not the flower head) aplenty.  The commercially grown long grasses that my sister had ordered for use in the wedding pieces was yucky, so on Thursday, July 13, my sister sent me on a mission to collect some good bear grass.  I had been up in the Carp Ridge area a few days before and knew I would be able to collect some there, so I headed off on my mission, accompanied by my uncle.

We enjoyed a leisurely drive, stopping to enjoy wild flowers and the scenery.  When we arrived at Carp Ridge the slope was beautifully carpeted with mariposa lilies.  I had attached my Raynox DCR-250 macro adapter to my Fuji Finepix s5000, and was happily engaged in photographing the lilies and their pollinators while my uncle strolled around enjoying the variety of wild flowers and collecting bear grass.

Our attention was diverted by a screaming/bleating noise. My uncle said “What was that?!” I replied that there had been open range cattle in the area the previous week that had since been rounded up. Perhaps a calf had been left behind. I surmised the noise was the bleating/crying of a lonely, forlorn calf. Back to photographing and collecting we went.

Shortly thereafter we heard the sound of heavy, labored, struggled breathing. We looked all around but could see nothing that was making that noise. However, the noises now had our full attention. We were up the slope a short way from the road. We walked back down onto the road and started walking back toward the parked vehicle, eyes and heads constantly moving, searching for the source of the noise — me leading and my uncle following. We could hear something struggling to breathe but still couldn’t see it, which was beginning to cause some apprehension on our parts. Then the struggled breathing noises ceased.

As I neared the vehicle, looking down the road and straight west into the setting sun — partially blinded by the sun and haze, I saw a shape come up the slope and up onto the road about 10 yards in front of me. It was an odd, unfamiliar shape. It was a head with curved somethings on the side. My first thought was that it was a large bighorn ram – perhaps sick, dying, struggling… That brief thought was shortly thereafter dispelled when a long tail stretched out, almost entirely across the road.

In the same moment that recognition dawned and I hissed “Cat!” back at my uncle, the mountain lion, for that’s what it was, with it’s front paws wrapped around the neck/head of the large mule deer doe it was dragging, realized that it wasn’t alone. It bolted.

Do I have photos? No. Despite that fact that my camera was around my neck I had two problems: 1) the macro adapter and 2) in the excitement of that briefest of moments of opportunity I quite forgot I even owned a camera. In all honesty I probably wouldn’t have achieved a photo no matter what, shooting straight into the sun, but, there you have it…

So, there we were: the still body of a doe, my uncle and me. No cat. I wanted to see the cat again. I WANTED PHOTOS. I suggested to my uncle that we get in the vehicle and move away then sneak back, but keeping our distance, with hopes that if we distanced ourselves the cat would return for its kill.

My uncle agreed. However, he thought that if we went out of sight the cat could return and drag the deer off and we’d miss it. He feared no one back home would believe our tale. He wanted some evidence to back our story. And so, I circled around the deer to take a photo of it without the sun directly on my lens. Just as I was pressing the shutter for a second photo, the deer jumped up and almost ran right over me. Apparently it had lost consciousness, being strangled by the cat, but had not yet expired before we interrupted the act.

So, my uncle and I left, continued on to the Maloney Basin trailhead, photographed a porcupine, then returned to Anaconda with photos of flowers and the porcupine, a bucket of bear grass, a story, and the memory of an evening we’ll never forget.