Winter In Yellowstone travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises, spa and resorts

Winter is the best time to visit Yellowstone National Park. Wildlife-watching is at its peak and some 10,000 hydrothermal features, including erupting geysers and steaming rivers, provide stark contrast to the biting cold. The crowds of summer are gone, and the glories of the park are wide-open. During this time of the year the wolves are the masters! 

Great herds of bison, elk, pronghorn antelope, deer, and bighorn sheep, struggling to survive the harsh winter, migrate down to the relative warmth of the thermal basins and the easier grazing in the open valleys. Otters frolic in snowbanks along the rivers. Moose move into the willow and fir to browse; bobcats, mountain lions, and foxes hunt in the woods. Swans drift across misty pools.

Yellowstone‘s snow-packed roads are closed to cars from December through March except for one plowed road running from Gardiner. The world’s oldest national park in snowcoaches also offers insights on thermal geology, vulcanism, and winter wildlife ecology.

However it was the wolves that fascinated most. By last winter, that population had grown to 306 wolves in 31 packs roaming the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Because almost half of them have wandered outside park boundaries, occasionally picking off domestic sheep and cattle, the conservation group Defenders of Wild-life has set up a fund to compensate local ranchers for depredations by wolves and grizzlies.

Location: Wyoming, Montana and Idaho