This year I spent 5 nights at Gros Ventre campground in the Tetons before going up into Yellowstone NP. The weather in the Tetons was cold with sleet nearly every day. The first clear day I ventured out to see what I could find and ran smack into a bear jam. This one I stuck around for because it was about 399 and her 4 cubs. Last spring this grizzly sow had 4 cubs. They all survived the winter and appear to be doing well. She is 25 now and nearing the end of her breeding life.
The Tetons had a lot of snow on them even late in May this year and there were still quite a few patches on snow on the ground.
From the Tetons I headed up to Canyon Village campground in Yellowstone. I generally use that as a base and spend my time in Hayden Valley. On the drives between the two locations I did manage to see a couple of bears, both times I was driving and did not have a place to stop. One had already started a huge bear jam with no rangers around so I called that one in.
Most of my days in Hayden Valley were spent watching a wolf pack in the far distance using my spotting scope. I did take a few photos with my camera and long lens and will post them but they are cropped a lot and just not great. Getting photos using my phone and the scope was tricky and not very successful. I need to practice that a lot more!
The wolves were fascinating. There are 12 adults and 9 pups in the pack. Sometimes an adult, often one of the black ones, would bring the two older pups out to play. They romped around on the snow, played with the adults, etc. They were very adventurous exploring. I did get to see them playing with a large bone, too. They would romp around and then collapse, worn out. Only once did I see the smaller pups out on the grass. Some of the adults spent a lot of time just laying around in the sun, sometimes on the snow because it was pretty hot.
The last evening I was watching them I saw the 5 that were laying down suddenly get up and run up the hill into the sagebrush. They were greeting the rest of the adults who had apparently been away on some mission. What a joyful greeting that was! I wasn’t able to capture it with the camera but got a couple of images as they relaxed a bit.
Yellowstone in the spring wouldn’t be complete for me without the Milky Way so I was out late one night to capture this image of it over the Yellowstone River.
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