wolf tracks

Friday night we heard that wolves had been sited in the Old Faithful area so we vowed to get up early and do an investigative ski around the geyser basin. But tired out by our photo safari and a night of work, we hit the snooze button a couple times before heading out on our skis around 11am. As we headed toward Black Sand Basin on the Upper Geyser Trail we spotted what we believe are pine marten tracks

Continuing along the trail we came to Castle Geyser, which we caught at the end of one of its eruptions -- something that happens every 10-12 hours

After crossing some astroturf we took a left and headed toward Daisy Geyser and the collection of pools, geysers and bacterial mats (below) that surround it

About half way between Daisy and Black Sand, near Punch Bowl Springs, we came across a track crossing the trail. After further inspection -- it measured about the size of my hand -- we decided it was a couple-day-old wolf track

With no actual wolves in sight, we headed on down the hill and came across another set of footprints (plus some tail prints). These belonged to a deer mouse are were about a quarter of the size of the wolf track.

Next we skied across the road to Black Sand Basin, which takes it name from the small grains of obsidian (the stuff Native Americans made arrowheads out of) that covers the area. For a few moments we had the basin to ourselves as we checked out the thermal features that sat on either side of Iron Creek. By far the most colorful and steamiest was Rainbow Pool

When a coach full of tourists pulled up we decided it was time to head back. We had to break trail along the road on the way home and barely made it back to get to work on time.

The highlight of our work night was the ranger lecture which fittingly was on the topic of wolves. The ranger giving the talk also broke the news to us that the rangers doing the 8am geyser prediction had heard wolves howling in the basin. Kicking ourselves for not getting up earlier we vowed to get up early on Sunday and find some wolves.

We headed out around 8am and followed the same path toward Castle and this time we had the local coyote breaking trail for us

Around the astroturf we spotted a wolf track like we saw the day before but, again, it looked to be a couple days old. After some skiing around, we decided that the wolves had probably moved on. Still, the basin looked beautiful in the early morning light

so we decided to ski around the geysers and thermal features. The skiing was a little slick but we managed to make it down Geyser Hill without any incident. We are hoping to make it out with one of the rangers on a geyser predict soon so maybe we'll have another chance at glimpsing, or at least hearing, a wolf in the coming days.