spring in yellowstone

It's hard to believe it's almost late June.  

June is still definitely spring, not summer, here in Montana.  The threat of snow still lingers, even if the temperature crept up to 70 degrees the day before. Spring in Yellowstone means lots of babies--elk calves, bison calves, bear cubs, bighorn lambs, badger kits, etc.  This June we've been lucky enough to share spring with visitors.  Here's a few snapshots from the month:

friday

bunsen peak ski

We skied down from our old house and right past a bison, who we failed to notice until we were past him...and he wasn't happy to see us, so we continued on our way.


Through the trees,


down the first hill, and over a bridge.

blacktail plateau ski

We've been MIA because we've been busy not doing things in the snow...this past week, while the rest of the country was dumped on with snow, we've had 40 degree weather and RAIN. Everywhere you go around here all anyone is talking about is snow, as in "want it, need it."

It's still possible to find snow here on the northern range, though conditions are not ideal. Blacktail had just enough snow and minimal wind, though I was skiing in a long-sleeve shirt and pants: no hat, no long underwear, no jacket.

Send snow. Please.

scenes from december

Last month I hiked Specimen Ridge, an almost 19-mile hike that has been on my Yellowstone wish list for years and years. Steve has always had this hike on his "no" list, so luckily I was able to convince a coworker to join me.

We hit the trail around 8:30 a.m.


And the first thing we saw were wolves! Members of the Lamar Canyon pack. We paused to watch them for a few minutes, and then continued on.


After a couple of miles we reached a river crossing, at the Lamar River.


And from there it was up, up, up. We climbed until we reached the top of the ridge. There isn't exactly a trail per se, and animals are continually knocking over the trail markers by rubbing against them, which makes it hard to stay with the trail in certain places on the hike.


Lots of wide open vistas.


And then gorgeous views of the Lamar Valley below.


After losing the trail briefly a couple of times, we found a sign that confirmed we were on the right trail and finally getting close to the top of Amethyst Mountain.


We ran into a few bighorn sheep, and they had no idea what we were. They don't see people very often, and they just couldn't figure out what we were doing up there.



Another view of the valley.


Finally, reaching the top of Amethyst Mountain.




Looking south, you can see Mt. Washburn in the right corner, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in the middle.


The second half of the hike had wide open views of the whole area.



A piece of petrified wood--the trail doesn't go through the petrified forest, but we did see a ton of petrified wood as we hiked.


We also hiked past too many sets of antlers to count.


It was hard to tell if you were getting close to the end of the hike, because it just looked like it went on forever.


We hiked past three large herds of bison, who couldn't quite figure out what we were either.


As we neared the end of the trail, a curious pronghorn started to approach us, and we had to clang our hiking poles together to get him to move on and away from us. We didn't see another person during the 10 hours that we hiked, and it was clear that the animals were not used to seeing people up there.


We finished the hike around 6:30 p.m., 10 hours total on the trail, just as the sun was starting to set.