How to avoid the tourist hordes at the world’s first national park

Visit Yellowstone National Park in summer, and you’ll be, literally, one in a million. Stop by in winter to see Old Faithful blow, that old geezer of a geyser, and you’ll be one of a few.

Native Americans have called this area home for at least 11,000 years; more recently, in 1872, Yellowstone was declared the world’s first national park, an area of about 900,000 hectares preserved for conservation.

Old Faithful in winter at Yellowstone National Park.Credit: iStock

It remains in the top five most-visited US national parks, a place where people come to witness the geysers blow and gurgle – there’s so much thermal activity beneath the surface here that our driver and guide (“Hi, I’m Matt, and that’s with two Ts”) assures us that if this dormant volcano blows, that’ll be it for the Western world. He saved this news for the end of the trip.

Matt with two Ts is the proud driver of a big yellow bus with tyres so fat he could enter it in a monster truck jam. On top of the thermals, he’s also showing us the wildlife, and even in the depths of winter, there’s plenty.

A bald eagle on watch.Credit: Getty Images

On our first stop inside the park, in a snowy siding alongside the Madison River, we see a flock of trumpeter swans. They’re huge, with a wingspan of up to three metres, some of them inbound from Canada and Alaska, swanning around in the warmth of the thermal waters.

A little further along the snow-covered road, perched high in a tree and taking in its surrounds, is a bald eagle, the national emblem. In the distance, a herd of bison chews away on grass peeking through the snow.

Onwards we go, sometimes at a crawl to let the bison pass or be passed. All of them are seemingly built forward first, massive heads and shoulders with their hindquarters an afterthought.

My first bison anecdote actually came on the ski slopes at Big Sky a few days previously.

Troy Nedved, now general manager of Montana’s Big Sky ski resort, once worked in Yellowstone National Park. While on the job, he was called in to help a bison calf that had fallen into a creek and was thought to have drowned.

“Normally we don’t interfere with nature, but this was maybe the result of some people filming nearby, so they asked me to help,” Nedved said.

The bus and the bison.Credit: iStock

A trained first-aider, he started to apply CPR. The result? “I could see its chest rising and falling, so I knew we were getting somewhere, and then, yep, we got it back.” Maybe, as we crawl along, one of these bison is the one Nedved brought back from the brink.

On the other side of that coin, over the river is a patch of red and a rib cage, all that remains of a lone bison and its encounter with a wolf pack. No wonder the bison travel in herds, instinct having the calves sticking like paint to their mothers.

We stop at a little clearing where Matt has phone reception. He checks in with the park rangers – who have the timing down pat – and finds the next predicted blow for Old Faithful is at noon, give or take 10 minutes either side.

So we make our way to Old Faithful, named for its regular and predictable eruptions and the centrepiece of a sprawling complex that includes vast fields of car and bus parking, a couple of hotels, a visitor and interpretations centre (complete with shop, of course) and viewing stands and walkways around the main geyser and its neighbours.

Parts of Yellowstone can look like a Jackson Pollock painting.Credit: iStock

Sure enough, close on noon it blows, a stream of steam arcing up into the air, each eruption bigger than the previous one. Old Faithful is among about 500 geysers in the park, and after seeing it do its thing and wandering the boardwalk around it, we’re back in the bus and on to some more geyser fields.

At first glance, they’re a wasteland, but look closer (and listen to Matt’s interpretations) and you can see the work of busy little bacteria in the water colouring the scene with the chaos of a Jackson Pollock painting, guarded by long dead but perfectly preserved trees.

You could wander through the park at your own pace, but if you want a deeper understanding of this natural wonderland and its geology and wildlife, a tour will take you there, and in winter, you won’t be battling the crowds.

The details

Tour
Tours depart from West Yellowstone, Montana, about 90 minutes from Big Sky ski resort. Winter tours last for nine hours and run from mid-December to mid-March. From $US230 ($345) an adult. Snow cover permitting, self-drive snowmobile tours are also available, from $US340 ($515) an adult. Park entry ($US20/$30) is additional for all tours. A tip – take light binoculars or a monoscope for wildlife viewing. See yellowstonevacations.com

The writer was a guest of Visit Big Sky and Big Sky Resort. See bigskyresort.com