High Plains Drifter

Jay and I had a long, fun-filled day in the northeast part of Yellowstone.  We began the day photographing a couple of the waterfalls on the way to Tower, including Tower Falls.  We then drove through the Lamar Valley photographing a myriad of wildlife from bison to bighorn sheep to antelope.  We even spotted a few wolves way off in the disance.  After lunch in Cooke City, we headed as far up Beartooth Road as we could, since the pass was closed due to weather.  We made it up quite a ways with accumulating snow providing an awesome landscape.  It was 26 degrees with a stiff wind at the point the road was closed.  But wow, what a landscape!  We headed back west to Tower Junction and then south towards Canyon.   On the way to Canyon we hit the first bear stop.  A few black bears were observed along the east side of the road near the Dunraven Pass.  I was able to get a few decent images of one of the black bears atop a tree feeding away.  We then headed just south of Canyon Junction on the north side of the Hayden Valley where there was a huge congregation of wildlife observers, and other passersby photographing and observing a grizzley bear feeding on a carcass.  It was pretty far away, but I still managed a few decent images at 400mm on my zoom lens.  Anyway, after that it was time to head to Uncle Tom’s Trail which is a steep little hike to near the base of Lower Falls.  Wow what a power of nature.  Anyway, took quite a few images of the falls from here.  The snow was increasing in intensity a little bit by this time.  We headed back north through the Dunraven Pass area, with yet another black bear encounter.  The light was diminishing, so many of my bear photos were fairly blurry.  Our final shot of the day was of a herd of elk lead by a large bull with one huge rack up on the snow covered mountain side.  Some of my images here came out quite well, which I’m thankful for!  Much of the park was seeing accumulating snow above ~7500 feet.  Down in Mammoth at 6300 feet, it’s liquid precip with no snow accumulation.  Tomorrow’s plan is still up in the air, but it will be chalk-full of more fun stuff I’m sure.  

Howdy!  After 1007 miles of driving on 1.5 hours of sleep, I arrived at Grand Teton around 6:30am Mountain Time.  I did some early morning photography with peaks of sunshine, much to my surprise, from Signal Mountain.  I then headed into Yellowstone and photographed Moose Falls, Old Faithful, and Gibbons Falls on my way to Mammoth to meet up with Jay.  I arrived in Mammoth around 1:30pm or so, to strong thunderstorms, believe it or not.  The temperature dropped from 57 to 46°F from that storm, with close CGs!  Anyway, these storms provided some snow atop 9500 foot peaks west of Mammoth, which was fairly pretty.  Also, I ran into some snowy ground driving through the 9500 foot pass very early this morning on my approach to Teton.  Tomorrow’s plan is highly dependant on the weather, and I may linger close to Mammoth if it’s fairly bleak outside.

I decided to leave right after work earlier today to get up into Yellowstone prior to the Friday night-Saturday snow.  It looks like 3-6" over a large part of Yellowstone is possible… with isolated near 1 foot perhaps in higher elevations.  It’s 10pm MDT at the time of this writing, sitting at a Days Inn parking lot in  Laramie, WY.  I’ll drive off and on through the night in between power naps, expecting to reach Teton by just after sunrise probably.  Should probably see some wet snow mixing in with rain showers by midday when I approach Mammoth.  More later, time to get back on the road…

From the NWS Riverton, WY office — mentioned in their Area Forecast Discussion on Wednesday afternoon:

FRIDAY NIGHT INTO SATURDAY...AS THE ENERGETIC UPPER LOW MOST LIKELY  
FROM WESTERN WYOMING INTO NORTHEAST WYOMING...THERE SHOULD BE A  
LARGE SWATH OF PRECIPITATION BEGINNING TO WRAP AROUND THIS SYSTEM. I  
HAVE HIT THE NORTH HALF WITH LIKELY POPS FOR FRIDAY NIGHT AND EVEN  
A BIGGER AREA SATURDAY AS WRAPAROUND FURTHER IMPROVES THE CHANCES IN  
AREAS LIKE THE WIND RIVER BASIN. DETAILS ARE STILL UNCERTAIN BUT  
OVERALL BIG PICTURE IS SLOWLY COMING INTO FOCUS. HAVE STARTED SNOW  
LEVELS FAIRLY HIGH THURSDAY EVENING BUT LOWERED THEM TO AS LOW AS  
8000 FEET IN YELLOWSTONE BY FRIDAY MORNING RISING TO AROUND 10000  
FEET IN THE GREEN MOUNTAINS. HOWEVER...IT IS POSSIBLE IN THE  
SOUTHWEST THAT TEMPERATURES COULD COOL MORE THAN EXPECTED AND LOWER  
SNOW LEVELS IN THAT AREA LOWER THAN SOUNDINGS OR H7 TEMPERATURES  
WOULD INDICATE. ON FRIDAY...SNOW LEVELS WILL GENERALLY BE BETWEEN  
9000 AND 10000 FEET.  

THE POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATION DOES EXIST FROM THIS  
SYSTEM ESPECIALLY ACROSS THE BIG HORN MOUNTAINS FRIDAY NIGHT AND  
SATURDAY. HOWEVER...EVEN OTHER AREAS IN THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS COULD  
SEE DECENT SNOWFALL...ESPECIALLY THE WIND RIVER MOUNTAINS AND  
ABSAROKA MOUNTAINS. STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER UPDATES ON THIS MAJOR  
CHANGE TO COLD AND UNSETTLED WEATHER.  

My plans are to either depart around 1pm from Dodge City tomorrow afternoon and try to make it up to Yellowstone as fast, and safely as possible, taking a few 2 hour power naps along the way… -or- leave as originally planned very early friday morning and plan on my original stop in Dubois.  I’m almost leaning more towards the Dubois scenario, because they might see as much snow as Mammoth given the elevation, and I love snow   Then I’ll stay another night in Dubois Saturday night and hopefully by Sunday I can start my way to Yellowstone and make Sunday a nice little snowy landscape shoot most of the day.  If the sun can come back out Sunday, it could be spectacular. 

Significant snows expected for Yellowstone Friday & Saturday! 

Well, hmmm.  This first snowstorm of the season for the northern Rockies is really throwing a monkey-wrench into my itenerary — at least the first couple days of the trip.  The significant Pacific storm is still on track, and now there are indications that a subtropical jet stream interaction may enhance precipitation and even start the event sooner.  A snow event that evolves faster spells trouble for me, becuase the absolute earliest I could possibly make it to Mammoth Hot Springs would be early afternoon Friday.  The new 13/00z run of the NAM model, which is notoriously fast and weaker with storms 3 days out, is certainly scaring me!  It has 700mb temps falling quickly below 0°C over the Teton/Yellowstone region early Friday morning.  This system is strong and cold, there are no two ways about it.  The Riverton NWS office is really playing this one soft so far, according to their point&click forecast on the web earlier this afternoon.  I think all locations of Yellowstone above 7000 feet will see any rain change over to snow early Friday (which is pretty much the entire park, except for the Gardner River valley in the far north-central portion of the park at Mammoth Hot Springs, Mammoth = approx 6400 feet), again if the NAM is anywhere close to representing what will happen.

In order to even make it to Mammoth I have to traverse the entire park from south to north, crossing at least a couple 8500+ passes.  They will certainly be snow early Friday if the new NAM is right.  This is just too close for comfort.  I don’t think I’ll be able to make it before heavy snow ensues.  Here are the scenarios playing in my mind right now… there’s 3 of them:

1)  Original itenerary departure of early Friday morning, arrival Dubois, WY by mid-evening.  Anticipation being snow-bound Saturday and essentially spend the day in Dubois with really nothing much to do.  Snow-covered and even road closures look to be a pretty good bet.  Spend a 2nd night at Dubois (Sat. Night), and assuming the storm ends Late Saturday, begin the drive west to Teton Sunday morning for snowscape photography.  Late Sunday I’ll head into Yellowstone.

2)  Depart immediately after work Thursday (after hopefully leaving early from work at 2pm), and drive non-stop, essentially, to Laramie.  Stay at a cheap Motel 6 in Laramie for about 6 hours, then depart at 5 or 6am and make a beeline drive to Mammoth, arriving sometime early-mid afternoon.  * This is my preferred scenario only if the expected heavy snow holds off until late afternoon or early evening.

3)  I just thought about this one not too long ago, and I’m actually leaning more towards this scenario given the scare from the new NAM.  Delay #1 scenario by one full day.  Instead of leaving Dodge early Friday morning, I’ll leave Saturday morning… arriving in Dubois Saturday evening… then get up very early for morning snowy landscape photography at Grand Teton, given the storm is over by then and skies begin to clear.  I really didn’t want to blow a day of my vacation (Friday), but by doing so, this would allow me to chase what looks to be a potentially great dryline supercell day in western Kansas very close to Dodge City, perhaps.  Interesting, eh?!

Stay tuned…

September 15-25, 2006 

At the end of this week, I will begin my journey northwest to Yellowstone!  I will be leaving Dodge City early  Friday morning, probably around 4am.  I will be staying Friday Night at the Super 8 motel in Dubois, WY, which is about 60 miles southeast of Teton NP.  I talked with Jay last week, and he’s staying at Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of the park.  I will likely meet up with Jay sometime late Saturday. I have already planned out a lot of what I want to shoot in Yellowstone, and each day’s shoot will depend on the weather.  Sunny days with deep blue skies will be reserved for photographing geothermal features such as hot spring pools, geysers, mudpots, etc.  Sunrise/sunset light will be reserved for grand landscape type stuff, more than likely.  I know for sure I want to get Lower and/or Upper Falls in dawn light from Inspiration Point or Artist Point.  So definitely one morning for that!  Cloudy days will be reserved for waterfall photography, mainly the long-exposure, silky composition waterfall shots.  Cloudy days work best for that kind of shooting, as well as dawn/dusk light.  Speaking of cloudy days…..

I just looked at the GFS model, and Saturday the 16th, my first day in the park, looks like a potential mess.  The first bigtime fall storm looks to be developing late in the week in the Pacific Northwest.  This sucker just looks big!  It is still 5 days out, but there seems to be strong support for a snowstorm in Yellowstone on or around Saturday.  I was planning Saturday the 16th to be my "survey" day, after a sunrise shoot at Grand Teton NP.  I’ll have to watch this closely, and my plans may change quite a bit for my first few days of the trip…including perhaps the possibility of leaving even earlier Friday morning… like 2 or 3am and driving almost straight through and stay my first night in Yellowstone with Jay on Friday night the 15th…skipping Grand Teton on the way up (but not on the way back home!).  We’ll see.  Once I am in the park, I doubt I will be able to post a daily blog.  It depends on the internet service, I dunno if there will be wi-fi hotspots in the park or not, I haven’t asked Jay about that yet.  Jay says he checks his e-mail about 4 or so times a week in the park, so I’ll probably go that route.  Nevertheless, I’m excited and anxious about this trip, needless to say!