Micah sporting his new Junior Ranger patch in the lobby of Old Faithful Inn

Welcome to National Park Week! Every day during April 17-25, 2021, has a special theme related to US national parks. This Saturday features junior rangers, a program focused on school-age kids but open to people of any age. See the NPS site for National Junior Ranger Day for information about a concert and loads of activities throughout the country and virtually from home on April 24. Since this is the shoulder season in Yellowstone between when roads were open for oversnow travel and plowed for regular vehicles, no special activities are happening there this week. Perhaps you have planned a cycling trip before the roads are crowded with cars: bike in the park! At the moment there’s a mix of rain and snow in the park, with temperatures up to 50°F (10°C).

In honor of National Park Week, Granite Peak Publications is making a donation to the National Park Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. As publisher of the Yellowstone Treasures guidebook, we also donate regularly to Yellowstone Forever. These two partners of Yellowstone National Park raise money for education, maintenance, new Canyon viewpoints, and the Yellowstone Wolf Impact Study, among other programs. We also donated two books to the Conservation Northwest auction this week.

The junior ranger patch for Yellowstone

Photo credits: Suzanne Cane took these photos in 2015. They are featured on pages 16 and 43 of Yellowstone Treasures, updated sixth edition.

Spring biking with bear spray at Silver Gate (The Hoodoos), March 29, 2017

Doesn’t this picture inspire you to get outside (well prepared for encountering cold and bears) in Yellowstone National Park this spring? Before the first roads open up again for public travel comes the spring shoulder season for cycling. Here is what our guidebook Yellowstone Treasures has to say about the road you see in the photo, which is about 4 miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs on the Mammoth to Norris Road:

3.7/17.3 The Hoodoos (or Silver Gate) one-way road. Go slowly to find and take the very short, unmarked loop road to the west—a remnant of the 1899 stagecoach road. Park here to look closely at some unusual rocks.

The massive, topsy-turvy blocks of silvery, gray-white travertine, strewn about so haphazardly, are the result of a large landslide from the slopes of Terrace Mountain to the west. No one knows when the boulders slid here. These boulders are not the same as the hoodoos you can see near the park’s East Entrance (see “What’s a Hoodoo?” on page 154). The other official name for this place, Silver Gate, is actually more appropriate.

The Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris road, the northwest segment of the Grand Loop Road (see map), closed to oversnow travel this year on Sunday, March 1st. The planned reopening date for cars for this road and out to the West Entrance is April 17th. So that means that for about two weeks before that, bicycles, including e-bikes, are allowed on certain roads! (They are never allowed on park trails.)

The following road segments may be opened to bicycling each spring:

• Mammoth Hot Springs to the West Entrance
• East Entrance to the east side of Sylvan Pass (six miles from the entrance)
• South Entrance to West Thumb

Keep in mind, though, as NPS says: “Roads will not be free of cars during these times: bicyclists will encounter employees, contractors, plows, and other administrative vehicles on the roads.” You’ll need a helmet and high-visibility clothing. You’ll also want to do your research in advance; Camping for bicyclists is limited to the developed campgrounds located throughout the park. See the park’s Spring & Fall Bicycling and Bike in the Park pages for more.

Credits: Photo by NPS/Jacob W. Frank, in the public domain (see Yellowstone National Park’s Flickr page for more wonderful photos!). Road log section quoted from p. 269 of the 6th edition of Yellowstone Treasures, due out this May.

This is when the fall bicycling shoulder season begins. However, the weather forecasters are predicting wind and snow for this weekend, so conditions will not be ideal. See the National Park Service’s Spring & Fall Bicycling for more. The shoulder season lasts until about the third week of November, when plowing operations stop so that enough snow can accumulate on the roads to support oversnow travel.

Then the Grand Loop Road will open to snowcoaches and snowmobiles on December 15, ending the fall season officially.

Photo credit: NPS photo from the Yellowstone National Park Flickr album, Jacob W. Frank, June 13, 2018.

The Gate of the Mountains by Albert Hencke (1865-1936), originally published in 1893 in Outing magazine. Click for a larger version.

Philadelphia-born Frank Lenz made his pioneering side trip through the then 20-year-old Yellowstone National Park as part of his solo round-the-world cycling journey. It took place in late August 1892, but even so he encountered snow. As he says:

I was congratulating myself upon having passed through the most uncomfortable portion of my trip when I espied it raining on the opposite side of the river, and soon the icy-cold spray reached me. When within half a mile of a government engineer’s camp, what was my surprise to see the rain change into snow. As it blew up quite strong. I made for the cook’s tent for shelter, and here for three hours I thawed out my fingers and feet, which were nearly frozen.

Lenz’s story is one of the highlights of our enjoyable anthology, Through Early Yellowstone: Adventuring by Bicycle, Covered Wagon, Foot, Horseback, and Skis. Other highlights, according to Aaron Parrett’s Montana book roundup in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, include Nathaniel P. Langford’s 1871 “Wonders of the Yellowstone,” Margaret Andrews Allen’s “A Family Camp in Yellowstone Park” (1885) and the journalist Ray Stannard Baker’s “A Place of Marvels: Yellowstone Park As It Now Is” (1903). You can read this and other reviews to learn more.

If you are interested in the shoulder seasons for cycling in the park, see the National Park Service’s Spring & Fall Bicycling page.

—Beth Chapple, Editor and Publisher

Excerpt from page 50 of Through Early Yellowstone

The month of March in Yellowstone also means that park roads start to close to oversnow travel, in preparation for plowing and reopening in April and May. While the road from the North Entrance (Gardiner) to the Northeast Entrance (Cooke City) is open year-round, today at 9 pm the road from the East Entrance to Lake Butte Overlook (Sylvan Pass) closes to snowcoaches and snowmobiles, and other roads follow throughout the next two weeks. Conditions permitting, there is also a schedule for reopening the roads for motorized traffic. See the Park Roads page at https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkroads.htm.

This period between closing the park roads to oversnow travel and reopening them is a time when cyclists and hikers can travel the roads but car drivers are not allowed. See the National Park Service’s Spring & Fall Bicycling page to learn about the regulations and reminders, since you must still share the road with bears, administrative vehicles, and snow removal equipment. No services are available within the park during the spring shoulder season.

—Editor and Publisher, Beth Chapple

Updated August 20, 2018.

The same privilege is offered by Glacier National Park in northern Montana, another paradise. But Going-to-the-Sun Highway requires really ambitious bike riders with good brakes!

Recently, 53-year-old Rick Buchanan was turned away when he tried to lead a group of snow cyclists into Yellowstone National Park.
Tim Reid, Yellowstone’s chief ranger, told Buchanan that the bike is not an approved means of winter travel, therefore, the group could not ride in the park. Under Yellowstone’s winter management plan, one can only enter the park by approved snowmobiles, snowcoaches, cross-country skis, or snowshoes. But the snow bike has actually been gaining popularity in the past 5 years.

My hope is that the park authorities will get in step with this new possibility and begin allowing them into the park during the winter season.
For more details, see “Snow Cyclists in Yellowstone.”

2011

What I’ve been wanting to do ever since walking five or six miles each day to see geysers has become more of a chore than a pleasure is to rent a bike to cover the distance from the settled part of Old Faithful out past predictable Castle, Daisy, and Riverside geysers to Fan and Mortar (which is erupting every few days so far this summer). Now it’s a possibility even if you arrive in an airplane or don’t want to put bikes on your car for a long road trip.
Here are some details: Every day between June 1st and September 30th this summer [2010] you can rent adult bikes for $8.00 an hour, $25.00 for a half day, or $35.00 for a full day, and child bikes for less. There are several pleasant places to bike from Old Faithful besides the Geyser Route Two that I write about in Yellowstone Treasures (pages 98-102). However, some rides would require putting bikes on a bike rack on your car unless you ride on the Grand Loop Road—which I don’t really recommend.