This fox was spotted tracking a snowshoe hare from atop the Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance.

Despite best efforts to fix up a wastewater situation stemming from the June 2022 floods, the park concessionaire Xanterra announced that Mammoth Hotel lodging and dining will not open this winter, though they have a ski shop, tours, take-out food, and hot drinks for the winter. Perhaps you can arrange accommodations in the town of Gardiner outside the North Entrance instead. Within the park, Old Faithful Snow Lodge is the best place to stay from December 15, when roads open to oversnow travel by snowmobile and snowcoach, to early March, when the roads close for preparing for the spring opening of the park. Always be sure to check the Park Roads page before you go.

Opening up for summer

The first roads are due to open to wheeled traffic on April 21, weather permitting, which is a bit later than some recent years. The first hotel rooms and cabins to open will be at Mammoth on April 28, Old Faithful Inn on May 5, and then Lake Hotel and Canyon Lodges on May 12. These dates are quite a bit earlier than last year, but of course they are subject to change due to weather. Most of the restaurants and cafeterias in the park open for either take-out or dining in once the lodging opens. See the Stay and Dine tabs on Xanterra’s YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com website for more.

Where to camp

Remember it’s not allowed to camp in your car or by the road in this national park. Fishing Bridge RV Park’s extensive renovation is complete, with new and larger sites, more showers and laundry facilities, and other improvements. Here are the opening dates or first available dates for the campgrounds you can reserve through Xanterra:

Madison Campground – May 5
Fishing Bridge RV Park – May 12
Canyon Campground – sold out through the end of May
Bridge Bay Campground – May 26
Grant Village Campground – sold out through June 8

Campgrounds run by the National Park Service, such as Tower Fall Campground, are reservable, but reservations for summer 2023 are not yet open on Recreation.gov. The flooding in June 2022 caused infrastructure damage to the following campgrounds, which will remain closed until further notice: Indian Creek, Mammoth, Pebble Creek, and Slough Creek.

So you can see that planning for your trip is both necessary and more complicated than it used to be. Time to get started!

Photo credit: Yellowstone Forever, January 22, 2017

Beth (left) and Janet Chapple posing with Lower Falls at Artist Point

On our first full day in the park we had the good fortune to witness Great Fountain Geyser. We realized from the prediction on the signboard we would need to drive around Firehole Lake Drive a second time, and then it worked out perfectly. The benches were full for Great Fountain’s thrilling show, and nearby White Dome erupted as well for us shortly afterward.

We went to several of Canyon’s beautifully expanded overlooks. Janet could use her walker on the nicely graded path to Lookout Point. Other members of our party took advantage of the half-mile walk from our cabin to Grand View as many as three times during our two-night stay! We found that early and late daylight hours were best for avoiding crowds.

On July 2, Niklas and I hiked from a Grand Loop Road turnout to see Black Sand Pool, Punch Bowl Spring, and Daisy Geyser, predicted for 4:30 pm plus or minus 20 minutes. It was breezy with nearby thunderstorms that happily did not come near. We were still approaching when Daisy started to erupt in its famous diagonal way at 4:09 pm. Only three other people witnessed the eruption with us. On the way back we sought out Demon’s Cave with its dangerous overhanging ledge, but it looks like people have thrown sticks in over the years.

We admired all the easily accessible waterfalls on our route. Besides Lower and Upper Falls of the Yellowstone at Canyon, that means Gibbon Falls, Kepler Cascades, Virginia Cascade, and Lewis Falls. At Lewis we walked along the bridge and also admired the downstream meadow and view of the mountains across the road to the south.

The morning we were moving from Old Faithful Inn to the Canyon Lodge cabins was our best chance to see Mammoth Hot Springs, we decided. The road closure this season between Tower and Canyon made us have to repeat a road segment instead of going around the upper loop road, but we stopped at different points, such as Gibbon Falls on the way north and Apollonaris Spring on the way south (more about that cold spring in a future blog post). At Mammoth the fun parts were walking the boardwalk stairs down from our parking at the Upper Terrace Drive to see Cupid and Canary Springs from various angles and then picnicking on the grass outside the chapel.

Old Faithful Inn interior, showing the great fireplace and balconies

Various lodges and cabins will open during May, but Old Faithful Inn rooms do not open until June 4, Grant Village lodge rooms not until June 18. Most of the restaurants and cafeterias in the park will still be limited to take-out rather than dining in. The gift shops will open on the same schedule as the lodging. See Xanterra’s update page on YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com for more.

Camping

Due to construction, three campgrounds will remain closed for all of 2021: Norris, Tower Fall, and Fishing Bridge RV Park. Here are the opening dates for the four campgrounds you can reserve through Xanterra:

• Madison Campground – May 14
• Canyon Campground – May 21
• Bridge Bay Campground – June 11
• Grant Village Campground – June 18

Bighorn rams at Slough Creek (click to enlarge)

Photo credits: Old Faithful Inn fireplace from Bat’s Alley, NPS photo; Bighorn rams at Slough Creek, NPS photo taken by Peggy Olliff in February 2015, which you can find on page 204 of Yellowstone Treasures, updated sixth edition.

News Release: Effective immediately, @YellowstoneNPS and @GrandTetonNPS are closed to all park visitors until further notice. There will be no visitor access permitted to either park. #Covid19 #CoronaVirus

Details at: https://t.co/4YLJxQqvFw pic.twitter.com/yUnXTra8vP

— YellowstoneNPS (@YellowstoneNPS) March 24, 2020

Were you, as we were, planning a trip to the park this summer? The COVID-19 outbreak means we all need to practice social (physical) distancing, which now means a need to cancel those travel plans. Last week, concessionaire Xanterra announced they are suspending their operations (lodging, campgrounds, dining, and tours) through May 21 (see https://www.yellowstonenationalparklodges.com/coronavirus/). Yesterday, the National Park Service made the unusual but prudent decision in tandem with gateway county health departments that they have to follow suit. NPS closed both Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park to visitors until further notice. To quote from the news release: “There will be no visitor access permitted to either park. State highways and/or roads that transcend park/state boundaries and facilities that support life safety and commerce will remain open.” So one thing that is not clear at the moment is what happens to travel on the Northern Range road between Gardiner and Silver Gate. Another question no one can answer yet is, When will the parks be able to reopen?

Please stay tuned to this website, because we will soon have news about the guidebook and a short-term sale. On Friday we announced the publication date for the sixth edition of Yellowstone Treasures on our Media Kit. For now, the best advice is stay home, stay healthy!

I realize that now, in my mid eighties, it is unlikely that I’ll go again in winter. As it happened, we were in the middle of the government shut-down, but, thanks to the concessionaire Xanterra, which covered the cost of grooming the roads as well as furnishing their usual pleasant rooms and good meals, we had no trouble getting around.

For potential visitors a little or a lot younger, I would still highly recommend that you go! The friends who joined me were able to handle the snowy trails around Upper Geyser Basin and Fountain Paint Pots.

Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel with snowcoaches in winter

You need to leave your car in Mammoth. That’s where you cease to encounter plowed roads, since the park has a policy of simply grooming the other snowy roads, making them suitable only for snowcoaches, snowmobiles, and a few cross-country skiers. If you don’t know what a snowcoach is, take a look at this picture from 2012. Rather than the triangular tracks we used to ride on, the coaches now have very large, low pressure tires. The ride is quite smooth.

Phone numbers for Xanterra are (866) 439-7375 and (307) 344-7311. You would have to be extra lucky to find available rooms between now and winter closure, this year on March 3rd, but think about planning way ahead for next winter.
Keep in mind that you can’t see all the park in winter—except maybe on skis. The groomed roads are limited to Mammoth to Old Faithful, Norris to Canyon, and West Yellowstone to Norris. They do try to keep the road from Mammoth out the Northeast Entrance to Cooke City plowed. Here is the link to the map showing what roads are plowed, groomed, and closed: https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkroads.htm.

I can’t resist crowing a bit: the snowcoach drivers and other Xanterra personnel were quick to let me know that they use and treasure my guidebook, Yellowstone Treasures, now in its fifth edition. In fact, when I sat behind the driver in one coach, he admitted to being a little nervous that he might get something wrong in his commentary. (He was superbly capable.) At the end of our trip, but before I left the snowcoach, he asked a colleague to pass the bound copy of the book (the one that Xanterra drivers share and use regularly), through the driver’s window for me to sign. I had never before seen a copy with a library-type binding!

—Author Janet Chapple

Photo credit: Jim Peaco, National Park Service, December 12, 2012.

Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel with snowcoaches in winter

Starting in fall 2018 through winter season 2018–19 you will find the hotel closed again for further work on the interior, but I expect the related cabins, the dining room, and the casual Terrace Grill will be open.

Incidentally, in recent summers I’ve found meals in the pleasant hotel dining room—located across the street from the hotel proper—to be excellent. So far, this dining room has not required advance reservations, but that could change.

Photo credit: Jim Peaco, National Park Service, December 12, 2012

Mud Volcano area in winter. As of today Yellowstone is still covered in snow; most travel by car starts April 21, 2017.

First, if your time is going to be limited to two or three days, in the book’s introduction (pages 17 and 18) there’s a list of Best Sights. An enthusiastic Amazon.com customer last June wrote: “Ms. Chapple’s rating of one star for those sights that were ‘worth taking the time for,’ or two stars for those you ‘must see’ really helped us plan our two day stay. . . .” (But—if at all possible—I highly recommend that you stay a week or even more. You won’t regret it.)

Yellowstone has become so popular—with over 4.2 million visitors last year—that almost all the in-park cabin and hotel rooms are already booked. I have to blame this mostly on the large bus tours that book blocks of rooms a year or more ahead, knowing they can fill up their tours with no trouble. This leaves us individuals and families who plan later in the year with little recourse but to book rooms in gateway places like West Yellowstone, Moran, Cody, Cooke City, and Gardiner. You can, of course, book a space in campgrounds or in the only RV camping spot, if you are so inclined.

Fortunately, the gateway towns have lots of accommodations. You will find phone numbers and email addresses for the chambers of commerce of all the gateway towns in the back of YT, as well as how to contact the park concessionnaire, Xanterra (or Yellowstone Park Lodges). Also, see our Yellowstone Links for the chamber of commerce websites in those places. Online resources such as Booking.com can be a great help with finding rooms outside the park.

A chapter near the beginning of Yellowstone Treasures tells you all about the five different entrances to the park and what you’ll see on their approach roads. The bulk of the book (pages 38 to 301) is what you’ll use before you go, while you’re there, and for reference when you return home. It’s full of detailed maps made and kept up-to-date by my incomparable mapmaker, Linton A. Brown. Here is one from page 200 of the guidebook.

Happy planning!

Photo credit: Janet Chapple, 2012.

This is nicely coordinated with the closing of all Yellowstone roads to wheeled traffic, except for the all-season road between Gardiner and the Northeast Entrance near Silver Gate and Cooke City.

There are seven webcams of different parts of the park accessible at the NPS webcams page.

If your winter Yellowstone visit reservations are not yet made, call concessioner Xanterra at: 307-344-7311 NOW!

One of Upper Geyser Basin’s most popular sites is the wonderfully regular Riverside Geyser. It almost always erupts every six to six-and-one-half hours. Here is the eruption I caught on my all-too-short visit to the park in mid June.

You can reach Artemisia Geyser’s beautiful pool and formation in one of two ways. One is by walking beyond Riverside Geyser about half a mile up what used to be the main road and is now a rather rough trail past Morning Glory Pool (page 95 in Yellowstone Treasures) or by parking at Biscuit Basin and crossing the road to reach the other end of the trail from Morning Glory Pool. Up the hill in the distance in my picture is Hillside Springs, which old-time stagecoach drivers called Tomato Soup Springs.

I did not see any grizzly bears on this trip, but there are now enough of them in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem so that visitors are seeing them quite frequently. The national media covered the recent very unusual event where a grizzly climbed on the hood and sides of an occupied car, leaving some scratches but giving the occupants of the car the thrill of their lifetime and their own video.

One thrill of this visit for me was being assigned for three nights to what has to be the best room in the Old House of Old Faithful Inn (Room 229). It was inside the farthest east of the five dormer windows that span the third floor front of the inn. Two mornings I awoke to a swishing sound, opened the side window, and there was Old Faithful Geyser erupting for my private enjoyment!

For fishermen and others interested in what is happening with the fish in Yellowstone Lake these days, take a look at the Great Falls Tribune’s story about the good news regarding the struggle against illegally introduced lake trout.

Roosevelt Cabins to open June 5, 2015

The facilities open gradually, too, beginning with Old Faithful Snow Lodge and Mammoth Hotel on May first. The last to open will be Roosevelt Cabins on June 5. Campgrounds also open gradually, although the Mammoth Campground is open all year. You can find all the details on this page: “Opening & Closing Dates of Facilities.”

Credit: NPS Photo by David Restivo