Yellowstone National Park in Winter

March 2019: Yellowstone National Park is a vast wilderness of mountains, forests and geothermal wonders making it one of America’s best national parks but in the summer, it is flooded with millions of tourists and its roads are clogged by traffic jams. When I was a kid, I visited with my family on vacation a few times and at the time it was my most exotic destination and back then I didn’t notice any congestion. Over the years the crowds have really worsened, and the sheer numbers of tourists can really be off-putting. But in the winter, most of the park’s roads are not paved and the road becomes inaccessible except by snowmobile. Only a small section in the north of the park-Mammoth Hot Springs and Lamar Valley is open and can be visited by vehicle and visitors are rewarded with having the park with the hot springs of the north and herds of wildlife such as elk, bison and bighorn sheep almost to themselves.

Montana Winter Roads

For a long weekend, my friend Sterling and I flew to Bozeman to stay with my brother, who lived and worked in Big Sky. We skiid one day on the mountain and visited nearby Yellowstone National Park the following day. The drive to Yellowstone was beautiful and we saw lots of wildlife along the way. We stopped and ate in small towns with hole in the wall bars. Hunting and ranching are a big part of this region and one pick trucksful of mutilated bison parts probably from hunting or ranching.

Big Male Bighorn Sheep off the side of the road near my brother’s house

Truck with full of mutilated buffalo

It was amazing to enter the park via the Roosevelt Arch, constructed in 1903 as a ceremonial entrance to Yellowstone. It was named after President Theodore Roosevelt because he happened to be visiting the park while it was being constructed, and he gave a speech from the arch.