Day 22-24 9/3-9/5 Yellowstone Mammoth Village — Kendall
We spent most of the day driving up from Grant, where we’d camped three nights. Saw huge herds of bison on the valley floor. Kept our eyes out for moose. Arrived in Mammoth to a whole heard of elk basking in the shade of the hotel. After setting up camp, we checked out the visitors center, the hotel and the few other buildings in the village. Nothing too interesting, especially compared to the spectacle of watching the team of orange-vested “elk-herders” run crowd-control and traffic as the herd made their way through the intersection and parking lot in search of the next grassy knoll. A bull elk had come just two days prior, the first to arrive for “rut,” which I surmised to mean mating season. Apparently, there were seven bull elk fighting for the herd of cows last year, with daily spars on the lawn of the lodge. Jake and I are hoping bull might show up and give us the opportunity to witness such a spectacle.
As we watched the herd navigate through cars and camera slingers, it started to rain. We ducked inside the nearest building and succumbed to the temptation of french fries. A few minutes later, the rain had stopped, and the herd had moved into a position surrounding our car. We maneuvered carefully behind the backs of buildings to the closest safe position to our car. Meanwhile, the herd had decided to move straight toward where we were standing (a locked door behind us). Upon instruction from orange-shirted crew, we moved along the side of the building. Jake and I found some railing to stand behind. Next thing we knew, the elk herding director himself (he carries shovels to make scary sounds on the pavement, drives a police car, and shouts orders to the other herders) was yelling at us to go around the back of the building.
I didn’t stop to look, but Jake said the bull elk had just trotted up. As one herder described, “he’s 600 pounds, he’s got a head full of dagger points, and he won’t hesitate to use them on you.” The bull elk definitely had the intimidation factor going for him.
September 5, 2009
Woke up before dawn to drive to Lamar Valley and see the wolves. I was freezing and tired and after five minutes I was pretty sure there were no wolves. Luckily, we stumbled across a Yellowstone Association group, and they’d seen a pup lying in the grass a mile out, obscured by the brush. I was still cold and cranky, so I went back to the car and slept while Jake enjoyed himself. Jake woke me a little later when it was finally warm enough to think straight. We saw an osprey munching on his morning catch, a coyote jogging the river bank, and pronghorns displaying their running abilities, and people kept saying they saw glimpses of the two wolves. The valley at sunrise was gorgeous enough for me, but I was glad Jake got to see his wolf.
Yesterday, we hiked the Beaver Ponds trail from Mammoth. Early on, a six foot snake slithered across our path. I was glad to see it had no rattles, and we later learned it was probably a bull snake. The Mammoth area is actually the driest in Yellowstone, so our path intermittently meandered from thick pine forest into sun-baked sagebrush. Clark’s nutcrackers chattered and swooped around us, hiding their morning stashes of seeds in standing dead trees. These gray-bodied, black-winged gossips are the only member of the crow family to have a pouch beneath their tongue to store pine seeds between 30-90 at time!
Two miles in, we reached the series of ponds. Coots dominated the first pond, while Lesser Scaups (read brown ducks) preferred the third. While we didn’t see beaver, we definitely saw a few of their dams. We took our time by the beautifully lit ponds, pondering the cat tails and wild rice, chuckling over the exclamations of the coots, and generally enjoying the newly-warmed morning mountain air. The loop back (5 miles total) took us to an overlook of Mammoth Village, where we could watch the lunchtime elk chaos ensue. As they herded past the post office, we took bets on which overly-trusting tourist was most likely to get trampled. Their were no orange-vested tourist herders out to remind people to use common sense around 600 pound creatures pumped with hormones for mating season.
The loop conveniently ended right in town, just before the burger joint we’d been eyeing since our arrival. We felt the splurge was justified after having worked up an appetite. Afterwards, we took much-deserved shower (13 miles of hiking since our last one), explored the northwest portion of the park by car, and finished the afternoon relaxing and reading in our tent.
