Yellowstone 2012 - Instructor Training

We were sitting against a fallen Douglas-fir on the edge of a mountain lake, and Joshua was talking about orienteering.

“So after you've adjusted the compass to account for angle of declination—whoa, a chocolate lily!”

His face lit up with happiness as he bent towards the little speckled flowers.

“That is so cool. Yeah, anyway...sorry, what was I saying?

There were eight of us sitting against the tree that day: six fledgling course instructors and our two leaders. We were in the middle of a crash course covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the logistics of steering 15 high school students through it on a nine day ecology research expedition. Round trip we would cover nearly a thousand miles, from Missoula to Bozeman and on into Yellowstone, from the remote Centennial and Lamar Valleys to Norris Geyser Basin. Our students would assist the Fish and Wildlife Service on mountain bluebird nest research, track wolves with the Park Service biologists, and help the US Geological Survey gather data for snowshoe hare and whitebark pine research. They would learn to cook over a Coleman and crap in the woods. They would go whitewater rafting on the Yellowstone River and hike in bear country. They would sit around the campfire and not shower. They would take formal ecology classes sitting lakeside in the long grass.

 First, though, the guides had to learn these things ourselves. Hence the crash course.

We left headquarters in Missoula early on a Monday morning, crammed into a mint-green Suburban dubbed Mama Bear. It was a glorious morning with blue skies rising and the sun just gilding the tops of the Bitteroots. Nicole and Joshua pressed their faces against the windows and car-birded, arguing happily about esoterics of field identification, a challenging practice when the bird in question is already 3 miles down the road before you can dig out your guide.

“I bet that was a yellow-headed blackbird.”

“No it wasn't, you didn't see it – it was way too orange on the breast...”

Then we passed several golden eagles sitting on a carcass roadside. There was no doubt about the identity of those bad guys. That sighting – my first – would have been crown enough for any day, and we weren't even in the park yet.Late in the afternoon we entered the Centennial Valley, west of Yellowstone. Sixty miles of rough road from the nearest city, it was broad and grassy, the hills running up to snow-topped mountains and down to marshes. Pronghorns bounded away through stands of basin rye grass. Meg, the Minnesota girl, giggled at her first glimpse of their flashing white rumps.

“Pronghorn butts,” she sang, “drive me nuts...”

Eventually we came to the headquarters of the Nature Conservancy, where our students would be helping clear undergrowth for controlled burns. After a barbeque with NC staff, we pitched camp in a field by a spring-fed stream.

When I woke up at 3 AM, the moon was bright on the prairie and the mountains glowed all around. Early in the dawn, Hannah heard a wolf howling over the hills.

As in Glacier years before, I felt like an ache the loveliness of this place I had come to.

The fine weather held through the next afternoon as we crossed into Yellowstone, but a chill wind was picking up, and I shivered as we sat among the glacier lilies at Red Rock Pass, listening to a lecture on mountain bluebird ecology. We had a whole series of assigned lessons to teach the students; part of instructor training was to practice teaching the curriculum. One of my lessons was on grizzly bear safety, but there was geography, geology, risk management, and a whole host of other subjects besides.

By the time we crossed into Yellowstone itself late that evening, the temperature had dropped to 30 degrees and the sunset was dimmed in darkening clouds. So it was with some dismay that we realized that Slough Creek, our planned campground, was closed. We piled back into Mama Bear and continued through the park. Snow began to fall. Nicole, the intern,was driving. The Suburban and trailer swayed in the gusts. As we rounded hairpin turns, the headlights illuminated snowbanks and steep drops into the canyon below.

At 10:30 PM we came to Canyon Campground and pitched our tents. All night long I snuggled in my bag, half-aware of the sleet pounding the fly of my sturdy little tent.

Next day, hot drinks all around and a silly game where we hopped around in the fresh snow pretending to be penguins. You are never too old for silly games; we played them constantly, two or three times a day.

Then on to Norris Geyser Basin, an eerie simmering landscape of steam vents and mud pots. We wandered around discussing Solfolobus vs Thermophilia aquatica, watching the pools boil, and crooning over a bright patch of bog laurel on the edge of the boardwalk.

Timber Camp, high in the national forest above Gardiner, MT, wasn't much warmer, but at least there was no snow as we set up camp. We were prepping for an early day ahead: wolf-watching with NPS ranger Rick McIntyre, a 6 AM rendezvous in the Lamar Valley.

Dawn next morning found us on the road. Deep into the park, past the bison herd sleeping in the sage, we spotted McIntyre's neon-yellow Nissan X-terra, bristling with telemetry equipment. It was early enough that most of his fans, a hard-core group of amateur wolf-watchers in Subarus, had yet to show up. A little DeHavilland bush plane buzzed around overhead. In it was Doug Smith, Yellowstone's head wolf biologist. He had picked up a signal from one of the alpha wolves of the Lamar Canyon pack.

We stood around awhile, scanning with binoculars (or in McIntyre's case a Swarovski crystal spotting scope), until a bunch of tourists in a Yellowstone Association bus pulled up to see what we were looking at.

“Let's shake em off!” McIntyre hissed, and leapt into his X-terra to charge away, following a new lead. We caught up with him again as he scrambled up a hill above the Lamar River with a grand view over rolling hills and meadows toward the high mountains. Telemetry told us the wolves were out there, somewhere, moving over that vast landscape – but where? Ducking into trees? Moving low through a drainage back towards the den?

As we scanned, McIntyre told us stories of the Lamar wolve, garnered from sixteen years of day-in day-out experience. He was an excellent storyteller and the stories were virtually Old Testament in their drama and scope.

“Now, 21 was the biggest, strongest wolf ever to come into this valley. When members of Mollie's Pack came raiding, he could stand in battle against six of them alone, twice the number of any other wolf...His son-in-law, 480, had none of 21's strength but he was far more cunning. When 21 finally died of old age. 480 become alpha. This is the story of how 480 went alone to lead the members of the Mollie's Pack into an ambush and save the lives of his five young pups...”

“I see one!” a woman cried. McIntyre broke off to come over and look, only to deem it a pronghorn. Disappointment all around.

We finally forsook the McIntyre brigade and headed to the Trout Lake trailhead for a hike.

We were gathering our gear when Andy, the 20-year old Wilderness EMT, saw a woman vomiting and convulsing on the side of the parking lot. He immediately snapped into action. The rest of us maintained a polite distance as Andy and Joshua went over to offer assistance. The woman's husband looked up in grateful disbelief and said, “I'm so glad you're here.”

I won't discuss the details, but her condition was severe enough to merit an ambulance. No one had cell service, so leader Josh (not to be confused with Joshua) drove off in search of Rick McIntyre and his radios. Meanwhile, Andy pulled a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff from his backpack and monitored the woman's vitals as Joshua assisted. Andy's calm professionalism was obvious even from a distance. Both husband and wife seemed relaxed and engaged, despite her distress. Joshua told me later that they were field biologists and had cheerfully talked birds with him while they waited for the ambulance. It took a long time, almost an hour, for the paramedics to show up – and this on a main park road in June! Our Wilderness First Responder training was no joke in this setting, especially with students.

After the ambulance came, we hiked up to Trout Lake, nestled all lovely among the cliffs. An otter munched a trout on a log as as we walked around the shore; other trout drifted in the shadows; an osprey soared overhead. We settled down in the shade of the Douglas-fir to eat lunch. The rescuers were still shaken from their heroics. We debriefed the incident as a group until they felt ready to move on to the scheduled orienteering lesson.

I was only half-focused, I kept looking around and looking around, birds and fish and flowers, the otter in a cove now doing backflips, light winds ruffling the treetops. And I looked forward to the day when we would bring students here. This bright and violent land.

photos (c) 2012 Megan Myer, Lily Vonderheide