Chris Weston Wildlife Photography

There are few places in the world like Yellowstone National Park in winter: It’s quiet softness hushed by a thick carpet of snow, its trees shrouded in frost looming giant-like against the azure sky, and its towering waterfalls standing sentinel, frozen in mid-tumble create a sense that you have entered another world. The fresh, icy-crisp air enhances the ethereal effect of Yellowstone’s famous geothermal features, an exotic combination of mist-shrouded hot pools, bubbling paint pots and steaming fumaroles. And amidst this ever-shifting landscape of cryptic light and mysterious shadows moves Yellowstone’s wildlife: wolves, eagles, bison, elk and moose. Join us on this magical adventure in the crown jewell of America’s national parks.

Highlights

• Privileged backcountry access
• Specialised snow coach transport
• Six full days in Yellowstone’s interior
• Fantastic wildlife
• Image-rich landscapes
• Geo-thermal features
• Pre-dawn to sunset shooting
• Flexible itinerary
• No single supplement

Description

To adventure through the interior of Yellowstone National Park in winter is to float through a fantasy landscape. Steam rising from numerous geysers becomes a super-cooled crystal fog that drifts through the trees like diamond dust, settling on every surface until entire groves become assemblies of ghostly druids bowing rigidly into the wind. Through this ever-changing landscape move the animals. Enveloped in fog, frost and snow, they appear as apparitions from out of the shifting mists - white phantoms haunting the landscape.

Although seemingly deep in a winter sleep, Yellowstone is alive with wildlife. Bison plow through deep snow in search of buried autumn-cured forage. Elk patrol the glistening white meadows and graze on grasses still green from the heat of nearby hot pools and bubbling springs. Small bands of mule deer, bighorn sheep and pronghorn antelope wander the frozen landscape. And on the edges, ghost-like, wolves watch and wait.

Our adventure begins in West Yellowstone, gateway to the western side of the Park and close to all the main geo-thermal sites, where wildlife congregates during the winter months. Each day we head into the park in comfortable and spacious specially-adapted tracked snow coaches that take us into the remote interior valleys and basins - Yellowstone’s most productive areas for photography - where we’ll find the most spectacular snowscapes and wildlife photo opportunities.

For six full days, from pre-dawn to sunset, we will explore the valleys and basins, such as the Hayden and Madison Valleys, Firehole River Basin and Upper, Midway and Lower Geyser Basins, venturing to Gibbon River, Gibbon Falls and other photogenic areas where the landscape is transformed into a winter wonderland of snow, ghost-trees and graphic ice formations. All the while we are on the lookout for the numerous big game species that winter in this area - the most abundant being buffalo, elk, coyotes and occasional wolves and moose.

And at the end of each day, back in the warm comfort of our lodge accommodation, we will have any opportunity to share our stories from the day’s shooting and visualise the next day’s adventure.