Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park in the US is an incredibly popular park that’s well renowned for wildlife spotting and its geothermal features including spurting geysers, with the largest and most famous geyser being Old Faithful.
There are significantly less visitors to Yellowstone National Park in winter compared to summer, so winter is quite a nice time to visit to escape the crowds, and the thermal features look rather nice surrounded by blankets of snow. Whilst the bears are hibernating during the winter months, there are plenty of bison, elk and wolves.
Where is Yellowstone National Park?
Yellowstone is a huge national park that spreads across 3,468 square miles in the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Winter access is probably better from the Idaho/Montana side of the range via West Yellowstone in Montana, which is only 48 miles southeast of
Big Sky Resort. West Yellowstone is 104 miles north of
Grand Targhee Ski Resort in Wyoming (via Idaho) or from
Jackson Hole there are outfits that head into the southern entrance of Yellowstone via Flagg Ranch.
Tours
Tours of Yellowstone are usually a full day activity. During winter you have the choice of exploring the park on snowmobile (you can’t hang around the wildlife on your snowmobile), from the comfort of a snowcoach (bus with snow tracks instead of wheels) or retro snowcat. Once in the park you can do some cross country skiing to further explore, or hike some of the main trails and board walks near Old Faithful.
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West Yellowstone
There are tour operators that run day tours from Big Sky Resort and Jackson Hole during winter, or you could stay in the little touristy town of West Yellowstone for a couple of nights before or after your ski vacation. West Yellowstone is adjacent to one of the main entrances to the park.
The little town of West Yellowstone is very quiet during winter and there are only a handful of options for evening dining and drinking, whilst during the green season it’s a tourist mecca.
Lodging is reasonably inexpensive and consists of simple motels and hotels.
West Yellowstone Accommodations