A Quiet Morning With a Grizzly and the Wapiti Alpha Female

Sunday, July 19, 2026

Mornings begin with a clear blue sky, around 50 degrees, then the day warms up to 82 or 83.  By late afternoon, gray clouds roll in.  It may thunder or just sprinkle, but sometimes – as it did Friday – there’s a heavy downpour.

It’s been a week since we’ve been to the Park, and we’ve heard recent reports of the Wapiti Pack on a carcass.  Far away – very far away, but still visible.  Early yesterday morning Hayden Valley was socked in by fog making wolf viewing difficult, but today the sky was blue and clear.  We arrived around 7:20, climbing the hill to join a crowd of others hoping to see the wolves.

The carcass site is about two miles away and to the left of the spot where we’ve seen the puppies.  It took Tim a little while to find it and spot a gray wolf milling around in an eroded area.  At that distance, wolves are a blurry shape, but luckily, this wolf moved, sniffing the ground and circling the area.  The site is almost to the top of the ridge, covered with sagebrush.  We watched the wolf a short while, maybe 15 minutes, before he walked off to the left and disappeared behind a hill.  The rest of the pack must have been in the same area on the hill, but we didn’t see them.

It was still early, so we headed south toward Fishing Bridge and Lake Yellowstone.  Vehicles were pulled over in Mary Bay, where a honey-colored grizzly foraged on the slopes, climbing over logs and through the grass.  A ranger warned that the bear was gradually moving lower and closer to the crowd, and he might have to scare it up the slopes again.  I prepared myself for an explosive noise, but that never happened.

The bear disappeared behind pine trees ambling through grass, seemingly unaware or ignoring the crowd.  It looked like Storm, Snow’s cub, but I can’t be sure.  She stayed in view a long time, surrounded by tall grass, cow parsnip and lupine.  The wildflowers everywhere are spectacular, helped by frequent rain showers.  There has been some discussion about Snow’s cubs, Storm and Rain.  Storm was thought to be female and Rain, male, but recently it’s believed they are both male.

On our way back to Hayden, we spotted another grizzly foraging in sagebrush along the Yellowstone River near Trout Creek, catching sight of him briefly before he disappeared into a ditch.  On that same stretch of river, a pair of geese were guiding their seven goslings as they glided through the water.  The goslings have lost their yellow down and now have darker feathers.  Still fluffy of course.  I was glad to see them; there are hundreds of geese along the rivers, but these are the first goslings we’ve seen in a long time.

It was a little surprising when Tim pulled over to the same spot where we watched the gray wolf this morning.  At 10:30 a.m. I didn’t expect to see anything and no one else was on the hill.  But, why not look anyway?  In minutes Tim spotted a wolf in the same eroded area.  It was the alpha female of the Wapiti Pack, her coat glowing white in the sunlight.  She walked down the hill a few steps, stopped and sat, then continued down the slope to the carcass and began to feed.  She was far away, but her brilliant coat allowed us to see her and even spot her with binoculars.  Every once in a while, the sun would change angle or hide behind a cloud, casting her shadow on the ground.  At first, it looked like another wolf was with her – but she was alone.  We watched her feed for a long time at the carcass, at least an hour, before she ambled up to the eroded area where she tugged on something.  Then she walked back into the sagebrush.  We watched the thin, white line of her back weave through the sagebrush and toward the edge of the ridge until she was out of sight.

We were joined by a young wildlife biologist who works for Wyoming Fish and Wildlife and another couple who were thrilled to see the wolf.  What a special experience for us to watch her without the chatter of the crowds. The quiet and relative solitude allowed us to appreciate this place all the more.

– Christine Baleshta