Wonderland: Yellowstone in Winter
Wonderland: Yellowstone in Winter
Wonderland: Yellowstone in Winter
8 Days Starting in Pray, Montana and ending in Jackson, Wyoming
Visiting: Bozeman, Pray, Yellowstone National Park, Lamar Valley, Jackson
Tour operator:
Tour code:
VW2022
Recommended For:
Guide Type:
Fully Guided
Group size:
1 - 24
Physical rating:
Medium, Activity 2 / Pace 3
Age range:
0-99
Trip Styles:
Active, Adventure Tours, Luxury, Walking Hiking and Trekking
Interests:
Activities:
From:
$7052 (USD)Tourhub Members Discount - Sign In
Tour Overview
The world’s first national park inspires awe any time of the year, as Yellowstone winter tours would attest. But as you’ll discover visiting the national park during the winter – when bison, elk, wolves and bighorn sheep wander across snow-covered valleys, and Yellowstone's amazing geologic features are even more spectacular in the frigid air – is a whole other... and perhaps other-worldly... experience. Exploring by snowcoach, you'll see gurgling mud pots and steaming hot springs surrounded by frozen landscapes... waterfalls whose cataracts partially freeze into ice bridges... and geysers, like iconic Old Faithful, erupting dramatically into the cold winter air. You'll ride a horse-drawn sleigh through the National Elk Refuge. And you'll meet a noted naturalist and wildlife photographer who offers insights into the lives of Yellowstone National Park’s iconic species. When filmmaker Ken Burns and his colleague Dayton Duncan started thinking of new trips on which to share their unique stories and experiences, a wintertime Yellowstone tour was a natural choice. In Dayton’s words: “You’ve never really seen Yellowstone until you’ve been there in winter. Once a snowcoach takes you into the interior (the roads are snow-covered), you have this incredible place pretty much to yourself." Small groups, active travel, immersive – it’s Wonderland: Yellowstone in Winter...
Highlights
Itinerary
Day 1 : Welcome To Montana
Location: Bozeman, Pray
Accommodation: Resort
Accommodation Name: Chico Hot Springs & Day Spa
Meals Included: Dinner
Tour begins: 6:30 PM, Chico Hot Springs Resort & Day Spa. A transfer is included from Bozeman Airport to the Chico Hot Springs Resort & Day Spa in Pray, Montana, in the foothills of the Absaroka Mountains, not far from Yellowstone’s north entrance, for a two-night stay. Your historic lodge, established in 1900, offers two restaurants, a Western saloon, two mineral hot pools, and a full-service spa. Join us this evening for a welcome reception and dinner.
Day 2 : Mammoth Hot Springs
Location: Pray
Accommodation: Hotel
Accommodation Name: Mammoth Hot Springs
Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner,
Take a morning dip in one of the Chico Hot Springs Resort’s open-air swimming pools, heated by underground hot springs. The waters have healing powers, if you believe the legends of gold miners and Native Americans... and even if you don’t, an immersion here is a warm introduction to the geothermal wonders of this volcanic plateau. Following a viewing of a Ken Burns's film, you'll leave your resort en route to Mammoth Hot Springs and Yellowstone National Park. Take some time this afternoon to explore the hot springs (just a short distance from the entrance of Yellowstone National Park) and visit the Albright Visitor Center. This evening, after settling in for a two night stay at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, enjoy a presentation by noted naturalist and wildlife photographer MacNeil Lyons on the some of the iconic species – including the bear, wolf and bison – you might meet on your travels in Yellowstone's winter wonderland. Dinner is at your leisure at the hotel tonight.
Day 3 : Tracking Wildlife In Lamar Valley
Location: Yellowstone National Park, Lamar Valley
Accommodation: Hotel
Accommodation Name: Mammoth Hot Springs
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner,
Head out this morning across Blacktail Plateau en route to Yellowstone's Lamar Valley on the northeast side of Yellowstone National Park – welcoming you to a park that is empty of crowds, silent, and eerily peaceful and pristine in shades of white. The temperatures in winter can reach 40 below, yet the ground steams through hidden fissures and hot springs, wafting great clouds across the white landscape, where distant herds of bison and elk drift through it like apparitions in a fog; hot springs here are wildlife magnets. After exploring (and keeping a sharp eye open for wildlife) in Lamar Valley, have lunch, then work your way back by coach through the Blacktail Plateau. Dinner is at your leisure this evening at the hotel.
Day 4 : Old Faithful & A Snowshoeing Trek
Location: Yellowstone National Park
Accommodation: Lodge
Accommodation Name: Old Faithful Snow - WINTER
Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner,
This morning you'll board a snowcoach – designed especially to travel over the snow-covered trails you'll encounter in Yellowstone in winter – for a trek to some of the park's geothermal spectacles: boiling springs, fumaroles, mud volcanoes, and geysers, which miners and mountain men called “places where hell bubbled up,” and American Indians considered sacred. In the crisp cold air of winter, these thermal features are all the more present – and spectacular – billowing steam, hissing water, and spume that encrust trees with frost and paint white masks on the faces of bison. You'll see Gibbon Falls, an 84-foot cascade frozen in a veil of ice; the Norris Geyser Basin; and you'll walk through the alien world that steams around Black Sand Geyser and Midway Geyser Basin. Around midday arrive at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge – your home for the next two nights – to warm up and settle in. And of course, during your stay, you only have to walk outside to witness the eruption (on average every 94 minutes) with no crowds between you and the legendary "clockwork" Old Faithful Geyser... a sudden explosion of boiling water that hisses upward to 180 feet for one to five minutes, drifting a curtain of steam in the icy air! There are about 300 geysers in Yellowstone Park (more than in all the rest of the world combined), many of them even more spectacular than the famous one on your doorstep... and you'll see some more of them this afternoon, when you join a local guide for a snowshoeing trek through some of the less visited places in the Lower Geyser Basin near Old Faithful. You'll also have time today to do whatever... like visit the new Old Faithful Visitor Center, ski, skate or just relax by the fire. Enjoy dinner at your leisure at the lodge tonight.
Day 5 : The Wonderland Of Yellowstone
Location: Yellowstone National Park
Accommodation: Lodge
Accommodation Name: Old Faithful Snow - WINTER
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner,
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is considered the soul of the park, deep in its interior, and you'll set out for it from your lodge today via snowcoach, over roadless terrain. En route, visit West Thumb Geyser Basin at a corner of Yellowstone Lake, and the Mud Volcanoes, bubbling mud hills that emit methane. Discover the sub-alpine Hayden Valley, once a vast lake bed, now a surreal winter landscape alive with trumpeter swans, bison, elk, and moose, home to the Sulfur Spring and the Black Dragon Caldron... and a good place to spot fox and coyote, too. After stopping for a boxed lunch, nothing prepares you for the sight of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone itself – a fantasy landscape with a deep gorge blown open by an ancient volcanic eruption, then carved by glaciers and the river itself, nearly a mile wide and plunging 1,200 feet with two torrential waterfalls, each with an arc of spume-made ice and crystalline forests up and down the steep banks. Members of an expedition in 1870 who first happened upon the canyon stood speechless on its rim for a full five minutes... silent... which may be the best way to describe it. And they didn’t see it in winter! Return this evening to the Old Faithful Snow Lodge for dinner.
Day 6 : A Sleigh Ride In An Elk Refuge
Location: Jackson
Accommodation: Hotel
Accommodation Name: The Wort
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch,
The ice on Yellowstone Lake can freeze three feet thick, yet where the edges meet the warmth of boiling springs, there are patches of open water where otters frolic and catch fish – and coyotes try to steal them. Stand in its awesome solitude and you are part of the picture. In Yellowstone tour by snowcoach via Kepler Falls and the West Thumb Geyser Basin to Flagg Ranch, once an army station when the military maintained the Park. Leave your snow vehicle behind as you continue your travels to the quintessential Western town of Jackson, Wyoming. Following lunch at Flagg Ranch, a horse-drawn sleigh takes you into the heart of the National Elk Refuge. You learn that vast congregations of elk – 7,500 out of what was once a population of 25,000 – weather the harsh winter here en masse; learn how conservation efforts over the decades strive to keep the remaining herds alive – including the annual antler auction, where Boy Scouts collect the great antlers shed by bulls in the spring and auction them off to pay for conservation efforts. Sled through the steaming, pawing winter world of the herd, as they watch you pass. Return from the tundra to your historic hotel in the heart of Jackson... with unforgettable images to contemplate. Your evening is free to enjoy as you please in Jackson, where you'll spend the next two nights at the historic Wort Hotel.
Day 7 : A Free Day In An Around Jackson
Location: Jackson
Accommodation: Hotel
Accommodation Name: The Wort
Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner,
The day is entirely free to do as you please in the beautiful town of Jackson, with the majestic peaks of the Tetons all around you in the distance. You might want to spend some time sitting by the fire or visiting the Silver Dollar Bar at your historic Wort Hotel (where the bar is actually made of silver dollars); re-enter civilization among the town's unique galleries and boutiques; be really adventurous, bundle up and go dog sledding or snowmobiling (both of which would require advanced bookings and additional fees, and could be arranged through the hotel concierge); or go downhill skiing at nearby Grand Teton Resort or Snow King (also requiring advanced bookings and additional fees). Have lunch as you please in town today, and don't miss the famous elk antlers of the town square. Tonight's special farewell reception and dinner takes place at The National Museum of Wildlife Art, whose galleries house a stunning collection of paintings, drawings and sculpture celebrating Western wildlife... and illuminating the natural world and humanity’s place in it (including you!).
Day 8 : Journey Home
Location: Jackson
Meals Included: Breakfast
Tour ends: Jackson. Fly home anytime. A transfer is included from The Wort Hotel to Jackson Hole Airport. Checkout time is 11:00 AM; post stays available. You should allow two hours for flight check-in at the Jackson Hole Airport.
What's Included
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Accommodation
4 Days Hotel, 1 Day Resort and 2 Days Lodge
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Small groups, no more than 24 guests
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Travel by snowcoaches to the remote parts of Yellowstone, “coaches on skis” that are specially designed to glide over the snow – a mode of transportation that dates back to the 1930s
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See the greatest collection of geysers, fumaroles, mud pots and boiling springs in the world at their most spectacular, when these thermal features that make the park unique are more prominent
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Special presentation by MacNeil Lyons, noted naturalist and wildlife photographer, who gives insights into the park’s iconic species
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Attend a special farewell cocktail reception and dinner in Jackson at The National Museum of Wildlife Art, whose galleries house paintings, drawings and sculpture celebrating Western wildlife
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Travel by sleigh into the National Elk Refuge
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Winter activities in Yellowstone (some at additional cost) – hiking by snowshoe, ice skating, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling
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Airport transfers upon arrival and departure as noted
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16 meals; service charges, gratuities to local guides, admission fees, taxes and porterage
What's Not Included
Check out our Q&As
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Are airport transfers included in this tour?
Yes
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Are the local guides on the tour English speaking?
Yes
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Are all the relevant entry visa’s included in the price of the tour?
No
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Are children permitted to take part in the tour?
Yes
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What is the fitness level required to do this tour?
Activity 2 / Pace 3
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Are flights included in this tour?
No
Reviews from Travellers on this Tour
Dates & Availability
Friday - Friday
Jan 03, 2025 - Jan 10, 2025Saturday - Saturday
Jan 11, 2025 - Jan 18, 2025Friday - Friday
Jan 17, 2025 - Jan 24, 2025Saturday - Saturday
Jan 25, 2025 - Feb 01, 2025Monday - Monday
Jan 27, 2025 - Feb 03, 2025Tuesday - Tuesday
Feb 04, 2025 - Feb 11, 2025Wednesday - Wednesday
Feb 12, 2025 - Feb 19, 2025Thursday - Thursday
Feb 20, 2025 - Feb 27, 2025Book with Confidence
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Low Deposit
Tauck requires a minimum deposit of 350 GBP per person or the full booking value, whichever is less, with the final balance not due until 60 days before departure.
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Cancellation Policy
We don't charge a cancellation fee, here is a summary of tauck charges.
Up to 60 days before tour starts: Forfeit 100% of deposit.
At 59 days before tour starts: Forfeit 25% of booking price.
At 7 days before tour starts: Forfeit 50% of booking price.
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