Sunday, January 3rd - Silver Pack!

Well, either I was exhausted or the noise stopped…I turned the lights out at 9:30 and woke up at 1:45 a.m. and then slept well until my alarm went off at 5:30.


I was headed out of Cooke City at 6:08 a.m. The town is completely dark and deserted at that hour, with the Soda Butte sign glowing neon red in the blackness. If it wasn’t for that sign you wouldn’t be able to see a thing. 

I drove a little faster today. I saw a red fox in my headlights at about 6:30.  I was in Little America at 7:15, at the Boulder pullout again…I sat for a while listening for howling, went to the picnic area bathroom and came back. Still no howling but a very vocal coyote was nearby. I left there at 7:45 and found Rick a few pullouts down. He was picking up signals from both the Lava Creek Pack and the Druid females but couldn’t see them. After  we both searched, he said we’d go back to Boulder. Nothing there either. Bob Landis called from Slough Creek…he had howling there so we went that direction, stopping at the pullout past the outhouse towards Lamar Canyon. We got out and immediately heard a LOT of howling. Rick asked me to try to get a visual on those wolves while he looked for signals…I failed (hated failing and feeling like I let Rick McIntyre down!) and he couldn’t get any signals from Agates, Mollie’s or any other collared wolves. It sounded like a pack of maybe 4 or 5 being answered by 1 wolf. Bob called again with a visual on wolves at Slough Creek so we went there and walked down the road to the spot where Rosie and I spent that wonderful morning watching the Cottonwood Pack last summer. We saw all the Druids…all in this group of them anyway…690, 691 (the only gray), "white line", the yearling female, and the new black male.  Only Triangle Blaze, the yearling  male who so bravely saved his sister a few months ago when she was under attack by the Miller Pack, was missing.  They were on the long, low bench and the male disappeared so Rick asked me to find him while he looked for the Lava Pack. I found him on some rocks above the bench, very hard to see. Rick came to MY scope to see where he was…I was glad to come through this time. We watched them on and off for a good hour and a half or more. For a while it was just Rick, Bob Landis and I…very cool way to spend a morning. A coyote was barking a very, very short distance away and Bob took his sound equipment over to record it. His movie camera is pretty cool but has to be very heavy to lug around.  He’s a very nice man. Soon other people showed up too and as always, it is so fun to help people find and see wolves. The new black male would seem to want to lead the females to the right and they would stop and not want to go anywhere. It was pretty funny after a while.  I noticed that the yearling female was always the straggler...always last and hanging back.   For a while the male bedded down in a meadow and the others just stood…the theory is that they try to rest standing up because, due to the mange, it is uncomfortable for them to lie down. They constantly scratch at themselves, even licking their paws and then scratching their faces. Their coats are pathetic and their tails are even worse. The new black came to them without mange but he is scratching now too. It’s like lice, it is contagious.

Rick finally decided to go check out Boulder and other spots again and I followed him but partway back to our cars, Calvin had spotted the Silver Pack, high on a rocky, conifer-covered knoll above Lamar Canyon, East of Crystal Creek. 

Sure enough, the alpha female was laying there…what a gorgeus silver color she is. Stunning. This pack is rarely seen, they only occasionally come into the park from Wyoming.  The alpha male is a HUGE gray wolf. He got up and down occasionally while the silver alpha female hardly moved. A pup would bound in and out of the scene occasionally, sometimes going to lay on a snowy knoll to the left of his mom…greeting dad, greeting mom, etc. We were never sure if we were seeing two different pups or just one, coming in from different directions. Once I paid attention to coat markings it was only one. There had been two spotted in this pack before.  It was kind-of cool to have Rick saying into his recorder for his notes “Tara reports…”, “Tara observed…”. We watched them for a very long time, also looking back to watch the Druids. Rick left, I stayed wanting to see what the Silver Pack would do. The male has what appears to be an injured right front leg…it appears to be black and probably it is dried blood although it was hard to tell. Rick asked if I could see any red on it and I couldn’t. He thinks it’s an injury and not mange.

I saw the alpha male turn to the side and saw his distended stomach and they must have just eaten, it was huge. Everyone else finally left and I walked back out by myself for another look at the Druids…they were gone, I looked for 10 minutes but I couldn't see or hear them.

I drove to Boulder then,  and Peter, a man Rick had introduced me to earlier, was there along with Rick. They had 471 and the yearling Druid male, Triangle Blaze, in sight (he hadn't been with the pack for several days). Rick asked me to look for the other Lava Creek wolves…I failed again, he found her first. But I did help a lot of people see them and directed them to the Druid male who was very far off and hard to find. Rick eventually left and I chatted with Peter quite a bit…he saw the  Lava Creek "06 female" kill and elk by herself a few weeks ago, and that wasn't the first time.  She is one tough wolf.

Rick showed us the place across the valley where the Crystal Creek acclimatization pen had been.  The area is out of sight but we got the idea of where it was.  When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 and 1996, they were brought from Canada (the same subspecies of the gray wolf that is native to the area...the Tundra or Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf) and put into chain link pens that were about an acre in size.  They were left here for about 10 weeks so that the wolves would hopefully get used to the area and wouldn't just run back to Canada as soon as they were released.  This technique is called a "soft release" and it worked well.

Crystal Creek Acclimatization Pen Area

 just beyond the crest of the hill in the center

Sometime mid-afternoon, a park ranger truck went back going very fast with his lights and siren blaring.

Little America

I left for awhile and drove up to Elk Creek, there was nothing there…I was debating hiking but decided there was too much wolf action going on, so I went back to Slough Creek. The Silver Pack alpha  female was STILL there. Robin and Steve came and a woman named Kat who works in the park, I chatted a lot with all of them. A woman and her son and grandma were down from Bozeman for the day and the grandma got SOOOOO excited to see the silver wolf…it was so cute watching her, I love helping people see wolves! She kept thanking us. I made coffee and soup. Calvin and Lynette came back too and had only had a brief sighting of two of the Blacktail pack. We watched until 4:30. The Silver Pack female got up and stretched a few times and went back to sleep. She definitely must have just eaten, to be laying in one spot for so long, only waking to stretch a few times.

Slough Creek area

I climbed up Dave’s hill with my scope to get a different view. Not so bad going up…I was following fresh bison hoofprints so I was very wary and slow. Coming down was harder…my mukluks, as wonderful as they are, do not have good traction and I did something to my thigh…not a pulled muscile, it actually felt like the muscle separated from the bone. A weird, alarming feeling.

South End of the Slough Creek area -

You can see why wolves are hard to spot

Everyone left then and I took one more look and left too.  Just before Cooke City, in the dusk, I saw two large shapes off to my right. Just a half hour before that, I had been thinking:  “I need to see moose” and there was a cow and BIG calf in a small open stream (Warm Creek). They were a little wary so I drove to a pullout and got out to watch them from a distance. It was too dark for a picture and hard to see well. The calf was definiltely focused on mom. I watched in the growing dusk for maybe 10 minutes as they drank from the stream, and then I left.  It was such a peaceful scene to stand there in the twilight watching them with no sound but falling snow and wind in the trees.  No vehicles passed the entire time...it was just me and the creek and the moose.

On my way through Cooke City I saw two sheriff’s cars and the ranger truck at a building that had a first aid symbol on it…as well as someone walking a dog that had an orange vest or something on. Search and Rescue dog, I thought. It must have been an avalanche. I asked my waiter at dinner and then Marc had gotten the whole story online…a 35 year old snowmobiler had been killed in an avalanche somewhere close to Cooke City.  This seems to happen every winter near Cooke City.  Very, very sad.
© 2010 Tara Morrison