Exploring Yellowstone - Fires

Rather than doing a day-by-day, chronological blogging of our week at Yellowstone, I am going to make blog entries by topic such as animals, waterfalls, geothermal features, etc.

I will start off talking about the fires.

We were glad to be staying a little south of West Yellowstone as we had smoke free skies at our cabin during our entire visit. There are currently 5 fires burning in Yellowstone. On our first day driving through the town of West Yellowstone and the west park entrance, the air was thick with smoke from the Maples fire. Fortunately, the smoke cleared by the time we reached the Loop Road, so it did not impact our visit. On subsequent days we could see the smoke from the Maples fire in the distance, but the wind was either not blowing or blowing in a different direction, so we were not driving through the smoke. All Yellowstone roads remained open throughout most of our stay.

As we drove into the park each day through West Yellowstone, we passed by the "fire camp".

Fire Camp sign as you enter West Yellowstone

On the outskirts of town there was a field with many large tents such as the one shown below. I suspect this was a bunk house tent for fire fighers who did not choose to sleep in their own tent among the trees behind the field. The advantage of the bunkhouse tent is there were heating/air conditioning units for the tents.

A bunk house tent for fire fighters?

The fire fighters' personal tents

At many of the roadside pull outs, the park service had posted signs giving the updated status of the active fires in Yellowstone.

Map showing the status of the active Yellowstone fires

One evening as we were driving back to our cabin on the west Yellowstone road, we spotted this line of fire fighters as they were returning to their trucks to drive back to camp for the night. There was a group of elk along the river bank that they spooked as they hiked.

Fire fighters returning after a day working on the Maples fire

After spending 4 full days in the park, we decided to spend Saturday doing some sightseeing in the town of West Yellowstone. It was a fortuitous decision as the Maples fire seemed to have flared up. The photo below shows the smoke as seen from the town of West Yellowstone. When we headed back into the park the next day, we didn't encounter any smoke except in the distance.

Smoke as seen from West Yellowstone on Sept 10th, 2016

There was also a fire in the north part of Grand Teton National Park. The night before we were to drive from Yellowstone to Grand Teton the winds picked up and caused that fire to flare up. As a result they closed the road that goes from the south entrance of Yellowstone to Grand Teton. We ended up having to drive around the outside of Yellowstone on the west side and enter Grand Teton from the south. It was the less scenic but faster route.