Why We Love Fall
By Emma Heller
Autumn in Yellowstone National Park is one of our favorite times of the year to be in the Park. As summer winds down, the number of visitors decreases, the temperatures start to cool bringing animals to lower elevations, making it easier to spot them. Yellow and red leaves start to speckle mountainsides and meadows, adding to the already colorful and vast landscape.
Sam Ozanich
While the number of visitors is winding down in Yellowstone, that doesn’t mean that other activity in the Park is decreasing. Animal activity starts to bustle with the cooler temperatures, breeding seasons and migration routes. Currently in Yellowstone, the bison rut, or breeding season, is in full swing. Lamar and Hayden Valley are excellent areas to see all the action. The bison rut will continue into the first part of September and end just as the elk rut begins. Heading to the northern part of the Park, especially around Mammoth Hot Springs and Lamar Valley will provide the best sightings for impressive bull elk and their harem of cows.
NPS / Neal Herbert
Many animals have been spending the summer in higher elevations to beat the summer heat. As the temperature changes, the animals make their way to lower elevations, making it much easier to spot ungulates, bears and wolves. Black and grizzly bears are entering what is called, hyperphagia. Hyperphagia is when bears are consuming as much food as possible to prepare for hibernation. Bears can gain more than 3 pounds a day until they enter their dens! Their primary food sources will be plants, but there is always the opportunity to see grizzlies steal kills from wolves and scavenge off of elk and bison injured during the rut.
NPS/Jim Peaco
We also have a great opportunity to see the raptor migration in Hayden Valley. Yellowstone has 19 breeding species, 17 of those species use Hayden Valley as a migration corridor. Migration typically happens during the day when it is warmer and the raptors use the warm air from thermal features to soar along and use less energy.
While Yellowstone doesn’t boast the extensive fall foliage like what you see on the east coast or Colorado. The mountains, hillsides and meadows do produce beautiful fall colors and alongside the colors of thermal features and the red, pink and yellow of minerals throughout the Park, it offers its own unique beauty found nowhere else.
We hope you join us in Wonderland soon! If you are planning on visiting the Park in the fall, stay up-to-date on what establishments and facilities are open, by visiting the YNP Plan Your Visit page, many are closing starting in October. We wouldn’t be surprised if fall in Yellowstone Park becomes your favorite time of year as well!
