By Emma Heller
Each spring, as the bears emerge from a long winter of hibernation, the snow starts to melt, the Glacier Lilies begin to emerge, and elk and bison calves are born, the Yellowstone Scenic Tours guide team starts to resurface in Big Sky for guide training and another incredible summer in Yellowstone National Park.
This time of year is exciting for our team for many reasons. While many of our guides live in Big Sky or Bozeman, a few live elsewhere over the winter, seeking other adventures or higher education. We all spend our off-seasons exploring other wonders around the United States and the World! We all look forward to seeing each other for guide training and the chance to soak up new information about Yellowstone National Park! This year, training looked slightly different than in past years to offer unique learning opportunities.
In years past, our guide team has spent three days training in Yellowstone National Park with local experts. This year, with all eight seasoned and experienced guides returning, we changed it up a bit! So far, we’ve had two days of training that included experiences that we get to share with you to make your stay in Yellowstone Country your best vacation yet!
May Guide Training Adventures
The Yellowstone Scenic Tours guide team is excited for another incredible summer in Yellowstone National Park!
Our first training took place in May, focusing on catching up with our team, operations, park updates, and a tour of the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center.
It is imperative for our team to know what is going on in the park. This includes road closures, construction updates, park service hours and operations, and unique opportunities for visitors. We’ve got this covered so you can get the most out of your time in Yellowstone Park!
This year we are excited to add new equipment to our fleet of 14 passenger Ford Transit vans. Many of the exciting animal sightings (like grizzly bears and wolves) don’t happen close to the road. Because of this, we need spotting scopes to observe these animals. While we’ve had spotting scopes since our start, this year we have phone adapters so we can video or snap photos of these impressive animals!
One of our guides, Porter, took this video of a sow (female) grizzly bear and her cub using one of our new phone adapters for our scopes!
That’s not all that we’ve added to our vans. Much of the park does not have cell phone reception. In case of an emergency or issue with a van, we now have SPOT Messengers in each van to ensure we can contact authorities or repair services. We are super excited about this addition! It’s not all serious on training days with the Yellowstone Scenic Tours team. We also had lots of fun exploring the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center!
The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is a nonprofit in West Yellowstone, Montana. Our team of guides was given a tour of the Center, and it sure is neat! It is a wildlife and education facility that many animals like grizzly bears, wolves, birds of prey, fish, otters, and ground squirrels call home and act as ambassadors to teach the public about their species and how to preserve their habitat. Many of these animals have been saved from dangerous situations and cannot be re-released to their natural habitats. While on tours, we take you to locations in the park to see many of these animals. However, there is no guarantee of seeing grizzly bears or wolves in the wild, and this is a perfect opportunity to see these impressive animals!
The guide team enjoying observing a grizzly bear at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center.
After a fun-filled and educational day, the team enjoyed drinks at one of our favorite spots in Big Sky, the Horn and Cantle Saloon at Lone Mountain Ranch. It serves up some great cocktails and has an authentic saloon vibe. After refreshing cocktails, we enjoyed dinner at Ousel & Spur, boasting some of the best thin-crust pizza topped with Montana and locally sourced toppings. It made for an incredible first day of training for the season!
June Guide Training Adventures
The Yellowstone Scenic Tours guide team got back together again for another educational and fun-filled day of training in June! While some of our team was in the field on tours, the remainder of us spent time on Lake Yellowstone and exploring short hiking options in the park.
Keith, Joel, and Porter scanning Hayden Valley for wildlife.
To get the best out of what Yellowstone Park has to offer, the earlier you get up, the better! With wheels rolling at 6 a.m. from Big Sky, Montana, we headed south to our first stop, with an exciting and unexpected detour along the way.
On behalf of the guide team, I can say that we were all excited about the main adventure of the day: a boat tour of Lake Yellowstone!
Our journey took an unexpected turn near Mud Volcano, a typical stomping ground for bison. Instead of the usual sight, we were greeted by a young grizzly bear! We were able to spend about ten minutes viewing this bear at safe distance for us and the bear. The timing was perfect as we had an appointment to catch at Lake Yellowstone.
Many of the guide team have never had the opportunity to go out on a Lake Yellowstone Scenicruise. I believe we all wished we would've gone sooner had we known how incredible of an experience it was and how reasonably priced it is! The five of us boarded the Lake Queen II with our highly knowledgeable captain and guide for the tour.
Our guide, Ken, educating us about Lake Yellowstone.
We don’t often get to see the stunning Lake Hotel from this view!
For an hour, our guide, Ken, taught us about much of the fascinating history of Lake Yellowstone. Highlights included stories of the controversial but ingenious businessman E.C. Waters, who not only built a steamship to transport guests from Grant Village to Lake Hotel, sparing wealthy guests an uncomfortable stagecoach ride around Lake Yellowstone, but also put animals on Dot Island as an attraction, and eventually was run out of business because of his shady antics.
Part of the tour showed us the burnt remains of the steamship from 1921. We would go out again with Ken and the Lake Queen II crew and highly recommend this experience! We learned so much and look forward to sharing it with you on our tours. While out in the park, we also did some recon on worthwhile short hikes we would love to take you on.
Photo of E.C. Waters wrecked steamship at Stevenson Island in Lake Yellowstone.
Most people visiting Yellowstone National Park never venture 100 feet off the asphalt! One of our goals is to show you many of the incredible and memorable places away from the road. While we only had time for one short hike to explore, we discussed many other options we could offer during our tours. We decided to explore the expansive Upper Geyser Basin and hiked from Old Faithful to Biscuit Basin. The further we ventured from busy Old Faithful towards Morning Glory Hot Spring and Artemisia Geyser, the less crowded and stunning our hike became. Along with this hike, we also have a handful of other hikes we'd love to explore with you in both the Upper and Lower Loops!
Joel, one of our fantastic guides, showing us Morning Glory Hot Spring!
We are thrilled for another incredible summer experiencing Yellowstone National Park! Our highly experienced and trained guide team aims to offer you the best day ever in our Nation's first National Park! We can't wait to share our knowledge and passion with you. Learn more about our private custom tours, see what people are saying about us, and book today to start your Yellowstone adventure!
