Tour

The Ultimate Yellowstone in Winter 2024 – Trip 2

Starts	Jan 15th 2024
Ends	Jan 24th 2024
Leader	Steve Gettle & Nicole Sudduth
Price	$6,950
Deposit	$1,000
Participants	6 (FULL - Registration Open for 2025!)

Yellowstone is a winter wonderland! Why is ours the Ultimate Yellowstone Trip? Unlike a lot of tours, we focus on the wildlife. Working from three locations we cover virtually every inch of the park and give you an unprecedented 7 1/2 days in the park over our 10 days together!! If you are comparing our tours to others, that is the only number that matters. More time in the park equals more incredible photographic opportunities. We use private luxurious snow coaches to enter the interior from both West Yellowstone and Mammoth. Then, for the Lamar Valley we travel in style in our own private bus that is able to drop us off anywhere along the route at a moments notice to catch the wildlife action in this epic valley. We limit our group to just 6 clients allowing plenty of room for you and your gear. Come, capture the magic of the season with us!

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Logistics

To make this easy for you, we have arranged a group shuttle to/from our Park lodging, so all you need to do is get yourself to the Bozeman airport and we will take care of everything else. You don’t even need to rent a car unless you’d like to.

We will stay at two lodges during this tour, one in West Yellowstone and one in Gardiner. Each day, we will have an early breakfast at about 6:00/6:30am and head out in our snow coach or bus to both catch the good light and wildlife activity. Breakfast in West Yellowstone will be at the hotel restaurant while breakfast in Gardiner will be “grab and go”. We will tailor our routes and destinations each day based on the conditions so we are in the best places with the best conditions for wildlife and photography.

To maximize our time in the field, we will have a box lunch each day and stay out through sunset, around 5:00pm. Upon return to our lodge, we will have some time to download images and enjoy a nice dinner together.

For the West Yellowstone and Mammoth portions of this tour, we use a private snow coach designed for wildlife viewing and photography. For the Lamar Valley portion, we have a photography-friendly bus that drops us off and picks us up as we find great situations that we want to shoot.

We have limited this tour to a very small group to allow enough room for both us and our gear and allow us to get closer to wildlife for the best shots possible. The other major benefit to a small group is it is less stressful to our wildlife subjects allowing us to get better, more intimate imagery.

Important flight note: since the weather can be very unpredictable this time of year and the drive from West Yellowstone to Bozeman can be slow under snow conditions, please make sure your departing flight on the last day is sometime after 2pm.

Gettle Photography Inc. is an Authorized Permittee of Yellowstone National Park.

Itinerary

Day 1

January 15 – Travel Day and arrival at our hotel

Fly in to Bozeman airport. Meet our group charter bus for 2:30pm departure from the airport to Gardiner.
We will meet at 6:30pm for dinner.

Day 2

January 16 – First full day in the Lamar Valley

We’ll board our vehicle at about 6:30am and head into the park. We will spend the entire day out finding and photographing wildlife and landscape scenes. Lunch is a box lunch. We will return to our lodge at around sunset and enjoy dinner together.

Day 3

January 17 – Photographing the Interior of the Park from Mammoth Hot Springs

We trek today via snow coach into the interior of Yellowstone, entering the park from Mammoth Hot Springs. Here the highlights are Sheepeater cliffs, Swan Lake Flats and Electric Peak. We will look for wildlife to photograph in this unique setting as well as the beautiful landscapes.

We will board our snowcoach at about 7:00 and head into the park. We will spend the entire day out finding and shooting wildlife and landscape scenes. Lunch is a box lunch. We will return to our lodge at around sunset and enjoy dinner together.

Day 4

January 18 – Back to the Lamar valley

Today we will spend another full day in the Lamar – again looking for great situations with otters, foxes, coyotes, big horn sheep and…maybe wolves.

Day 5

January 19 – Back into the Interior via Mammoth Hot Springs

We board our snow coach for another full day of adventure into the interior.

We will board our snowcoach at about 7:00am and head into the park. We will spend the entire day out finding and shooting wildlife and landscape scenes. Lunch is a box lunch. We will return to our lodge at around sunset and enjoy dinner together.

Day 6

January 20 – Back into the Lamar Valley

We will venture again into these wild lands looking for bison, wolves, coyotes, fox and more.

As with our other days, we will board our vehicle at about 6:30 and head into the park. We will spend the entire day out finding and shooting wildlife and landscape scenes. Lunch is a box lunch. We will return to our lodge at around sunset and enjoy dinner together.

Day 7

January 21 – Transfer to West Yellowstone

Today, you’ll be transported via shuttle to West Yellowstone. Enroute to the hotel, the shuttle will stop at some great locations outside the park for wildlife photography. Upon arrival in West Yellowstone, get settled in the hotel. We will meet as a group for dinner.

Days 8 and 9

January 22 and 23 – Exploring the Interior from West Yellowstone

Going into the Park via snow coach from West Yellowstone gives us unique access to the wildlife rich areas of the Madison River and Hayden Valley as well as opportunities to go to the geyser basins and even Old Faithful.

We will typically have breakfast at 6:30am, board our snowcoach at about 7:30 and head into the park. Each day, we will spend the entire day out finding and shooting wildlife and landscape scenes. Lunch is a box lunch. We will return to our lodge at around sunset and enjoy dinner together.

Day 10

January 24 – Travel day

After breakfast we will say our goodbyes and head home. Our charter bus will pick you up at 9am and take you to the airport.

Booking

Price

$6,950

Deposit

$1,000

Payment schedule

Deposit of $1000 due with registration
Payment #2 of $3,350 due July 1, 2023
Final Payment of $2,600 due by October 10, 2023

*Pricing based on double occupancy
*** Single supplement add $400

Included
– All lodging – 9 nights
– Airport shuttle chartered for our group (pick up and drop off at Bozeman airport)
– All breakfasts and lunches
– Private snowcoach and/or specialized bus and Driver/Guide
– Comprehensive Pre-trip Booklet that includes all the photo gear and other packing information for the trip as well as all other pertinent details to help you make the most of this adventure

Not included

– Airfare to and from Bozeman
– Dinners
– Park pass

Description

Yellowstone, with its wildlife, is the Serengeti of North America and being able to explore all of the accessible areas of park this time of year – both the interior and the Lamar Valley – makes this The Ultimate Yellowstone tour! Imagine frost-covered bison, icy steam-veiled geysers, wolves, otters, big horn sheep, elk, coyotes and foxes against the wintery scene. Photographing wildlife will be our focus for this trip but we will of course photograph the striking landscapes of this time of year as well.

In winter, Yellowstone reveals a very different mood – one of survival. Snow in the mountains pushes wildlife down into the valleys and rivers in search of food and warmth, ice and snow surround geysers veiled in steam, mud pots bubble in freezing fog, waterfalls are veiled in icicles that reveal the water’s flow. The landscape is austere, while herds of bison or elk stand dark against the white.

This is a great time of year to see and photograph wildlife in their best coats. They are concentrated into smaller valley areas: hunting, feeding, or sometimes simply standing stoic against the cold. Bald eagles, river otters, beavers, trumpeter swans may emerge along a river. Coyote, fox may hunt through a field, diving into snowbanks to catch mice and voles under the snow. Wolves hunting in packs may make a kill and feed there for a days. We will look for it all each day.

While using Gardiner as our base, we will alternate days between going in to Lamar or Mammoth so we have the best chance to catch action. We will enter the interior via snow coach through Mammoth and spend 2 days looking for and photographing wildlife and landscapes at iconic spots like Mammoth Hot Springs, Swan Lake Flats, Electric Peak and Sheep-eater cliffs. And we will explore the Lamar Valley over 3 days by private bus with a professional driver/guide. This is one of our best opportunities to photograph Wolves, otters, big-horn sheep, and moose.

In West Yellowstone, we will visit Hayden Valley in search of foxes and river otters, explore Madison river area in search of elk, bison, bobcats, trumpeter swans, coyotes; visit the icy Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and stop at geyser basin and other thermal spots to capture those ethereal settings.

Wildlife is our focus but the landscapes are gorgeous too! During this entire tour, we will be working hard to photograph mammals but throughout our search, we will take advantage of the beautiful austere winter landscapes and photograph them as well.

Unlike other tours, we will work the park from three locations and put you in every corner of the park that you can possibly see this time of year. Over the course of our 10 days together, you will have 7 1/2 game drives!! We know of no other tour that provides this many game drives or this much access to the incredible wonderland that is Winter in Yellowstone. We maximize your time in the field and give you the best value and experience we can.