Yellowstone 2025 Trip report

If there is one place that should be on every wildlife photographer's bucket list, it's Yellowstone in winter. The snow covered landscapes, freezing temperatures, and the harsh struggles of some of America's most iconic wildlife set the scene for one of the greatest spectacles on Earth.

I have visited Yellowstone many times over the years, but never in winter. The icy roads and unpredictable weather was what made me the most nervous, but this past January I decided to suck it up and head to the park anyways.

In previous years, there has been very little or no snow in the park in early January. That doesn't really help when you're trying to photograph "winter" in Yellowstone. Luckily there was snow forecasted the day I arrived, and over the next few days I was treated to some incredible sightings of bison covered in thick snow on their fur.

Bison are the most common animal to see in Yellowstone, but I've never taken of photo of one that I've really enjoyed until now. Watching them march solemnly as snow falls around them and blankets their shaggy coats really made me appreciate the struggles that they face during this harsh time of year.

The second most common animal that I would see were coyotes. Coyotes aren't all that interesting to me because you can find them in pretty much every urban area of America, and I even have a pack that lives right behind my neighborhood back home too. But they are still part of the story of Yellowstone in winter, and I took plenty of great photos of them as well.

For me, Yellowstone is usually a very unproductive photographic destination. It's not like Africa at all, and there are days where I take 0 pictures at all. The limited road network and distances of most wildlife means that I'm coming home with a fraction of images that I would take on most of my other safaris. But Yellowstone has one subject that I have been spending years trying to get a good photo of: wolves.

Wolves are one of the hardest animals to photograph, with most sightings only being visible through a spotting scope miles away. I can see wolves almost every day in the park no problem, but photographing them is a whole other challenge. You basically have to hope one crosses the road or that a kill is made within photographing distance, aka just pure random luck.

Well guess who got lucky?

I was headed towards a pull out to take a little break from driving around, and literally on the side of the road on top of a rock was a black wolf. Just pure random luck. It came down and walked down the road for about two minutes before heading up a hill and disappearing into the forest. It was just about being in the right place at the right time, and there were only two or three cars to enjoy the sighting.

Unfortunately when I looked back at my photos, I noticed that they were incredibly soft and not nearly what I was hoping for. Trying to shoot my 400mm prime lens out the side of my driver's side window as the wolf was walking down the road meant that I was shooting at an awkward angle, and the motion blur was just too much. I tried to recover what I could in post processing, but I'm still not 100% happy with them. I know that's the perfectionist in me talking, but I hope in the years to come that photo editing technology will improve and make these photos even better.

That was my one and only wolf sighting during my trip. I've been to Yellowstone enough times to know that these moments are exceptionally rare. I've poured literal blood, sweat, and tears, into photographing wolves, and at this point I've just come to accept that you can't force these kinds of things. If it happens then it happens, and if not, there's nothing you can do.

With the wolf pressure off of my shoulders, I tried shifting my focus to whatever else I could find in the park. Unfortunately the next few days were quiet, but that's just how Yellowstone is sometimes. As I was heading out of the park one day though, I saw a tour guide with a couple of guests looking through a spotting scope towards a nearby cliffside. Usually I just ignore these groups because I know that whatever they're looking at most be too far for photos, but where they were looking caught my interest so I pulled over anyways.

We spotted some very nervous looking mountain goats, and that drew our eyes to one of the craziest sightings I've ever had doing wildlife photography: a mountain lion!

Mountain lions are one of the most elusive and secretive of all animals in Yellowstone, and seeing one is like finding a needle in a haystack. As the lion started to make its way across the cliffside, we realized that it wasn't alone. Out of nowhere, a second lion appeared, and it became apparent that this was a mother and cub pair. I should've bought a lottery ticket after this.

I got some incredible video clips and photos of the mountain lions, but there was no chance that these two were coming any closer, so I called it a win and headed back home. It really is the type of sighting that nothing else can top, so it's best to just enjoy it for what it was and not try to push your luck.

The next few days got quiet again, and it was hard to really get into a rhythm photographically. I had some very high highs, and some very low lows it seemed.

I tried to photograph some moose, but most had already dropped their large antlers by this time of the year. I got some good shots, but I know finding a big bull with a nice rack would've made them even better.

At the end of these quiet days, I would stop by Mammoth Hot Springs which has a resident bull elk that is usually found in the same spot every day. Since I would stop by at the end of the day, I wouldn't have a ton of light left to work with, and I didn't have much patience to wait for him to pose because of how tired I'd be. Still, I got a couple nice photos of a bull elk in winter, and that's worth it in my opinion.

As I was nearing the end of my trip, one subject that kept eluding me was the red fox. I just couldn't seem to find one in the usual spots where people were seeing them, and I was running out of time to find one.

There are a handful of habituated foxes in Cooke City, which is just outside the northeast entrance of the park, but I felt conflicted about photographing them. Apparently some of the residents in town feed them dog food, so they are probably some of the least wild wildlife around.

I finally decided to make my way out there and look for foxes, and low and behold I found one just as someone was pouring dog food out for it. I'm sharing these photos as part of the trip report, but honestly all I could do at the sighting is laugh at how absolutely horrible and pathetic this situation was. I tried so hard to find foxes, and this is what I get. Ridiculous.

On my last full day in the park I decided that I was done chasing foxes and wolves, so whatever I found I was going to photograph.

Every day on my trip I would drive past the confluence of the Lamar River, and look around because I knew that there was a family of otters there. But I would always seem to miss them by a few moments, which was irritating to say the least. On this day though, one otter finally came out at the exact moment that I was there. Finally!

Unfortunately it was just way too far for good photos, and even though I spent the entire day there waiting for it to get closer, it kept its distance from the huge group of photographers standing nearby. I put all my eggs in the otter basket for my last day in the park, and even if it didn't pan out, I couldn't fault my decision making.

After two weeks, my time in Yellowstone had come to an end. I came to the park chasing wolves, and I had an incredible sighting that made the whole trip for me. Not to mention seeing two mountain lions, which I would have never expected. Yellowstone can usually be a mixed bag for me, so I really didn't know how I would fare visiting in winter. I hoped for the best, and I can honestly say that it was my most successful visit to the park ever. Now I just have to wait until next winter because I want to do this all over again!