Low snow year: Yellowstone National Park temporarily closes some roads to snowmobiling
A snowmobile tour walks away from Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park on Dec. 16. (Samuel Wilson/Bozeman Daily Chronicle)
BOZEMAN – A low snow year is impacting local businesses and tourism to Yellowstone National Park, with the park temporarily barring some roads to snowmobile travel due to the lack of snow.
In winter, only the road between the north and northeast entrances is open to regular vehicle travel. The rest of the park’s roads are only accessible by oversnow travel via snowcoach or snowmobile, which people typically ride on in guided tours.
The park’s winter season kicked off on Dec. 15 with a limited coating of snow on the roads but still enough to allow for snowmobile travel.
But on Dec. 27, the park closed roads in the west side of the park to snowmobiling – specifically the popular 30-mile route from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful that most snowmobile tours depart from.
The roads from Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris Junction, and from West Yellowstone to Norris Junction, also have limited snowmobile travel because of lack of snow, according to a map of current Yellowstone road conditions.
Oversnow access for snowmobiles and snowcoaches from the southern parts of the park remains open, a Yellowstone National Park spokesperson wrote in an email.
The temporary closures remained in effect on Tuesday, marking six days of no in-park snowmobile tours for West Yellowstone businesses trying to accommodate tourists and their changing plans.
Some touring businesses have vans and snowcoaches that can ride on the roads with exposed pavement, and have switched peoples’ snowmobile reservations over to those vehicles so they can still travel into the park.
Jerry Johnson, owner of Backcountry Adventures in West Yellowstone, said the company is doing their best to switch reservations. About 40% of people have switched from snowmobiles to snowcoach tours, about 30% are doing snowmobile tours outside of the park instead and about 30% have canceled or rescheduled their reservations, he estimated.
In the town, the closure has had a “big trickle down effect” in that there is less work for guides, mechanics, hotels, restaurants and cleaners, Johnson said.
Travis Watt, general manager at Three Bear Lodge and employee at See Yellowstone Tours in West Yellowstone, said the holidays were still pretty good for business.
There were a couple of cancellations, but most people were here and just snowmobiled outside the park or took snowcoaches or vans instead, he said.
There has definitely been a financial impact, but he won’t crunch the numbers until things open back up.
Johnson was fortunate to lease a few extra vans to take tourists to Old Faithful, and snowmobile guides have kept busy by driving those vehicles instead, he said.
Watt, who is also the mayor of West Yellowstone, added that he’s heard from retail stores and restaurants that it’s been a bit slower than normal.
Watt and Johnson, both longtime residents of West Yellowstone, said they remember a few times when the Yellowstone snowmobile season started late or closed early due to lack of snow.
But both said this was the first closure in the middle of the season that they could remember.
“Normally, by New Year’s we are up and running,” Watt said.
The increasingly volatile climate has pushed some companies like Xanterra to stop doing any snowmobile tours in the park, instead opting for snowcoaches that can travel safely on pavement.
Rick Hoeninghausen, director of Xanterra’s Yellowstone National Park Lodges, said they have also transitioned their snowcoach fleet in the last decade so the lack of snow doesn’t deter operations.
Many companies used to run snowcoaches with skis on the front, called bombardiers, but those have largely been replaced by buses with large rubber tires that are able to drive over snow and on pavement, Hoeninghausen said.
There were several reasons why Xanterra upgraded its fleet, but one was the trend of less snow on average compared to the past, he said.
Before the upgrades, there were a few times when Xanterra drove people to Old Faithful in buses because of low snow. So it’s not like this closure is something that’s never happened before, Hoeninghausen said.
There haven’t been many lodging cancellations within the park as a result, he added, as most of the people who go on snowmobile tours stay in West Yellowstone.
The West Yellowstone companies added snow is forecast to fall this weekend and through next week – hopefully enough to make the closure temporary and start snowmobile tours up again.
“We are taking it day by day,” Johnson said. “But we don’t want to speculate.”