Yellowstone - Summer of 1992
Summer of 1992, I spent in at Mammoth Hot Springs. This location is right on the Wyoming/Montana border. Things I remember. First off, people from all over the country, and sometimes from around the world go there to work for the summer. The company I worked for was TW Services out of Gardiner, Montana. If anyone is interested in doing this for the summer, you definetely should.
First off, we made minimum wages. They gave us either free housing, or they charged us something like $15/month, or something like that. Wages were pretty meager, minimum wages. The cool parts of the job was that your money has nowhere to go. For the most part, we just hiked around the area, everywhere in Yellowstone Park. My personal responsibility was to work in the Pantry in the Kitchen. This basically meant making pastries and serving ice cream upon requests by the wait staff.
Housing situation. We shared a room with another employee. Showers and laundry are down the hall. Downstairs there is always a guy on duty. His responsibility is to maintain some kind of order, make things people are relatively quiet so others can sleep, etc. Our guy downstairs was an ex-military guy, very authoritive, with a big army mouth. Always swearing and had a million stories. Very funny guy!! He kept order quite well, and at the same time kept a nice order to the whole place.
Probably one of the highlights of working at Yellowstone were late nights in the lounge in the lobby. We'd regularly play card games, or just goof around exchanging information and such. One of our more interesting evenings was when the regular guys talked a mormon guy to play Penny Poker. The mormon guy was religiously against it, but someone told him he'd have his money back if he wanted to play - it was only pennies overall. He got in the game, and lost. One of the other men, a 50-year-old wanderer guy, quite hard, yet good-hearted, didn't agree that he could take his pennies back. Afterall, it was only pennies and it was just a game. The mormon guy pulled out his pocketknife and began to pull pennies from my pile. The 50-year-old guy went out of control, got in his face, and said 'if you are going to pull a knife, why don't you pull it on me?'.. and.. well, to make a long story short, nothing happened, but the Park Rangers got involved, and the mormon was sent home the next day, or, well, he had his parents come to pick him up. The incident itself was so.. hmm.. blown out of proportion. The next day there were rumors everywhere.. 'did you hear that weird mormon guy pulled a knife on someone?'.. totally blown out of proportion.
One of the other great things about working at the Park, where the hiking opportunities. I often worked the evening shift, so from morning until evening I could go pretty much anywhere. Sometimes this meant that I'd be late for work, and I got written up a few times beause of it. There was a group of us who hiked everywhere you could possibly imagine. There were elaborate trails throughout the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and when we had a couple days off in a row, we'd often go to other parts and go hiking such as Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and once even Old Faithful. However, we all agreed that Old Faithful had too many tourists, and arguably one of the more boring parts of the Park.
Probably the grand daddy of all hikes was a mountain called 'Electric Peak'. Most hikes were along ridges and trails. The difference with Electric Peak was it was pure orienteering - or map work. There were no trails. There were certain rules if you were to attempt the hike. The main one you had to hike up near to the treeline and establish camp in one day. Then when you wake up you should quickly ascend the top of the mountain, and get down quick before 2pm. Why 2pm? Because frequently lightning storms would come across the mountain. Why would lightning storms matter? Well, Electric Peak got its name because the entire top is all Iron Ore. Iron Ore conducts electricity, and anything or anyone on top would get a severe electric shock if caught up there.
Okay, so the day we decided to ascend, we took a formal and informal crew. There were a few regular hikers who were pretty hardcore. But we weren't an exclusive group, and anyone willing or wanting to join us was more than welcome. One particular woman wanted to join us. Anyhow, the core of us decided we were going to do the whole trip in one day, starting at 2am on the Full Moon. We figured we'd get to the top within 12 hours, and then descend to the bottom. We had one problem though, all was well, but the woman who joined us wasn't fit enough for the hike. We were patient, but making horrible horrible time. To make a longer story short. We got above the tree line 11 hours later right around 1pm. As a few of us began scrambling across the rocks - well above the treeline. The rocks are deceptive, if you don't quickly move over them, they tend to shift around below you.. causing you to slide downwards. At this part was when the woman had a problem. She didn't move quick enough, the rocks began to slide while she was on them, and one hit her hard in the leg. In kind of destabilized us, and a few were momentarily stuck in a safe spot, but well above the treelines and sitting very high in the Iron Ore part of the tip of the mountain. To move the story along, we were still about an hour from scrambling across the rocks, hitting the peak, and scrambling back down. Part of our crew were trying to descend to the top, and others were assisting the woman in her our of need. I was about second in pack behind claiming the top away from the downed woman. Anyhow, a very cloudy mess of clouds start rolling in. The way they were coming it looked like they'd be extremely quick - maybe 20-30 minutes.
Okay, so at this point, some decicions have to be made. To we claim the top and hurry down, or do we just start working our way down. I was caught because the crew with the woman was calling for us to attend her needs. So having to turn around, we got back to her. The main guy was probably only about 15 minutes from the top, but due to the situation, gave up on the conquest. We reached her started descending, and the clouds brought in a thick heavy snowstorm (it was summertime in Wyoming). Anyhow, thats what happens in high altitudes. We got zero visibility, cold and wet from the day, and now caught in a snowstorm. I was quickly descending, leading the way with another guy, when we saw the edge of the cliff. WHOA! Everyone back up, back up! Don't come down this way!! Anyhow we got lost up on the mountain in a snowstorm for about an hour, still worried about lightning strikes hitting the mountain, and still well above the treelines. Eventually, we were worked our way all the way down and all the way home. The woman was hurt, questionably though. But it turned into nearly a 22-hour hike in total, and we didn't even claim the top.
Okay, outside of hiking, there were tons of animals. Elk, mountain goats, moose, bears, wolves, foxes, buffalo. The Elk was everywhere, and was occassionally known to charge people. So were the buffalos. There were always stories of some tourist who placed their baby on top of a buffalo for a good picture, and the baby would end up dead. Occassionally, elk would charge tourists for the same reasons. One of the more interesting parts of working at the park were that everyday you saw all of these animals constantly. Since Mammoth Hot Springs was right on the edge of the park, many tourists would stop in the middle of the road to capture a photograph of a lone elk. If they'd just continue enough five minutes, they'd see a whole herd of them. The whole park was one big zoo.
Bears were the most interesting part. I found a great trail by the river with huge bear droppings. One time I saw a baby cub up on a hill, and the mother threw small boulders down the hill. We knew to get out of their quick. For the most part, the bears were well monitored. Apparently back in John Steinbeck's time, back in the 1960s, there was a huge problem with bears. You can see this in his book "Travels with Charley". However, at this time, all of that had been curbed, and bears were kept far away from people and tourits. Apparently, too many bears had a taste for tourist food and too many tourist deaths as well. Over the years, the Park established a policy of killing bears that depended too much on tourists. I think the 1960s Yellowstone Park insprired the cartoon of Yogi Bear and Jellystone Park. Those days had long passed when I was living there in the summer of 1992.
Hmm.. there are thousands of things I could write about my time in Yellowstone. There could also be alot to be said about how the park was formed and a ton of geological things. I'll refrain and leave that for geologists or Yellowstone enthusiasts.
If you have any other questions about Yellowstone, just send me an email at wintermoon2@yahoo.com. I'll tell you anything you need to know.
Living/working at the Grand Canyon!
You can email me at:
Wintermoon2@yahoo.com