Weekend with the Wapitis, Part 6 - Winter 2026
By Isaac and Katie Milesky-Rath
Photos by Isaac and Katie Milesky-Rath
The Wapiti Lake pack of Yellowstone National Park decided to put on a show during the week, rather than the weekend this time. So, without further ado, welcome to “WEEKDAY with the Wapitis”. After our previous encounter with the wolves on the Madison River in early January, there had been no sightings of them for several weeks. We had no idea where they had run off to.
On January 18th, Katie was at Canyon village on the fourth day of her “Yellowstone Couples Adventure” tour when she got word that there had been wolves sighted both south and west of her, in Hayden Valley and on the Norris/Canyon road. She debated with several other guides about which way they should go to return home. She’d already planned on going south, but at the last moment her group chose to go west. Luckily, they made the right choice. Several miles into the drive, after navigating through a bison jam, they caught up with a coach from another company and a single grey wolf on the road. Katie chose to hold back, not liking the way the other coach was stressing out the wolf as it slowly followed it up the road. After about a mile, they caught up to a few more wolves, some grey and some black. It was the Wapiti Lake pack.
She chose to stay back, but the other coaches that didn’t have as much time before they had to be back had to continue on, and the wolves dispersed from the road and scattered into the forest. Once the other coaches all left, Katie made the choice to pull over at a pullout and let her guests out. She decided to pull over and let all of the other coaches leave before getting out and asking her group to be very quiet. Over the course of the next few minutes, they got multiple different wolves howling as they attempted to regroup. Another coach pulled up, and Katie signalled to them to pull over and be quiet. After a few minutes of this, they drove about a mile or two up the road and turned the coach off with the windows down. They were hoping they would come back up onto the road (since we know that is a favorite and significantly easier way for them to travel than trudging through deep snow), and they were not disappointed. They didn’t want to be a disturbance to them at all, which is why they stayed silent inside the vehicle and let them go whichever way they wanted without input from us. After a few minutes, they left so they could go on with their night without humans around.
The next day, we got word that the pack had been spotted chasing bison in Gibbon Meadows, just south of Norris junction. By the end of the day, they still hadn’t caught anything, but that changed the next day. Katie had a full schedule of dietitian appointments, and I was working in a different area of the park, so neither of us was able to make it up there to watch, which was a real bummer. The videos and photos we saw from coworkers and guests alike were incredible. The bison the pack took down was fairly small, so it didn’t last too long. We got to watch the wolves feed on it the next day, but by the following late afternoon, the wolves had already up and left. We got confirmation of where they were headed from Katie, as she was almost completely alone on the road heading north at about 8pm when she passed them just north of Madison. Not wanting to disturb them or scare them off the road, she simply put the coach in park and waited for them to pass. It was a truly intimate encounter with them that she will never forget (and definitely woke her up a bit on hour 14 of 16 working that day). At one point, when all the wolves had passed, she got out of the coach and just listened, and the chorus of wolves howling coming from all directions was surreal.
Over the next day or two, the pack was close enough to Old Faithful to get most of the guides excited, and I managed to catch them with guests a few times. At one point, while chatting with some members of the wolf project, I asked about one of my favorite wolves in the park, 1270M, and learned that he is significantly younger than I had thought! While he’s already graying with age, he’s only 5 years old and will be turning 6 in just a few short months. While that is considered old for a wolf in the park, where the average lifespan is only 3-5 years, I had assumed he was much older, maybe pushing 8 or so.
That evening, I got word that the pack had been spotted following a group of bison along the Madison River, where they eventually went over a ridge and out of sight. One thing about the Wapitis is that we never know when we are going to see them, but it’s always incredible. If you want to read about some of our other extended observations of the Wapiti Lake Pack, check out “Weekend with the Wapitis,” “Weekend With The Wapitis Summer 2024”, “Weekend with the Wapitis Part 3 summer 2025”, “Weekend with the Wapitis, Part 4 (+ Bears!) - Fall 2025”, and “Weekend with the Wapitis, Part 5 - Winter 2026”
