Heading into Jackson from Idaho, just stay on Broadway and instead of turning North towards the Tetons, stay straight past the park and the hospital and veer left when it ends onto the National Elk Refuge road, in less than 2 miles you will see the hills on the left, find a pullout and glass the hills. Around Thanksgiving each year around 70 Bighorn settle in here for the Winter and provide ample viewing opportunities. I wish I had known of this road before, I have lived in Eastern Idaho for nearly 20 years and never knew you could drive behind the Elk Refuge! You are restricted to the road only, turnouts specifically, but this is probably for the best. If you need to get closer for a better shot you should buy a longer lens rather than stress an animal, especially during the Winter months when unnecessary exertion could kill an animal.
The first bighorn appeared in the morning on top of the butte at the outer edge of my lens' reach so this was enjoyed mostly with binoculars but they exhibited some interesting rut-like behavior even in early January, we even watched some females and young males butting heads in a playful manner, very similar to my own family.
Once the sun rose higher in the sky and the temperature warmed up to -20, the herd began to move down the hill to graze and the pictures got much better.
The youngsters were really fun to watch and we witnessed the largest ram in the group gently butting heads with this one on numerous occasions.
Home Economics class - Bighorn style
There is always time to hone your skills
They are beautiful animals to be sure
Some even have a sense of humor..
If you find yourself in Jackson during the late Fall / early Winter you simply need to take an hour and head out there. We spent an hour in the morning watching them run around then 10 minutes later we were in Cafe Genevieve on Broadway having breakfast before heading back for another hour of bighorn fun. If you are visiting the area and don't have a long lens, maybe just an iPhone or a point and shoot camera, THIS is the place you need to visit. Not only are you close to town but Bighorn will come fairly close to you when foraging for food, sometimes within 100', well within range of your camera.
PHOTOGRAPHY NOTE: Cold weather is tough on your gear in many ways. Batteries HATE cold weather and performance suffers greatly so make sure you have spares and keep the spares warm! Another tendency when shooting from the road is to sit in your heated vehicle with the lens resting on your half-lowered window. This is normally my preferred method as I am the prototypical lazy person, but I noticed today that the "heat shimmer" from my truck with the engine running was really playing havoc with autofocus and image quality. Because of this I was forced out of the warm confines of my vehicle to set up a tripod in the cold. A small price to pay, to be sure, but this creates another issue that many are not aware of that you need to be careful with. When your gear is out in the cold for extended periods it tends to get cold. I know, duh! but stay with me. When you bring this cold gear back into a warm building or vehicle your gear is at risk of condensation. The moisture in a warm place has nowhere to go but is attracted to the coldest surface (e.g. glass of ice water inside forms condensation on the glass). If this moisture accumulates inside your lens and/or your camera body you are in for trouble, oxidation, water spots that can never be reached and even fungus. To avoid this, place your camera & lens into a large ziplock bag until it gets to room temperature, I keep silica gel packs in my ziplock bag as well to further remove moisture
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The wildlife along the river was a bit too far away and not exactly worthy of National Geographic but it's always good to see a herd of elk, it reaffirms all the reasons we live here. Did I mention it was -17 degrees when I shot these?
Speaking of the temperatures, here are some phone shots from my drive to Jackson...
A few things of note with this last picture aside from the temperature, I listen to odd audiobooks and there are certain times of the year where heated seats are even more useful than tires.
Ok, so after I finished up my business in Jackson I headed back out the canyon towards Alpine, WY and just before coming out of the canyon I noticed something very important in photography. I saw someone in a turnout with $15K worth of camera gear pointing all that gear towards something on the cliffs. This is easily the most important lesson I have learned in realm of photography to date. If someone is willing to drag 50 lbs of very expensive gear out of his vehicle when it is -15 outside, that person has probably found something interesting to see. The lesson? Pull over! But watch for ice, plowing into this person's truck would be frowned upon in most photography circles. After safely parking, I grabbed my Canon 1DN MK II body and my Sigma 50-500mm lens and sauntered over to where the guy was standing, looked up and saw five mountain goats up on the rocks leisurely grazing on whatever they can find in the snow.
The photos did not come out tack sharp like I wanted but this also leads to another lesson in photography. If your camera / lens combo weighs just shy of nine pounds and you are hand holding while pointing up in the air, you are not going to get the best photos, I don't care how butch you think you are especially if you are still recovering from shoulder surgery. Point being, take the extra time to set up your tripod, you brought it with you so why not? We are heading out tomorrow looking for bighorn sheep and you can rest assured that the camera will be on the tripod. Hopefully we have some usable shots for you!
For those interested where the mountain goat photos were taken see map below:
In order to get to the park early to get a campsite we spent the night in Coram, MT at Glacier Under Canvas, a glamping site with extremely comfy beds, stoves and furniture but in a tent. It is also fenced three sides to the highway to keep bears out which is nice but some critters still made it in. I highly recommend it if you get a chance.
Upon arrival at the park we realized that our two tripods were still at home and had failed to make the trip with us. When you are looking forward to long exposure shots of rivers and stars this is not a good thing! We managed to find a camera store in West Glacier and bought the last one in the store for $40. I'm sure you can picture the high quality and stability of this tripod in your mind (where is the "Sarcasm" font?) Catastrophe partially avoided we went exploring and fell in love with the place.
Our original campsite was now off limits to us as tent campers due to bear activity but we found a site at Lake McDonald. Of course, since it was OUR camping trip, half of the park was on fire and no campfires were allowed so we were relegated to placing our folding chairs around the camp stove to warm up in the mornings. Trying to be optimistic about it we were fascinated by the helicopters that would scoop water from the lake.
As you can tell by the last photo, the skies were pretty grey for our trip and we never really got a clean look at the stars, Glacier NP is one of the best locations for it though, far from light pollution and nearby towns have strict rules about light pollution after 10:00 pm, we just got unlucky. The hiking was superb though, on our first day we did the Trail of the Cedars, a short .7 mile loop with interesting waterfalls and foliage and kept hiking up to Avalanche Lake.
The next day we traveled the "Going to the Sun" road which is widely considered the most beautiful drive in the country, through narrow winding asphalt carved into cliffs and 4000' drops with a 12" rock "guard rail", it is supremely beautiful but with my fear of heights it was also very nerve racking. Needless to say, there were very few pictures taken by me. We did make one stop on a turnout so that I could stretch and un-clench. Logan Pass on the main road is a great spot to find mountain goats, they are all over the park but very prevalent up top. We found one munching on grass less than 10' from the decking.
We drove through the East side of the park which was where most of the fires were at and there were views of lakes that previously nobody had been able to see with all of the fire damage. Sad to see but it's part of nature. We entered Canada and had lunch at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton, AB., it's not nearly as fancy as it sounds but the food was good and the setting is spectacular. The wind was blowing really hard at 60-70mph so my 5 shot hand held panoramic was not very good but still better than what I thought would be.
The next few days were a lot of walking by the lake and taking random trails to see where they would lead us but eventually the weather turned on us and we left a day early but fully intend to go back soon.
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