A Wolf in the Park

We were waiting for Grizzly 399 to emerge from the woods. Out of the corner of our eyes we saw a flash as a large bull elk ran full speed across the highway. Luckily it did not get hit by any cars and ran into the meadow before disappearing into the thick ponderosa and lodgepole forest.

Turning back to where we thought 399 and her cub would emerge, but we instead saw a flash of a canid. I snapped a quick picture as it ran next to our group of photographers.

It then stopped to watch the elk, hoping it had been hit by a car, but instead the elk was unharmed and the wolf caught its breath, looked at us, and then loped into the forest, going over a hill and disappearing as fast as it had appeared.

It was the first wolf we had ever spotted in Grand Teton National Park and spotting it made our day, (notice how sharp its teeth are and thta the wolf has been radio collared)!

It won’t be long before the grizzlies move high up in the mountains. Then, they will be eating carpenter moths and white bark pine nuts. The moths are about fifty percent fat, and the bears will turn over rocks finding and eating as many as twenty thousand moths a day, (I have been told that their fat content is so high that you can light a moth with a match and it will burn like a candle, and no I would never do that).

The moths account for about twenty to thirty percent of the bears weight gain in the summer. Because we rarely see bears in the hot summer months, we have been going to Grand Teton National Park every week. The last two times we did see Grizzly bear 399 and her cub but they were so far away that the pictures were poor, (that’s with our 600 mm Sigma Telephoto Lens). So you take what you can get and hope to see flowers, moose and elk.

We did hike about one third of the way up Grand View Point Trail and Renita took pictures of some of the wild flowers. In one picture of Phlox she captured a pretty black and white spotted butterfly!

It didn’t matter as we had a wolf closer to us than we had ever been.

It was a red-letter day, our first wolf sighting in Grand Teton National Park. Clear skies The bears eat lots of grass but one of their favorite foods is clover, so where you see clover is a good place to see grizzlies.