The Steam, Stars, and Winter Soundscapes Tour Review

This tour promised to “stimulate all of [our] senses”, and “reveal a whole new world” to us. In reality, I think this tour needs a few improvements. If the words “stars” and “soundscapes” are in the title, the guide should devote at least some portion of the tour to the skies and the noise level (or lack thereof). Of course the same tour with a different guide could be entirely different.

Regardless of what the guide knew or did not know, trying to get a group of people to shine their flashlights onto a geyser or a water cascade in pitch black darkness seems pointless. If the tour is about observing thermal features, let’s start the tour about 3 hours earlier, when it is still light out.

At one point the driver stopped at a pullout, suggested that we look out the window and commented that there we could see the aftermath of the forest fire. Did I mention that it was pitch black outside? After someone pointed out that we could not really see anything, the driver agreed, but proclaimed that if it was a full moon night, we would be able to see everything no problem. Great, except there was no moon at all.

Over an hour of the 2 hour and 15 minute tour was spent in a “Bombardier”—another form of a snow coach, as we were driven to our “destinations”. Being in a snow coach during the day is fun. The scenery we could see during our 4+ hour tour from Mammoth to Old Faithful was incredible. However, in the middle of the night, you can only see what is directly in front of the vehicle, and only if there is no fog (which there is a lot of when you enter the Lower Geyser Basin). So, dear tour designers, can we spend a little less time on the snow coach during the night tours—they are not that exciting.

The tour did have its high points. When everyone was trying to find the mud pots in the Fountain Paint Pot area with their flashlights, Nick and I were glaring up into the star filled skies. We do not know our stars well, (which is why we were hoping for a guide who did), but we were still able to identify Mars, Orion, the Milky Way and the Big Dipper. As the geysers steamed around us, the stars went in and out of sight, but multitude of the stars was still amazing.

This was the only tour where the driver offered us some hot chocolate when we got back in the Bombardier. Not only was the vehicle carrying several thermoses of the yummy hot drink, but the driver also distributed nice hot beverage mugs for everyone to keep. Very nice, but hardly making the tour worth while.

On a long drive back to Old Faithful, I saw a little snowshoe hare running up from the road. This was another highlight of the tour.