Lamar Canyon Pack Wolf MPEG GTNPYNP Groupshoot June 2013

This Groupshoot was a howling success! 

The highlight of our day was a close encounter with "Middle Grey", the mother of this year's Lamar Canyon pack wolf pups. More on that later.

Today, June 8 was the last day of the 2013 MPEG Grand Teton/ Yellowstone Groupshoot. Like the whole week, we had a perfect weather day, thus the ENTIRE week .... we experienced perfect weather !

Like the last few days, everyone was on their own for the last day of the 2013 YNP/GTNP MPEG Groupshoot. Sadly, we all must go back to reality.

We started out at 5:00 am with one MPEG member choosing to follow us. We elected to go North and promptly got into a bison jam as the Madison herd has the same idea as us. Around Roaring Mountain, a red fox crossed in front of us. I got a nice pose with him sitting on a log. He still had his winter coat.

We continued on to Swan Lake Flats and no grizzs around. We perused Gardiner for elk calves with their moms and no luck. We moved east to Petrified Tree and again no luck... we moved on to Lamar Valley stopping at the Hitching Post pull out. We noticed spotting scopes being set up quickly, and asked why.... (I figured I knew the answer) and I was told "Middle Grey", the mother of this year's Lamar Pack wolves was headed this way!  We set up our gear and Shreeni was told by someone that Middle Grey was spotted down the road hiding in some willows. We rushed to load our gear and moved down the road (I didn't know I would move that quick)... and once we get there, the spotting scope folks pointed her location out to us. She was crouched down but you could see her ears twitching. I was excited. I was directly across from her ....75 yds or so across the river! we all knew she wouldn't stay there for long.  Sure enough, just a few minutes after I got there, she popped up (see blog pic 1) , posed for us and headed East. After a few minutes, she disappeared back into the valley.  Wow.. she is a big, strong looking girl in person. Just beautiful.

After my heart stopped racing from this highlight of the day, we went up to Pebble Creek and photographed the moose cow and her very young calf. We got photos of the calf nursing..... Another special Yellowstone moment.

We went back to Gardiner for lunch with a few MPEGers.  After lunch, we decided to go back to Swan Lake Flats. We found 1 Grizzly grazing (175 yrds out) and then another Grizz showed up. The resident Grizz eventually found the other Grizz and ran him off. The first Grizz grazed more but never came closer after waiting 4 hours... BUT while waiting for the Grizz to come closer, ANOTHER red fox trotted up the road, straight at us, giving us a "out of the blue" photo op.  Two foxes in one day!

We headed back to the hotel early get ready for tonight's wrap up Groupshoot dinner with everyone sharing their fav (or 2) moments.

This Groupshoot is history. We had perfect weather too. This was a great group of MPEGers. 16 MPEG members and 3 spouses. 

I posted a Group photo. They will remember this trip for the rest of their lives.

That's All Folks!

Thanks for all of Blog readers. I appreciate your interest and support!

Stay tuned as I will being posting images from this Groupshoot in the very near future!

Flying back home tomorrow morning.

Goodnight Everyone!

Mark