Location: Gardiner, MT
Housing included: No

Fast-paced and hands-on, this two-day program covers a wide range of wilderness medicine topics for people who travel in the outdoors. Whether spending time in the backcountry is your passion or your profession, you should never have to ask, “What do I do now?” During this program, you’ll learn how to prepare for the unexpected. NOLS Wilderness Medicine curriculum is unique and includes many advanced topics that other programs leave out, such as dislocation reduction and epinephrine administration. In just two days, you’ll have the knowledge, skills, and ability to make sound decisions in emergency situations. This program is ideal for trip leaders, camp staff, outdoor enthusiasts, and individuals in remote locations.

Location: Gardiner, MT
Housing included: No
Instructor: Amanda Evans

Yellowstone’s northern range is known worldwide for its charismatic megafauna, such as grizzly bears, bison, wolves, and elk. You’ll spend three full days looking for these and other wild animals and learning how they fit into the park’s ecosystem. Enjoy early morning and afternoon searches for wolves, bears, and songbirds, in addition to falcons and other birds of prey as they migrate back to the area. Keep a watchful eye on the ground, too, where you might spot small animals.

Location: Gardiner, MT
Housing included: No
Instructor: Meg Sommers 

Is your camera one of your best friends? Do you want to learn more about wildlife and how to tell their stories? Then come immerse yourself with fellow advanced enthusiasts in the heart of Yellowstone. With the park’s north entrance in Gardiner as your home base, you will personally experience this magical place, watching and photographing wildlife as they go about their lives. Our limited class time will be devoted to increasing your ability to communicate with your images. You will spend most of the time in the field, so you will have ample opportunity to photograph wildlife and learn about their behaviors while mastering your technique and the ethics of wildlife photography.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Jim Halfpenny, Ph.D.

Mammals are elusive and hard to observe in the wild, but you can discover their behavior in the signs they leave behind. Through illustrated lectures and laboratories, you’ll learn about natural history, ecology, anatomy, gaits, track averaging, relative size, estimating track age and speed, identifying prints, finding clues, and following trails. During afternoons in the field, you’ll put your learning into practice as you explore animal behavior by reading the stories that tracks tell. Evenings will be spent analyzing data collected in the field. Expect to be hiking off trails, in mud, and wading in water.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Shauna Baron, M.S.

It’s spring! And time to look for spring babies in the wilds of Yellowstone. You’ll look for bear cubs, wolf pups, bison calves, elk calves, bighorn lambs, and lots of young birds. Find them with spotting scopes and binoculars, and by taking short walks to better vantage points. As you search, you’ll also talk about why species choose certain birthing grounds, and how they protect and raise their young. Expect to be outside from before dawn throughout the day to after sun-down. Even so, you’ll have plenty of free time to enjoy all aspects of Yellowstone’s vibrant spring.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day trip
Instructor: John Gillespie

You’ll travel through geologic time, pondering the powerful convective and tectonic forces that pulse through our living, breathing planet and bring constant change over geologic time. Along the way, you’ll begin to piece together the big stories – geological, archeological and historical – that add dimension and richness to Yellowstone.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Amanda Evans

Yellowstone’s northern range is known worldwide for its charismatic megafauna, such as grizzly bears, bison, wolves, and elk. You’ll spend three full days looking for these and other wild animals and learning how they fit into the park’s ecosystem. Enjoy early morning and afternoon searches for wolves, bears, and songbirds, in addition to falcons and other birds of prey as they migrate back to the area. Keep a watchful eye on the ground, too, where you might spot small animals.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Jim Halfpenny, Ph.D.and Jim Garry, M.S.

Ursophiles (Greek for “bear lovers”) unite! Discover a uniquely broad view of bears from their evolutionary origins to interpretation of their sign to compelling renditions of classic bear tales. In lectures and the field, you’ll learn about bear evolution, ecology, and management from carnivore ecologist James Halfpenny, and about the rich cultural history of bears from folklorist Jim Garry. We will observe these magnificent bears during the field trips.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: Karen Williams, Ph.D.

Come see first-hand Yellowstone’s geologic past, as seen in the rock layers of Mount Everts. You will hike off-trail to the summit of Mount Everts and stop along the way to identify the characteristics of the landscape that put the geologic history into context. The slopes of Mount Everts are open and give a wide view of the surrounding mountains and canyons. As we ascend higher on Mount Everts, the rock units get younger and younger, as we walk from the distant past up higher to the relatively recent remains of the last ice age.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Katy Duffy, M.S.

Are you fascinated by owls—their huge eyes and fabled hearing, their secretive habits and cryptic beauty? Through talks and field trips, you’ll explore how these adaptations work and why they help owls successfully live in Yellowstone. Visit places in the park that owls call home to find out why these habitats work so well for them. You’ll learn to read other park landscapes for signs of good owl habitat, and read signs that these secretive birds leave as clues. You might even see owls hunting in daylight—and find out why this suits them so well.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Alan Petersen, M.A.

How did Thomas Moran begin his memorable paintings in Yellowstone? By using some of the same essential and time-tested drawing techniques that you’ll learn in this class to capture the essence of the Yellowstone landscape. You’ll be introduced to these techniques during an indoor session, and then spend the rest of the time outdoors applying what you’ve learned to create your own landscapes. Whether you are new to drawing or have experience, you’ll learn to see and to depict Yellowstone National Park in a new way.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Meg Sommers

Do you love watching wildlife and want to learn how to photograph them? Not quite sure how your camera works and want to learn more? Then come immerse yourself with fellow beginning and intermediate enthusiasts in the heart of Yellowstone. With the Park’s north entrance in Gardiner as your home base, we will spend the first morning and early afternoon in class learning the fundamentals of your camera, how to find wildlife and how to take your photography to the next level.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Hannah Hinchman

An illustrated field journal is a nimble instrument where you can combine drawings, maps, commentary, and questions, enfolding the smallest of events into the largest of landscapes. As a beginner or a veteran journal keeper, you will learn a world of ways to bring your Yellowstone experiences to the page. You’ll use your journal both in active adventure and quiet absorption, exploring many tools and techniques. If you want to expand field-journaling to the digital world, consider the optional iPad sketching session.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Joanna Lambert, Ph. D.

Archeological and genetic evidence has demonstrated that humans have a closer and more ancient history with wolves (and, ultimately, domestic dogs) than any other animal species on the planet. Wolves started self-domesticating themselves more than 36,000 years ago, scavenging near human hunting sites. Over time, this interaction resulted in humans selecting for traits that led to the fully domesticated wolf that we call “dog.” This Field Seminar will touch on these topics and give participants a rich understanding of just how unique our relationship is with Canis lupus – not just now, but in the evolutionary past as well.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Joanna Lambert, Ph. D.

Humans have shared landscapes with wild predators throughout our 200,000+ year evolutionary history. Historically, we had the knowledge to persist with these predators despite sometimes fierce competition. However, increasing urbanization and concerted efforts of shooting, poisoning, and trapping that began in the 1800s resulted in local extirpation of many of the world’s native carnivores, along with the knowledge of how to coexist with them. In this class, we will explore the long history that humans have had with carnivores.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: John Gillespie

The Gardiner to Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Geology Field Trip explores part of the Northern Range and the northern flank of the Yellowstone Caldera and reveals a diverse world of ancient oceans, multi-stage bi-model volcanism, glaciation, landslides, hot springs and fault lines. The route traverses an extraordinary section of fascinating and varied geologic landscape. that evolved in different epochs but in this very place. It now provides ideal habitat for Yellowstone’s iconic flora and fauna. Through roadside stops and short hikes, you’ll be presented the opportunity to try to decipher some of the stories of Yellowstone’s ancient past as written in the rocks.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Paul Doss, Ph. D.

People often overlook the non-living parts of an ecosystem. And yet, the underlying geology and climatic conditions are what form the foundation for every square inch of Earth’s living space. In Yellowstone, that foundation is fertile, and deadly, brutally cold, and fatally hot, sweeping and green, and steep and rocky. This seminar will illuminate the linkages among the solid, wet Earth, and the abundant, diverse life that not just lives in Yellowstone, but thrives in Yellowstone.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: John Gillespie

This ambitious field trip from Gardiner, Montana, to the 10,947-foot Beartooth Pass will take you on a journey through time and space to piece together the vast and complex geologic history of Yellowstone Country and its diverse ecosystems. During a busy day of roadside stops and very short hikes, you’ll visit outcrops, roadcuts and landforms that illustrate some of the big stories that shaped the landscape you see to-day.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Paul Doss, Ph. D.

Mammoth is a unique hydrothermal basin in Yellowstone National Park. You won’t observe geysers in Mammoth nor travertine at Old Faithful…why not? This seminar will answer those questions, and many more. The terraces at Mammoth need 320-Million-year-old limestones and fault systems that are active today in order to form. Observations from the Norris Geyser Basin, the Northern range, and outside the northern boundary of the park will help to develop a full understanding of the complex and dynamic history and behavior of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: Karen Williams, Ph.D.

Hike to the remains of a petrified forest, comprised of trees very different from those found in Yellowstone National Park today. Fossilized, or petrified, trees tell us something about the ancient climate of Yellowstone, as well as the geologic forces active at that time that caused the forests to turn to stone. Though you will hike to one remnant forest, you will learn about other fossil forests in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Institute staff

In this certificate-level course you will gain the skills of a naturalist. Through this intensive course, you will learn to understand and interpret the wildlife, geology, plants, and climate of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Through field outings and expert instructors, you will encounter a diversity of plant and animal communities. Topics covered range from natural history, controversial topics, ecology, and cultural history.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Brenna Cassidy, Ph.D. student

This course will explore trophic cascades, important direct and indirect interactions between species that can effect an ecosystem in significant, and possibly unexpected, ways. Investigating how wolf reintroduction, population fluctuations of elk and bison, and increasing populations of beavers interact, will show how much Yellowstone has changed. Along the way, this course will investigate how these, and other species of plants and animals have been affected with field trips and short classroom discussions to emphasis important concepts.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Kate Ochsman

While Yellowstone National Park teems with excitement during the day, nighttime holds a special allure and stillness in Yellowstone. Nestled in the fabric of a dark sky, the American West stars twinkle above us with a brightness that few around the world see. The summer milky way shines with its colors and dark spots. The constellations reign overhead in their myth and lore. This workshop will explore and capture Yellowstone’s night skies through discussions on nighttime photography, in addition to going out into the field to become better acquainted with our cameras, and to experience and capture Yellowstone by starlight.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Dr. Rob Thomas, Ph.D.

Jump into the bus for three full days of exploring the most amazing roadside geology in the world: Yellowstone, Earth’s largest active volcano. You’ll examine rocks formed in continental collisions billions of years ago, ponder the forces that buried forests, and follow glaciers that covered the entire park in thousands of feet of ice. While traversing roads in and around the park, you’ll find evidence of volcanic eruptions during the past 2.2 million years – including signs that the volcano continues its action today.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Dr. Robert B. Pickering, Ph.D.

The story of bison/human interaction is at least as old as the Ice Age cave paintings of Altamira in Spain and Chauvet in France. Even in those early times, bison sustained people with their gifts of meat and hide and connected them to a supernatural world. These themes of sustenance and spirituality were established when humans came to the Americas. The human bonds with buffalo—both economic and spiritual– pervaded the ancient worlds of America and the Eurasian steppes. In North America, bison and humans co-existed and interacted for millennia. Native stories and histories, and archaeological investigations provide insights into this long relationship.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: Dr. Robert B. Pickering, Ph.D.

Bison are one of the most interesting, enigmatic and important species in North America. They are part of the important story of climate change for the Ice Age to the Holocene and are considered to be a keystone species of the plains. Bison and humans have interacted for at least 10-12, 000 years in North America. The human/bison connection goes back even further in Europe. During this one-day session you will learn about the importance of bison in natural history and to a succession of human cultures in North America including our own. Much of the discussion will occur while the group is out looking at bison.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: Daniel and Kara Hidalgo

Follow in the footsteps of Thomas Moran by learning to paint outdoors at some of the same locations that inspired the famous Yellowstone artist. Not only will you learn how to capture the essence of a scene, but you’ll also learn the significance of artists like Moran to Yellowstone’s history. Through classroom and field sessions you’ll practice incorporating the sensory experience of being outdoors-temperatures, sights, sounds, lighting, and atmosphere. You’ll also improve your skill with composition, color theory, and painting in changing outdoor conditions.

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch
Housing included: Yes
Instructor: George Bumann, M.S.

What is the raven’s word for eagle? How does a wolf know when to give up on a chase? How do animals pass on information through time? Delve into these and other questions of animal intelligence by directly observing Yellowstone’s wildlife. You’ll learn to decipher body language, behavior, and vocalizations for clues about intelligence. Watch how different species interact with each other and their environment. Explore how they learn and pass their knowledge to their offspring. And consider how this information applies to other species—including those you may know from home.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Amanda Evans

Yellowstone’s northern range is known worldwide for its charismatic megafauna, such as grizzly bears, bison, wolves, and elk. You’ll spend three full days looking for these and other wild animals and learning how they fit into the park’s ecosystem. Enjoy early morning and afternoon searches for wolves, bears, and songbirds, in addition to falcons and other birds of prey as they migrate back to the area. Keep a watchful eye on the ground, too, where you might spot small animals.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: Day Trip
Instructor: Katy Duffy, M.S.

It’s a raptor time of year! Start with a brief classroom session focusing on raptor identification and ecology. Then you’ll spend the day in Hayden Valley and other Yellowstone valleys watching for raptors (birds of prey) flying overhead on their journeys south. With any luck, you’ll see eagles, osprey and a variety of hawks and falcons.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Meg Sommers

Do you love watching wildlife and want to learn how to photograph them? Not quite sure how your camera works and want to learn more? Then come immerse yourself with fellow beginning and intermediate enthusiasts in the heart of Yellowstone. With the Park’s north entrance in Gardiner as your home base, we will spend the first morning and early afternoon in class learning the fundamentals of your camera, how to find wildlife and how to take your photography to the next level. The rest of the class will be spent in the field. You will witness the wonders of this magical place, watching and photographing wildlife as they go about their lives.

Location: Gardiner, Montana
Housing included: No
Instructor: Meg Sommers

Is your camera one of your best friends? Do you want to learn more about wildlife and how to tell their stories? Then come immerse yourself with fellow advanced enthusiasts in the heart of Yellowstone. With the Park’s north entrance in Gardiner as your home base, you will personally experience this magical place, watching and photographing wildlife as they go about their lives. Fall is a special time to be in Yellowstone with the color returning to the trees and the elk rut at its peak. We will be looking not only for the large predators but also for all the other wildlife who make up the rich tapestry of this amazing place.