I start my drive at 6:20 at 26 degrees. I wind up the OGR, guided east by a pretty pink sunrise.

Today, Instead of a snowshoe hare, a fox crosses the road near Allison’s spot.

I find Jeff and Doug Mac at Nature Trail, so I stop to scope with them. We are quite delighted to find the Rescues again in view near their days-old carcass.

There are a few less wolves in view today – my high count is 6 with 5 blacks and the lone gray.

The grey seems young and interested in play. It bounces and darts in and around the bedded adults but doesn’t quite succeed in getting any of them up.

I tell Jeff that I remember seeing two grays with the Rescues in January, so I am pretty sure that the “missing gray” here is the uncollared bouncy gray now with the Junctions. We suspect he is a yearling, like this one.

I wonder if this one misses its playful sibling.

Rick arrives, and tells us he is soon to meet a large group of school kids hoping to see wolves. He asks us to help him show them the wolves and we all agree.

When the group arrives, we see it is indeed a very large group, but their support team has brought a lot of scopes, which helps!

The Rescue wolves are fairly active, coming and going both left and right of the central knoll down to their carcass.

Around 8AM of the wolves get up and move with determination to the right. Uh oh, if they continue in this direction they will be out of sight soon.

Now a third black gets up and follow the first two. The gray does the same.

We hurry to make sure the group sees the remaining wolves before they, too, get up and disappearing downhill.

Welp, we did our best.

Doug heads back west while Jeff and I pack up to go east. Calvin and Lynette decide to stay a bit in case the wolves come back into view.

I learn later that they did return, and brought more wolves with them! Calvin and Lynette ended up seeing 12 wolves today, 11 black and 1 gray.

Then they all went out of sight to the southwest, around 9:30.

Meanwhile, Jeff and I stop to scope from Hellroaring. Unfortunately the latest pass by the snowplow has built up a very high berm at the north end that blocks the view.

We look anyway, but find only bison and bull elk. We hear a single woodpecker, knocking away.

A stop at Elk Creek is also fruitless. We scope Specimen Ridge, looking for the single black, but no luck there, either.

But the day is gorgeous, with bright sun and clear skies, even though it’s still cold at 17.

We head further east. I check the Long pullout carcass. Just one coyote today (which gives me a 3 Dog Day). None of us have ever seen any Junctions on this carcass, which seems odd to me.

Around 10AM, we hear a radio call from Lamar. Michael and Michelle (Wolf Tracker) have spotted a single black wolf south of the road.

I immediately think it could be the same mystery howler Calvin found yesterday.

By the time we arrive, the wolf has been out of sight for nearly a half hour. Michelle advises us to look south from Picnic or Trash Can since they last saw it going into the tree line east of the big fan.

After a half hour of fruitless scoping all we have noticed is some bark-howling by unseen coyotes. Then Calvin saves us all, as he so often does. He spots the lone black as he emerges from the trees at the eastern edge of the big fan, just where Michelle said she lost him.

We all agree it is the same handsome wolf we saw yesterday. He stops in the open just west of the “comma” fan. He sits on his haunches, looking back to the west. Perhaps those coyotes were howling at him?

After a pause, the wolf continues east but soon disappears again into a thick stand of trees.

After another 10 minutes, he emerges on the east side of the “comma” fan, where the trees are thinner.

He continues for a while in the open, then passes the double foothill. He shows up again, now approaching the middle foothill. He disappears behind there and is out of view for a while.

Lynette and I are joking that the wolf will probably bed down there and we’ll stand here for three hours waiting for him, when suddenly there he is again, this time heading into the trees behind the middle foothill. I see him bounding/lunging through deep snow back there.

And then he’s gone.

It’s now 12:30 and I’m actually warm enough to take off my coat!

I have been hearing Rick talk about how much snow there is in Silver Gate, so I drive up there to take a look.

Along the way I see several sheep grazing on the eyebrow hill west of Hitching Post.

Michelle is here with her group so I stop to chat and thank her for the call. She suggests that the handsome black wolf could be 1407M. He’s the Willow Creek male who tied with 1386F last year. I think it’s a really good guess and tell her so.

The road is mostly dry through Soda Butte Valley but once I’m past the Baronette, I have packed snow on the road.

There is, indeed, quite a bit of snow piled up in Silver Gate. I stop at the store to see Kristina and catch up. It’s crazy warm up here, 42, and the tall berms are melting, leaving puddles everywhere.

Laurie’s driveway is so full I cannot see any part of the front-yard marsh, just a pure expanse of white from the road up to the deck supports.

I take a photo to send to her later.

Now I go back west. I find no one in Lamar so I continue to Little America, stopping again at Long Pullout.

One coyote is feeding while a second is about to arrive from the west.

At Nature Trail I find no-one scoping but I check the carcass area just to be sure. Nope. I think they’ve moved on.

I call it another early day and get my stretches done before dinner.

Today I saw: 2 badgers, bison, 4 coyotes, dippers, ducks, elk, a fox, bighorn sheep, 7 wolves from two packs: 6 Rescues (5 black, 1 gray) plus 1 mystery collared black (likely 1407M from the Willow Creek Pack) and the spirits of Allison, Richard, Jeff and Chloe.