Yellowstone will transition completely to over-snow travel this weekend

This week's heavy snow in western Wyoming will allow Yellowstone National Park to transition completely to over-snow travel Saturday morning.

Yellowstone’s “snow season” officially started December 15, when park roads were only open to guided rubber-track snow coaches. Until this week, however, there wasn’t enough snow for snow mobiles to travel over the roads. 

Park spokesman Dan Hottle says that’s changed, so now commercially guided snow coaches and snowmobiles will have access to most major roads through the park, though some parts remain dicey.

"It’s very warm temperatures still. So because of the fact that we’ve had a lot of heavy wet snow, with warm temperatures on top of some ice that we had before, it’s making for some ripe avalanche conditions in some of the higher elevation slopes."

Hottle says the park’s East Entrance near Cody through Sylvan Pass remains closed because of avalanche danger.