WINTER COMFORT
New Snow Lodge at Old Faithful is a masterwork created by architects and expert artisans
Stories and photos by MICHAEL MILSTEIN
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - Winter visitors to Yellowstone National Park have long had but one choice for accommodations in the heart of the park: the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, a cramped and crowded former employee dormitory with little character and even less charm.

This winter all that changed with the opening of a new Old Faithful Snow Lodge, a nearly $20 million architectural masterwork that's one of the most ambitious and carefully planned projects in a U.S. national park in at least a decade. With 52 rooms now open and a finished total of 100 rooms expected to hold guests starting this spring, the lodge also likely represents the last major construction project in Yellowstone for many years.

The challenge for A&E Architects of Billings, which began designing the new Snow Lodge in 1992, was to create a building that would compliment the historic and renowned Old Faithful Inn without copying it and that would stand up to Yellowstone's harsh winters while also serving as a functional refuge for winter travelers.

We wanted something that fits the setting, but also has the feeling of being a building of the 1990s," said A&E President Jim Bos. "It had to be durable both in construction and style."

By nearly all accounts, the architects succeeded. While the cavernous Old Faithful Inn and its dark, knarred wood overwhelm visitors, the beauty of the Snow Lodge is in its details: the wrought-iron finishes, carved wooden desks, luxurious furniture, images inlaid in the wood of lamp stands, and a lobby full of thick wooden beams that feels open, but not gaping.

The beams, in fact, were once part of the Aloha Lumber Co. sawmill in Pacific Beach, Wash., that cut lumber used in construction of the Old Faithful Inn in 1903 and 1904.

"We hoped these details would be interesting conversation pieces in themselves," said Jim McCaleb, general manager in Yellowstone for Amfac Parks and Resorts, which operates lodges in Yellowstone.

Such touches drove up the cost of the Snow Lodge and boosted the room rate to $121 a night but also made it much more than the oversized shoebox that was the former lodge, which had grown piecemeal to keep pace with the popularity of winter trips to Yellowstone. There will be no net increase in the number of rooms for rent in the park: The old snow lodge was demolished last summer to make way for its more stylish successor.

"Our feeling was that this was going to be the next and probably the last historic structure at Old Faithful and we wanted it to be pretty special," said Edna Good, the National Park Service's chief of concessions in Yellowstone. "Of all the places in the park, Old Faithful deserves that."

Amfac financed the snow lodge with about $16 million in royalty money the company is required to put back into park buildings and about $4 million in direct corporate investment. Once the building is complete, it will be wholly owned by the government, which also owns most other lodges in Yellowstone.

The lodge's first winter has not been without its glitches: a pipe feeding a fire sprinkler broke, damaging some hardwood floors, and huge mounds of ice have formed on the roof, a problem that should melt away when the building is finished and fully insulated. But those faults are temporary, officials say, and overall visitors are pleased with the new haunts.

"It's a pretty hard test to open up at Old Faithful in the middle of the winter," Good said.

Most of the buildings in the Old Faithful area fall within a designated national historic district, so all construction had to follow strict standards. Crews inventoried all the trees on the building site, Bos said, hoping to save as much native vegetation as possible. Designers also positioned the building to take advantage of existing but lesser-used parking lots, so little new pavement would be necessary.

Workers buried five 25,000 gallon tanks beneath the new building to hold enough fuel oil and propane to heat it through the deepest of winters. Crews then poured thick concrete walls that should stand up to both heavy snowdrifts and the occasional large earthquakes that rattle Yellowstone.

Entrances draw people into the building from four different directions, which during the winter should eliminate the traffic jams of snowcoaches, snowmobiles and pedestrians that clogged the one main entrance to the former Snow Lodge, Good said. The most visible entrance leads visitors down a long, glassed-in hallway past the lodge's restaurant and bar and alongside clusters of deep, soft couches and writing desks.

"Instead of just walking right into the lobby, we wanted to create a bit of anticipation," Bos said. "There's nice northern light there, and it's a nice place for people to sit and read."

A&E Architects had already planned renovations of Lake Hotel in Yellowstone and two wings of Old Faithful Inn. From the start, Bos said, the company pulled local artisans into the project, calling on a wrought-iron designer from Lavina, furniture makers from Cody and woodworkers from Gallatin Gateway.

The three-story building, the first new construction in Yellowstone since Grant Village was built in the early 1980s, holds to today's standards. A fast-food restaurant and ski rental shop, formerly housed in small separate buildings, are built into the new Snow Lodge. It also includes fully handicapped-accessible rooms on the first floor and elevators, modern kitchens, bar and a full basement that holds an employee dining room and storage space.

It should also reduce the burden on Old Faithful's beleaguered sewer system. While the old Snow Lodge had no grease traps to catch the grease that twice last summer caused sewers near Old Faithful to overflow, the new lodge is outfitted with two large grease traps, Good said.

Thanks to the new building's all-weather design, it will replace Old Faithful Inn as the park accommodation that is the first to open for in the spring to begin Yellowstone's summer season and the last to close in the fall. Its winter season runs from late December through mid-March.

"It's really a dramatic improvement over what we had before," Good said. "When it's done, and it almost is, it will be a real asset to Yellowstone."

Artist adds to beauty of project

Sometimes during the summer Stefan Halvorsen heads to Yellowstone National Park before sunup and, carrying a flashlight, finds his way down along a river or stream.

"I sit down in the grass and listen to dawn happening," said the artist, who lives in a log cabin west of Cody. "Early and late light is the best. There's more drama and emotion in those hours. It's a personal feeling of how I react to the mountains but especially Yellowstone."

He hopes to convey those feelings through his etchings and oil paintings that now hang in the new Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the first Yellowstone building project in decades to include a commissioned artist.

Last June, designers planning finishing touches for the new building hired Halvorsen to provide two prints of his original etchings for each of the lodge's 100 rooms, plus 16 oil paintings for the lobby, restaurant and bar, where they will be available for purchase.

The job has been anything but easy. He finished the first patch of prints just in time for the opening of the first half of the lodge's rooms in early July and, soon after, a back injury put him out of commission for two months. By the middle of December, he had finished the final nine of his 16 oil paintings and sent them to a framing shop in Riverton, Wyo., where the building housing them burned to the ground.

"There was nothing I could do but start stretching canvas again," he said in an interview.

It was a unusual chance to see whether he could improve on his own work, which reflects the mountains and streams that he has haunted since childhood.

Halvorsen, 52, has spent every summer since he was 8 years old hiking and fishing Yellowstone and the Beartooth Mountains. He graduated from high school in Powell, Wyo., served in Vietnam and earned degrees from the University of Wyoming. Although he has left northwestern Wyoming now and then, he has always found his way back, most recently as a graphic designer and master printmaker who devotes as much time to creating reflections of the surrounding landscape he loves.

Cody's Big Horn Gallery and Toucan Gallery in Billings both show his work, which might seem reminiscent of Russell Chatham, but which has a smooth vibrancy all its own.

Most of his large paintings grow from sketches that he draws in the field, or - if conditions demand it, as they often do in the winter - photographs he snaps of intriguing curls in the Yellowstone River or a pine tree draped in soft snow.

"I love doing big things - trying to capture the landscape itself," Halvorsen said. "Yellowstone is absolutely my favorite place in the whole world."

OLD FAITHFUL SNOW LODGE

How much is too much?

Yellowstone's new, $20 million, first-class Old Faithful Snow Lodge also carries first-class rates: $121 per room per night. Some worry that such high prices may put a visit to Yellowstone out of reach of the very public the park is supposed to serve.

"I would be concerned about the pricing out of many Americans," said Snow Lodge guest Howard Maltby of New York, who has visited Yellowstone off and on for more than a decade. "It's ludicrous to build something that's so expensive. It definitely limits who can afford to get into Yellowstone."

Rooms without bathrooms in the former snow lodge could be had for around $60, said Edna Good, chief of concessions in Yellowstone. The lowest rates now available at Old Faithful during the winter are $74 for 10 cabins that will be eliminated after this year. Because the new snow lodge is not yet complete, some rooms remain available for $96 in the neighboring Snowshoe Lodge, which will also close after this year.

"Right now there is no cheap place to stay at Old Faithful during the winter," Good acknowledged. "Unfortunately you just can't have something cheap in the winter that also operates well."

Guests Richard and Sharon Terry of Missouri said they found the Snow Lodge prices near or slightly more expensive than comparable lodging outside Yellowstone, but they said the extra cost was worth it.

"The food was excellent," Sharon Terry said. "We've enjoyed our whole stay. It's been great."

The higher prices of the new Snow Lodge have not affected business in the least, said Jim McCaleb, general manager in Yellowstone for Amfac Parks and Resorts, which operates the lodge.

"I don't think it's discouraged people in the least," he said.

The National Park Service has received a few complaints about the higher rates, Good said. Park managers, she said, now plan to propose as part of a new park commercial services plan that some of the Snowshoe Lodge rooms now slated for closure should remain open in coming winters at a reduced rate of $35 to $40.

"We think it's important to have a range of prices for different budgets," she said.