Ok not doing travel stats anymore because it's a pain. I think I'll just do a cumulative miles driven instead. As part of the planning process, Sunday was a morning hike up Mt. Washburn. The guides say that if you only have time to do one hike in Yellowstone this is the hike to do. Round trip it would be about 6.25 miles. As you can tell from the sign this is Bear country. Lucky for me this is a very popular hike so there were dozens of people around me. The first thing you learn is never hike alone! Ok, I had to buy the hat. Besides helping me look like I know what I'm doing it's actually very functional in keeping the sun off your neck and face.
The hat is all I need, I don't need another thing...well maybe this compass. The hat, and the compass, and that's all I need...  Right! Well, I'm making great time up the mountain and will be bottom to top in 1.5 hours until I run into my little friend here. She is a Big Horn sheep and is sitting right on the edge of the trail. Having been scared to death at all the visitors centers about being mauled by bear and gored by buffalo I'm afraid to walk past this thing. Even though it only has little nubs for horns I've got visions of being violently nubbed to death. Here I am 100 yards from the summit and I can't go any further. So I thought.
Clearly I've got all the gear going and look like an experienced hiker. I actually thought I was going to pull the fascade off until a female hiker comes along. I tell her we have a friend blocking the path. She says they are here all the time and you can just slowly walk past as they see people all day. She proceeds with no trouble and I feel like the total novice given I waited there for 15min.   Finally the summit. I must say it was worth a possible nubbing to see these views. I stayed up there for about 45min eating lunch and hanging out. For those who didn't know Yellowstone currently has a natural fire burning. From the summit you could actually see the flames. So far it's burned about 10,000 acres. It started in late June by a lighting storm and the National Park Service tries to allow these events to run their natural life (based on a study done in the last 60's called the Leopold Study). The study suggested that the NPS should not interfere with any natural events with respect to park maintenance (fire containment) or animal populations.
They say that there is a major fire in this area every 200-300 years. The last fire was in 1988 and over 700,000 acres were burned.  On the way down I ran into a whole group of Big Horn. They just had their offspring a couple of months ago and here you can see a little baby. I still found myself being a little nervous as you never know how mothers will react if they perceive their young are in danger.
And yes my mother has commented on the little 150mph stunt and the speeding tickets. After the morning hike I did a series of park exhibit hikes. Here I toured the Mud Volcano area. This is the dragons breath. The sounds were incredible and you could hear the water boiling and gas escaping deep into the cave. The smell was awful as much of the gas escaping is vaporized sulfur. After the Mud Volcano hike I drove to the Old Faithful area and did yet another hike. This was a huge area of the park and days could be spent here alone.
I had to see Old Faithful and sat patiently with about 1000 other people awaiting it's eruption. It was pretty cool to watch and hearing all the ohhs and ahhs was fun.
Honestly the Fountain and Morning Geysers in the Norris Geyser Basin were more fun to watch. Basically they are erupting violently non-stop and they make lots of noise. Some other people with the right idea. This was an exciting part of our little hike. As we were making our way down the trail our Ranger noticed a young male buffalo coming towards us on the same trial. Needless to say we quickly moved off the trail about 100 yards. The Ranger said the young males like to taunt tourists. It was a little scary as the bull made his way past. For a moment he stopped and checked us out. Luckily he decided it would be too much effort to gore me.  Finally on my last day in Yellowstone I was up at 6:30 for my paid hike. While all the other experiences in the park were fantastic, I think this was the best thing I did. For only $15 you can "rent" a Ranger for a semi-private group hike. We only had 4 people in our group and our Ranger spent 7 hours with us as we hiked near 8 miles. We basically accosted him with questions the whole time and he barely had time to eat his lunch. I learned more about Bear attacks, fire fighting, and park politics than I think I could learn in a week of going to all the main free attractions. A great way to end the Yellowstone experience.
Off to Mt. Helena. |
