From: dgh@dgh.Eng.Sun.COM (David Hough)
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry
Subject: Yellowstone trip report - long
Date: 30 Jul 1992 18:29:28 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: dgh

A couple of weeks ago I wrote:

> Yesterday I volunteered to accompany my wife and kids on a trip
> to NW Wyoming July 19-26, replacing her friend who became ill.   Now I need
> to research interesting things to do while she goes touristing.   So I solicit> anybody's suggestions for dayhikes
>
>      * up to 15 miles when by myself, 6 miles with kids
>      * that go to places not very interesting to tourists
>      * that can be started from near places interesting to tourists
>              such as Jackson, Yellowstone hotels, Lander, Pinedale, Cody,
>              Bozeman, Billings (turns out that Billings is interesting to
>              tourists because it's cheaper to fly from San Jose to Billings,
>              on short notice, than to Bozeman, Cody, Jackson, etc.)
 
I'd like to thank everybody who sent me suggestions before I left, even
though I wasn't able to act upon most of them; I posted a summary
before I left.

We flew to and from Billings via Salt Lake City.
We had to get flights at 6:20 AM going and 7:00 AM returning.
If you want to go cheap, you go when they tell you.   Both cases featured
2-3 hour layovers in Salt Lake City, longer than the time in the air.
Next time I might try Idaho Falls.

I got the dirtiest rental car I'd ever seen from Avis in Billings.   It
was the last one, so take it or leave it, and rental car companies
don't try harder to rent to people without reservations, so we took
it.   A Pontiac Grand Am, I'll never buy one for sure.   Not bad, just
outstandingly mediocre.

We drove to Bozeman to see the Museum of the Rockies and their famous
Worlds Most Nearly Complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton.   Well you get
to see a couple of bones, but the whole thing hasn't been put together
for public exhibition.   The Museum of the Rockies is OK but on the
whole, not lots more interesting than lots of other museums in the area
with less PR, such as the city museum in Thermopolis.   In the museum store
I found an umbrella, which I had forgotten, and a book on Native American bear
mythology, which is interesting reading after being in grizzly country.

I got a lot of comments from people who noticed the umbrella sticking
out of my pack.   Evidently hiking with an umbrella is less common
there than in Oregon.   I have a cagoule for real storms, but an
umbrella is much more pleasant for drips and drizzles.   By the way, in
response to a recent rec.backcountry thread, I don't think any tent can
keep you absolutely dry in a sufficient storm.   Your body moisture
builds up and won't go anywhere else when the humidity is 100% no
matter how well ventilated the tent.  When it's 100% inside your tent,
and 100% outside and colder, usually the case, your fate is sealed.
This is less of a problem in houses only because they are so much
bigger and they have heaters which also lower the humidity.

After acclimating in Bozeman our first night in Yellowstone was at
Mammoth.  The rangers took pains to discourage me from hiking anywhere
due to mom grizzlies with cubs seen everywhere, apparently.   So I
decided against Beaver Ponds or Sepulchre Mountain, two popular hiking
areas, and rigged up a sort of bear bell by tying a Sierra Cup and
Swiss Army Knife to clang together as I walked along.   Then I went
over Claggett Peak trail to Snow Pass, along an abandoned road in
Gardiner Hole, then back along the Howard Eaton trail through Golden
Gate to Mammoth.  The grizzly bear problem may have been slightly
exaggerated since I saw a local guy jogging alone over the same route.
Anyway Snow Pass is a dog, the telephone line runs through there.   I
did see a herd of elk in Gardiner Hole.   The hike back along the
Howard Eaton trail through Golden Gate was pleasant, though, and
included a back view of a hot spring that was actively advancing
through the forest.   This was much more impressive somehow than the
main Mammoth springs which were bigger but fully civilized with
boardwalks and fences and pictures of little boys falling through the
thin crust to be boiled alive, which I pointed out to my son.   Total
hiking this day was maybe 6 miles.

The Howard Eaton trail is some 150 miles in all and roughly parallels
the main roads in the park, but not so close that it's not
interesting.   An interesting month could be spent I suppose hiking all
of it, at least the parts that have not been closed in order to keep
people out of bear breeding territory.

My wife had gotten lodging reservations three months in advance, which
is cutting it pretty close, and was lucky to get three consecutive
nights in the park, but not so lucky to get two consecutive nights in
the same place.  So the next day we had to drive.   She dropped me off
at Dunraven Pass and promised to meet me later at Glacial Boulder,
which is a granite-looking erratic which would not
merit mention in Yosemite, but was sufficiently impressive in
Yellowstone that a trail was named after it.

From Dunraven Pass you can hike up an old road to the top of Mt
Washburn, which
has an enclosed lounge with bathrooms, as well as apparently the
telephone switching center for the whole park.   The interesting part
was hiking down from Mt Washburn to another part of the Howard Eaton
trail.   As I left the lounge it started hailing and I could hear
distant thunder.   This discouraged me from admiring the alpine botany,
which was plentiful.   Unfortunately the trail starts going up again
just when you think it should be heading into the woods, in order to
give the lightning another chance.

By Sierra standards the game trails in Yellowstone are an order of
magnitude more significant.  It is often not easy to determine which is
the human trail and which is the game trail at a junction.  Human
trails are usually blazed with red or yellow metal markers, which
helps.

Finally I got into the woods and down to the junction with a part of
the Howard Eaton trail that had not been much maintained in recent
years; fallen logs were not disturbed, although metal tags seem to be
maintained.  In fact the Howard Eaton trail north of Mt Washburn has
been closed and abandoned for bear reasons; even the red tags seem to be
removed.   But I was going south toward
Yellowstone Canyon.  The hike was mostly pleasant, almost level after I
got off Mt Washburn, and the sun came out.   All the meadows were very
boggy, and I discovered that I hadn't adequately waterproofed my
boots.   The best part was reaching the uncivilized Inkpot Spring, a
boiling cauldron of black mud that really does look and smell like the
direct route to hell.   Nobody around and no fences to keep you from
falling in.   I didn't see anybody else on the trail between Mt
Washburn and the Seven Mile Hole trail that day.   I did have my bear
noise ringing continually on that stretch.   I didn't see many trees
that I thought I could climb on short notice.    Once you reach the
Seven Mile Hole trail you are back in civilization with a wide
maintained trail and other people, and occasional views of Yellowstone
Canyon.   Total walk that day was about 9 miles.

That night we stayed at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel, which had an
interesting bar with a live string quartet in tuxedos and gowns.
Couldn't get dinner there; like Tuolumne Lodge, you have to make
reservations the night before.  The next day the family took a tourist
boat cruise on the lake.   During that time I walked over to the
Natural Bridge, which was OK for Yellowstone but not very memorable by
Utah standards, and started up another piece of the Howard Eaton trail
(actually a road here) until I came to a sign announcing that it too
was permanently closed on account of bears.

In Yellowstone I guess you have to assume all large bears might be
adult grizzlies and all small bears might be small grizzlies, so any
Yosemite training toward aggressive rock throwing behavior against
black bears might be hazardous to your health.

The true dangers of Yellowstone were revealed later in the day when we
turned in to the West Thumb thermal area as an ambulance was pulling
out.   During that day, in that parking lot, one man had been run over
by a loose truck that hadn't had the parking brake set and a kid had
been hit while running out from between parked cars.

After that my daughter and I dropped off at Kepler Cascades in order to
hike over to Lone Star Geyser and then into the Old Faithful area.
It had gotten hot and lots of big black flies were bothering her, and
she needed to go to the bathroom but refused to do it in the dirt, but
she didn't complain too much.   The walk along the old road to Lone
Star was very pleasant along the Firehole River.   We got to Lone Star
just after an eruption, and didn't want to wait three hours to the next
one, missing our dinner and letting the flies have theirs.   The trail
to Old Faithful from Lone Star, yet another branch of the Howard Eaton,
passes through some extensive burn areas.  Contrary to what you might
have heard at the time, the ground no longer looks burned, anywhere I
went in the park - flowers, grass, and small trees everywhere - and
most of the "burned" areas have at least half the trees still alive.
But the ridge south of Old Faithful was really burned, and none of the
standing trees were alive.   Very hot hiking this way, but it made it
possible to see the Old Faithful area buildings at a distance which
encouraged my daughter some.   She stopped at the first outhouse we
encountered, then we wandered off to meet my wife and son for dinner in
the Old Faithful Inn.  The Inn really is a remarkable building and I'm
glad it was saved from the fire.   Most of the rest of the Old Faithful
complex might not have been missed, though.   During dinner I had a
couple of Old Faithful Ales, a local brew that tasted like... beer.
But I'm no connoisseur.  After dinner we strolled around the geyser
basin and saw eruptions from about four of them.

Our time in Yellowstone was up the next day, so we found a laundromat
in West Yellowstone, then drove around to Driggs, Idaho, which has a
pretty funky mountain shop in which they posted a newspaper article
predicting that Driggs would be one of the ten hippest towns in America
by 1997.   Scary thought, as the sales person said.   Driggs has an
outstanding view of the Tetons, by the way, and is surrounded by
ranches most of which have barns half buried in the ground which, it
turns out, are old potato storage sheds.   We were heading up to Grand
Targhee Ski Resort.  I don't know what it's like in the winter, or at
other times in the summer when they apparently have bluegrass and rock
festivals (Jefferson Starship) and cowboy poets and kids science camps,
but this particular evening none of the above were happening and it was
exceptionally quiet.  No reservations necessary at this restaurant!
They aren't making a lot of money during the summer.   

You have to hike
quite a way from Grand Targhee to see the main Tetons, so I didn't try
before dinner.  The next day we got started as early as we could
manage.   We drove down to Teton campground where my wife left me, to
meet again on the other side of the Tetons at White Grass in 11
hours.   The distance was variously listed as 17-20 miles on maps,
trail signs, and books, with 4000 feet of elevation gain and loss, and
in any event was the longest single day hike I'd done in years.   She
took the kids around to Jenny Lake and Jackson while I was walking.
The weather was perfect, clear but cool but not windy, and the hiking
very pleasant, although this trail is quite popular with hikers and
horses.   I moved along pretty well on schedule up Teton Creek to
Alaska Basin which is a familiar sort of timberline lake basin,
although the surrounding mountains look different from the Sierras -
lusher vegetation due to more rain and more soil and less granite and
glaciation.   After I had passed the high point of the trail at 10800'
I began to wonder if I was going to see the Grand Teton at all on this
hike.   Finally I looked at a map and discovered that I wasn't, unless I
ran back up to 10800' and then another 500' or so of vertical to the
top of Static Peak.   I was afraid of jeopardizing my rendezvous time
so I didn't, but the advice seems to be - don't hike over Static Divide
without walking up Static Peak as well.   The trail from Static Divide
down to White Grass is a lot less interesting once it gets below
timberline, and with a gratuitous 400' climb at the end to get from
Phelps Lake back up to the trailhead on top of the lateral moraine.   
I read later that there was an
unmarked horse route from a big basin north of the divide down more
directly to White Grass.   I might try that if I ever go that way
again, although more likely I would try a more direct (but longer)
route from Grand Targhee to Jenny Lake.  Anyway I crunched down several
miles of hot steep gravelly trail to Phelps Lake and then up to White
Grass, arriving two hours ahead of schedule.   The people at the trail
head asked if I had seen the bear on the trail reported by the people
before me.   Just lucky, I guess, I hadn't used the bear bell because
grizzly bears aren't supposed to be this far south in the Tetons.

When my family showed up I learned that the nearest motels were in
Pinedale, two hours away, since she didn't want to go back to Idaho.
Definitely a bad idea to chance it without reservations in Wyoming in
the middle of the summer on Friday night, but perhaps the influx of big
shots into Pinedale scared away tourists with any choice in the
matter.  Bush had been there a week or two earlier.   The only reason I
wanted to go to Pinedale was to go hiking in the Wind River mountains,
but we didn't have time, so the next day we touristed at South Pass
City and Atlantic City, drove through the Wind River Indian Reservation
trying unsuccessfully to find events open to tourists, went through the
Thermopolis museum and the Buffalo Bill museum in Cody, a monument to
one of the first Marketing Scientists.   I then got to drive back to
Billings in the dark, only in time to go to bed in order to wake
everybody up in the dark and head to the airport.
--

David.Hough@Eng.Sun.COM