Leaving Eden

We spent Saturday night at the Riverside Cottages in Gardiner. Sunday was our last full day in the park and we decided to stretch our hike-weary legs and walk the mile to Boiling River for a soak.

My parents hadn’t been there in years and were pleasantly surprised at the improvements the Park Service had made.

We took our masks and snorkels in hopes of finding Jeff’s ring. Instead we found another mens’ titanium ring! Too bad it was too big for him. This photo was taken just before the man on the right backed up and sat on Jeff. We got a pretty good laugh out of that!

They followed me here...

After breakfast at the Canyon Cafeteria, we were off to the Wapiti Trailhead parking lot to start our adventure.

Not too far into Hayden we found a spot with lots of broken dishes. Could it have been the site of an old hotel? We were relieved to find that my parent’s packs looked heavier than they were. No extra extra flashlights here. Then it was out to the east across the end of Hayden and into the trees. We were in awe of the mushrooms grown from this year’s rains. Fairy rings of cottage cheese – dotted amanitas sprung up along the trail.

Lines of bizarre, sponge like, tangerine-hued fungi gave away the locations of long ago rotted away logs.

I found a really weird fungus that looked like a pink sponge dripping blood.

Best of all, massive boletus sprouted all over the place. The largest were the size of footstools, the smallest, like oversized dinner rolls. Daddy mentioned a French chef he knew of willing to pay $50 an ounce for dried boletus. We marched on past several thousand dollars worth of mushrooms before stopping for lunch at 4M2.
Then it was GPS time. We left the trail  and headed off into the trackless hills toward Joseph’s Coat. Jeff heckled me for my ‘drunken sailor’ style of navigating in which I weave and swerve to avoid deadfall and keep a short-person friendly route.

Finally we popped out in Joseph’s Coat, made our way past the blue green lake and arrived at 4B1. The blue green clock usually keeps these springs submerged, but this year they were on dry land.
Our timing couldn’t have been better; we had just enough time to pitch tents, gather and cover firewood and hang the bear bag before a nasty storm swept up on us. Rain, ice, thunder and lightning pelted us for hours.

We were trapped in the tents for about two hours - long enough for us to realize that neither of our brand new tents were waterproof. Yay wet sleeping bags!

Eventually the rain lessened enough for a bathroom break and I called everyone out to make dinner. The rain started up again before we’d finished boiling the second pot of water. Dinner was a cramped affair eaten in my parents’ tent. As we ate we savored the aromas of everyone’s wet, 12-mile trail feet. Mmmmm!

Then, miracle of miracles, the sun came out and it stopped raining. We climbed out of the tents and made a fire.

The rest of the evening was spent roasting socks over the fire and waterproofing the tents by tying emergency foil blankets over them.

Then we said goodnights and headed off to our sleeping bags. Jeff and I had selected the $20 Ozark Trails Junior Tent for this adventure – a child’s tent. It was absurdly small but that was OK because we had to carry it 24 miles and it only weighed 2 lbs. Changing into our dry sleeping clothes was like a game of Twister with only enough room for one person to move at a time. When we were finally ready to sleep we lay there for about 15 minutes before realizing that we were both gasping for air. The emergency blanket had sealed the tents ventilation fly down and we were slowly suffocating.

Amazingly enough the night was still and rainless. In the morning we awoke to a small hailstorm and made a quick, unanimous decision to skip our second night at 4B1 and head immediately back to the nearest hotel with a hot tub.

Here are some Indian Pipe flowers that feed off fungi and produce no chlorophyll.

Other than the weather, it was a good backpacking trip.

I watched my father running around (literally running) with a huge pack on his back looking at mushrooms.

I realized that as long as she had pretty scenery to enjoy, my mother could forget the weight of her pack too.

When we reached the trailhead we looked back to see the hills we’d come from – blue with rain. On the drive to Gardiner we saw slopes at 9,000 ft freshly dusted with snow. Joseph’s Coat is at about 9,000 ft. Leaving early was a good decision.

Rest stop on the hike out.

Jeff became temporarily fascinated with this tree.

Orange Rock Spring where we rejoined the trail on our hike out.

Victory!!

Canyon Sunsets

Last night a big thunderstorm camped out over Madison campground. It made it kinda hard to sleep. Jeff snapped this photo of the lightning out the window of the tent. We didn’t get up to much today since we were mostly busy moving locations and prepping for the backpacking trip.

Jeff treated me to a lunch at the Old Faithful Inn dining room. It has these beautiful etched glass windows depicting park wildlife in human roles; putting on a play, whooping it up at the bar, dancing. I like to imagine the early park visitors, dressed up for dinner – black tie and ridiculously fancy dresses – all in the middle of the wilderness. We got our backcountry camping permit today from a no-nonsense Park Service Volunteer. He didn’t crack a smile as he quizzed us over the backcountry regulations. He asked us what we should do if a bison charged us. We were stumped. “Use the bear spray?” I guessed. “That might help, and RUN.” That might have come in useful yesterday.
 We met up with my parents at Canyon and went through their equipment weeding out the nonessentials. “Yes to extra wool socks, no on the 5 lbs. of extra granola, no to shampoo, a novel and an extra blanket…” I managed to pry about 5 spare flashlights from my father’s grip. I could imagine the headline; “Man dies after attempting to carry 20 lbs of flashlights into the wilderness.”

We watched the sunset over the canyon and revisited our wedding site.

An osprey nest on a pinnacle over the river.

This picture shows where the nest is.

Here is a little moss flower we found.

Bear Safari on Blacktail Plateau

We finished off our day with a bear safari. We decided to drive the six-mile Blacktail Plateau road and saw one grizzly on Mt. Washburn (see photo at left) and five or six black bear on the plateau.

On the way back we saw the grizzly on Washburn again. This time he was walking along a ridgeline above the road. As we watched, a man started out after him with an absurd amount of photographic equipment including the World’s Largest Tripod. From where we were we could see the bear and the man as he lost sight of the bear. Griz lumbered downhill toward Total Oblivious Guy in a yellow shirt, having a peaceful moment, admiring the view of the valley below. As he crossed the road, breaks shrieked, doors opened and cameras blossomed from every window.

You can see the grizzly heading toward the road in the photo at left. Totally Oblivious Guy finally turned around, just in time to see a Massive Grizzly walking toward him, and what did he do? Pulled out his camera and started taking pictures of course!! Meanwhile the World’s Largest Tripod was still wandering clumsily along the ridge searching for the Grizzly. People get excited about bison, they ooh and ahh over elk in velvet antlers, they love to watch the wolves, but the grizzlies will always we be the rock stars of Yellowstone.

Expedition to Crater Hills

This morning I found a cute little golden-green frog. I was happy to see him with so many frogs dying from the chytrid fungus all over the world.

We saw these bison cows and calf along the road between Madison and Old Faithful. We programmed the GPS for Sulphur Springs and bounded out across Hayden in search of Crater Hills.

I found this toad in the grass. Two or three bull bison loitered on the outskirts of the meadow and Jeff kept nervous watch on them as we neared a clump of trees. The trees were obviously a popular bison hangout. They’d beaten the crap out of the ones at the edge of the meadow. We wondered if it was part of a forest eradication program run by the buffalo in hopes of creating more grazing land. We worried momentarily over a suspicious pile of warm scat. Was it too big to be wolf scat? Was it big enough to be bear scat?
All so unnerving was the fact that about half the trees in the area had been toppled – probably from routine straight-line wind.

Then we were out of the woods standing at the base of a tiny roaring mountain. Promising springs and fumaroles puffed and hissed all around us. I couldn’t wait to start exploring. But before I could decide what direction to head, a dark cloud swooped in and unleashed on us - rain, hail, thunder, lightning and Jeff without his raincoat. So we huddled together and wondered if we were about to be struck by lightning or crushed by a falling tree. The storm broke as abruptly as it had begun and since we were soaked, we decided to head back to the car. We started back into the woods and hadn’t quite reached the trees when a formidable, hair-raising and very near ROAR came out to greet us. We froze and glanced around as the roaring and growling continued, convinced that we were about to meet a grizzly. (Remember we had seen a possible bear poo at the edge of the trees) Jeff unholstered the bear spray. After several horrible seconds, a HUGE dark shape lumbered out of the trees toward us. When I recognized it was a bull bison I laughed with relief. Sure, bison have been known to toss, stamp and gore people to death regularly, but in my mind they are still herbivores and slightly more trustworthy than grizzlies. So we carefully detoured around the enraged animal (bison HATE thunder) and back out across Hayden to the Element.

On the way I snapped this photo of a bison skull.
I’ll just have to make it back to Crater Hills on a sunny day.

Black Sand and Ravin' about Ravens

After Fern Cascades, we entertained ourselves walking the boardwalk at Black Sand Basin. We watched Cliff Geyser fill its basin and erupt on the bank of Iron Creek.

I spotted the now unmarked Handkerchief Pool alongside Rainbow Pool. You can see it as a tiny eruption in the center of this photo. It is unmarked because back in the day ladies used to throw their hankies in where they would be sucked into the subterranean plumbing whirled around and returned to the surface, freshly laundered. Rangers at the time encouraged this! Take a look: http://mms.nps.gov/yell/ofvec/exhibits/treasures/thermals/hotspring/handkerchief.htm

We also saw Emerald Pool. Isn’t it beautiful?

We watched two ravens playing for a long time. One raven had a big orange cheesy puff and the other wanted it very badly. He tried to snatch it away at first and when that didn’t work, he tried begging and acting generally pathetic. When that didn’t work, he flew off and came back with a candy wrapper, which he attempted to trade for the cheese puff.

This whole time the other raven was strutting around displaying his prize cheese puff as if to taunt his little brother.

I love ravens. They are so clever and entertaining.

Here is a raven eating dog food from the bed of a pickup truck at Old Faithful.

The park is very crowded this summer. I’ve never seen it this packed before – the boardwalks were overflowing at this Old Faithful eruption.