Rewind...Day 4 Honeymoon

Headed to Tower campground, one of my favorites in Yellowstone. Nestled alongside a mountain stream in a high valley and subject to cool breezes, it was absolutely perfect.

Home sweet home complete with man made door mat.

We hard boiled some eggs for breakfast.

This is where you see a lot of buffalo in the park.

Werd up Buff Da Billz.

We got our first dose of many thermal features of the park on the way at Mud Geyser basin.

Mud Geyser

Sulfur smells dominated the air here. (Who farted?)

Dragon's Tongue Spring

A Small mud pot with microbes all around the rim.

This sign constantly reminded us what happened to poor little Timmy, and that being scalded to death like a few people are every year hurts.

Lots of pigments in the guys growing around the springs area.

The walks in Yellowstone are constantly being destroyed by thermal movements, but at least lumber isn't in short supply here.

We set up got ice and supplies for the day and then headed off for our next round of adventure. We decided to hike Mt Washburn from Dunraven Pass. We decided on this route because it seemed that the switchback offered would afford a good view as the climbing was steep and the land would drop below us. Also our original intention to get a little extra mileage out of this out and back, and at 3.1 miles would be our first good test of hiking at altitude. The trail from Dunraven pass was actually an old road grade that in places had progressed to more of a single track hike.

Right from the paring lot this hike reminds you that the grade will be constantly going up.

Up a small valley and Washburn is on the upper right.

Looking back down on where we hiked from steeper terrain.

The final 1/2 mile of trail traverses a very cool spine, somehow like 50 years ago they were able to pave sections of this road. Landslides forced them to make another road up the back of the mtn with a much friendlier grade, so this road is progressively falling off the mountainside.

The horse flies were absolutely awful until about 9500 ft where I was hoping they all asphyxiated and dropped dead. They were slow though so the competition between Abby and I to rack up the insect body count raged on till we were clear of the pesky little buggers.

As we hiked up through the high alpine meadows there were huge beautiful fields of flowers that seemed to stretch endlessly through the valley.

Lots of these yellow guys.

Some blue guys.

Lichens, symbiotic associations of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont), grow everywhere even at the top of the mtn these guys were doing just fine.

More flower power.

As we got higher, the occasional rock escarpments gave us breath taking views of the land below to our south, and leftover snow pack was fun to play around in. At the top we toured one of the only actively manned fire towers still in Yellowstone, noting several formation on maps there on our horizon and the big forest fire itself.

These two are for you Dave.

Yes we did take one without sunglasses (for the grandmothers) but we thought this one was cooler.

The southeast edge of the fire.

We learned the ranger lived up there none stop for 3.5 months of the year in between snows and was restocked every two weeks. His abode on top of the tower was packed with many comforts of home to keep him from getting lonely and the daily visitors I think helped cure that as well. Being the geek I was I asked him about some of the equipment he ran and got some good explanations about some of the things’ functions that remained mysterious to me. After a little convincing, which I don’t know how I did it, I was able to get Abby to concede to hike off the backside of the mtn to the road on the other side, with the prospect of hitch hiking back up to Dunraven Pass.

Last year was a record snow year so there was still a lot of snow. Notice the red color in this snow.

The color is caused by a red pigmented cyanobacteria that lives on receding Alpine snows and glaciers. Sometimes refered to as "watermelon snow"

The barron back slope.

Looking back up the ridge you can see the tower and a snow field.

If the forest is going to ever grow back here, it's taking its sweet merry time. There were no young saplings to be seen anywhere.

It was a little shorter to the parking area on this side of the mtn but the terrain was much different. Where there was high alpine forest on the other side this side had only high altitude meadows that stretched quite some distance. Some small groves of trees burnt out as a testament to the fires that swept through here some time ago. Here were pummeled by the sun’s full force in the open as well as winds whipping across the open ridgeline. We arrived at the parking area to find that we had another good mile to go before we hit the main road. This is where the fun began. Hitch hiking is hard, and we tried in vain for 45 min to get a ride as we walked down the improved gravel road. After the first few min I looked back to find Abby just stopping and smiling at cars as they went by and I had to explain the whole thumb thing to her. We tried hiking with her in front of me and back but it seemed people would have none of the two sketchy figures on the side of the road. After making it back to the road I prepared myself for what I thought would be the inevitable 6 mile hike by me to Dunraven Pass to get the Van. We found a pullout for a scenic overlook about ½ mile up the road and made on last ditch effort to get a ride. Finally! College girls and ecology grad students doing research at that, stopped to give us a ride and we couldn’t have been more thankful, as our dogs were barking by now. We had a brief "nature geek out session" in the 15 min drive back to the pass. Abby learned that her shoes did not fit well and that when you feel a hot spot you need to stop. Her reward for trudging through the heat and pain on her foot was a nice fat blister I feared would derail our plans for more day hikes and possibly the summit attempt on Grand Teton the following week. After we found our way to the car we drove to "THE GRAND CANYON" (of Yellowstone) to check out Yellowstone falls via the Uncle Tom Trail, with lots of steps and people freaking out about the heights everywhere.

An awkward pose on a busy platform.

Yellowstone Falls

And again from Artist Point. (we never seemed to hit any light right for the fals we hiked to)

70 down 500 to go.

Abby and I were tired but it was nice to see people that had gotten off a tour bus suffering for a change instead of us with close to 10 miles of hiking for the day. (which we found to be a lot if you hike this amount in sucession several days in a row) At Artist Point we got another good view of the falls and ran into our first tour bus crowd so this visit was brief and we were missing the slopes of a much less populated Mt.Washburn. We stopped at Upper falls picnic ground at the end of the day as the Sun was starting to go down to find it completely deserted…perfect. We took our solar shower and behind the latrine was a tree perfectly suited for a solar shower rinse. After our showers we decided we would treat ourselves so we went back to the canyon village and ordered some huge American Burgers with fries and indulged our appetites. Abby also got a 5 dollar shake much like the one from Pulp Fiction but I only got one sip of that thing before it was destroyed so all I can say is it was pretty good. We met a couple from western Mass at the bar and talked a bit. I did not envy their crowed hotel where they were staying all week and having to drive vast distances. We ended up missing the wolf ranger program at Tower that evening but the burgers were worth it and we own "In the Valley of the wolves" we purchased from PBS last year.