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| | | Hot Springs and Geysers and Bears Oh My, WY | | | |
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Hot Springs and Geysers and Bears Oh My, WY
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| Hiking | 4.47 Miles |
162 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.47 Miles | 2 Hrs 27 Mns | | 2.39 mph |
| 162 ft AEG | 35 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | West Thumb Geyser Basin (0.92 miles): Did a Figure-8 route through this area. This requires walking on an elevated boardwalk among numerous hot (and boiling) springs on the shore of Yellowstone Lake. The pools contained many colors, from pastel to deep blue to orange. Every hot spring looked impossibly deep, had abundant steam rising from the water on an 85° day, and demonstrated some degree of bubbling or boiling. Someone had lost a hat to one of the boiling springs. Fascinating area, especially with the peaceful lake in the background. Then we walked along the lake, checking out the hot springs immediately adjacent to and within the lake. Abyss Pool and Black Pool were particularly interesting.
Old Faithful to Morning Glory Pool Loop (3.55 miles). Arrived at Old Faithful 10 minutes before it was scheduled to erupt. It eventually erupted 10 minutes later than scheduled. Worth it. We then proceeded along the boardwalk 1.9 miles to Morning Glory Pool, which has exceptional colors. We passed at least 10 other geysers along the way. Two were continuously erupting, with water and mist spraying everywhere. Grand Geyser was scheduled to erupt about 20 minutes from the time we passed by it, and had a crowd of at least 70 people sitting on the boardwalk, waiting for the show. When we reached Morning Glory Pool, we were the only ones there. We spent some time admiring it, then took a different route back. The same crowd was still waiting for Grand Geyser to erupt, and it eventually did, approximately 5 minutes after we had passed it on the way back. We could see the towering spray of water from a quarter mile away. We passed by Castle Geyser, which was also scheduled to erupt soon, and had a crowd of 30 people around it, but the mosquitoes were becoming irritating, so we headed to Old Faithful Inn for the buffet, which was excellent.
Overall a very cool, unique experience walking among these steaming craters and otherworldly colors. It was fascinating to see so many hot springs and geysers, which surpassed my expectations. There were a lot of people, but they were dispersed enough that it didn't really bother us. There were signs everywhere warning about bears, but we didn't see any there, probably due to the high human population, almost all of whom were armed with bear spray. |
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