Yellowstone Adventures Part 2

After a spectacularly great dinner at the Old Faithful Inn we were ready for another trail Friday morning.

Fairy Falls 17.75k 100m elev gain

I wore different shoes for this - my Brooks trail runners.  I have an idea shoes might still be the key to my ITBS.

Very early on this trail we found a lot of hot springs bubbling away, it is so incredible to see these things without being surrounded by crowds.  In fact, we had this trail entirely to ourselves pretty much the whole time.

The trail crosses through an area of hot springs and runoff before crossing a marsh.

The Falls are just to my left in this picture.  We took a detour first to Imperial geyser, another backcountry feature we had all to ourselves.  It erupted every 3 or 4 mins and the steam was lovely and warm.  In hindsight shorts were maybe not ideal attire today - we even had a light hail shower early on.

There is no better sound than that of boiling mud plip plopping out the ground!

Time to visit the Falls!

It started to get busy shortly after we arrived so off we went back up the valley.  The run deteriorated into a walk/run by now once again due to knee issues.  I still got much further in better shape than the previous day though.

This guy was about 50 yards away as we passed through the edge of some woods.

And we saw a few of these beautiful little guys.

The sun came out and it got much warmer on the way back so we were able to run sections.  We took a final detour along the Firehole River to see more springs and came across the bones of a bison at the bottom of this one. It was about 5 metres deep and I can't say the edge looked too stable, the spring had cut under it by a good couple of feet.

It's true you can escape the huge Yellowstone crowds just by following a trail, remarkable.  We had an outstanding time today.