Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park Read online

  There are, of course, many other places in the park where you can see untrammeled thermal features. The Brimstone Basin is all the way to hell and gone out the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It seems to be little visited, but even features reasonably close to Old Faithful are not too crowded and are pleasant to visit. It just takes a little walking to get to them.

  Artists’ Paintpots

  THERE IS A PULL-OFF ON THE GRAND LOOP A little south of Norris, and a sign directing you to Artists’ Paintpots. It is a short, mostly level half-mile walk that gains some altitude at Paintpot Hill.

  If the geysers inspire awe—and they do—the paintpots generally make people laugh. They are the comedians in the pantheon of thermal features. Nathaniel Langford thought the mud in the pots looked like “thick paint.” He wrote that in the pots a “bubble would explode with a puff, emitting . . . a villainous smell.” He didn’t say that while some of the bubbles burst like boiling water, rather soundlessly, others break in a flatulent manner, creating a sound that invariably makes people laugh. You might be the world’s most sophisticated individual—it won’t matter. You’ll still laugh when the mud pot farts.

  The trail goes under some electrical wire strung up on poles—where’d that come from?—then proceeds slightly uphill. Steam rises out of a few holes in the ground, where water sloshes around deep inside. These fumaroles—I’m sorry about the nature of the extended metaphor here—sound like a giant’s toilet constantly flushing itself. A vague odor of rotten eggs colors the air in the vicinity of the fumaroles.

  Now geysers and fumaroles and mud pots all exist because of the molten rock seething just under the surface of the land, in the bowl of the hotspot’s martini glass, if you will. Rain and snowmelt percolate below the surface. This water becomes superheated and rises, as hot water will, toward the surface. It wants to be steam, but the pressure of the earth in various narrow columns and chimneys won’t let it. In those places where the earth opens above, the water flashes to steam and explodes into the air.

  This is how geysers work.

  Fumaroles, Lonely Planet Yellowstone says, are essentially dry geysers “bursting with heat but without a major water source, whose water boils away without reaching the surface.” In other words, these are thirsty geysers whose eruptions happen underground. What you see on the surface are odd-shaped holes in the ground, belching steam. Fumaroles may flush or roar, and when they roar, the sound is like that of a high wind approaching. They also burp out a lot of hydrogen sulfide, that rotten-egg smell that Nathaniel Langford found so “villainous.”

  Mud pots, says Lonely Planet Yellowstone, are “created when rock is dissolved by the sulfuric acid in groundwater to create . . . a form of clay.” The pots are colored by dissolved minerals, mostly iron and sulfur.

  A boardwalk winds through these thermal features, taking you directly past some of the best mud pots. One pond of mud looks like a very thick stew, all chalky gray and bubbling merrily away as steam and gas rise to the surface. The mud bubbles burst with the precise sound a human makes when relieving himself of gas. There are dozens of bubbles, all bursting at once and all throwing up dribs and drabs of color.

  The boardwalk then heads downhill, into a small basin. Small thermal streams run this way and that, fed by hot springs, which are composed of superheated water that rises to the surface without benefit of eruption. The hot pools, like the mud pots, derive their delicate colors—emerald green, cobalt blue—from dissolved minerals.

  Then you are in the Artists’ Paintpots, where more than half a dozen ponds full of colorful clay appear to boil flatulently. If an artist were to use these colors, he’d compose a picture in rusty reds and cornflower blues and chalky grays.

  On my last trip to these mud pots, a few other visitors strolled about the boardwalk, nudging one another and making jokes about the bathroom sounds. Then they were gone, and I was alone with the mud pots for over an hour, thinking about artists and hotspots as well as flatulence and the end of civilization as we know it.

  Monument Geyser Basin

  THIS IS THE ONLY “BASIN” I KNOW THAT REQUIRES a stiff uphill climb. The trailhead is located on the west side of the Gibbon River, at the Gibbon River pull-off.

  A sign reads ATTENTION HIKERS, and continues in a merry manner: WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND HIKING IN PARTIES OF 3 OR MORE PEOPLE AND STAYING ON MAINTAINED TRAILS.HIKING OFF-TRAIL INCREASES THE RISK OF ENCOUNTERING BEARS. And then, just in case the visitor hasn’t taken the point, the sign reads, in HUGE letters, THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF YOUR SAFETY. The admonition concludes, IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THIS SITUATION, YOU MAY CHOOSE TO HIKE ELSEWHERE.

  About twenty yards farther on the visitor is confronted by yet another sign that suggests, IF YOU ENCOUNTER A BEAR, STAY CALM. DO NOT RUN. Easy to say, more difficult to accomplish. MANY CHARGES, the sign advises, ARE BLUFF CHARGES. This seems to imply that, on occasion, bears charge with deadly intent.

  One day I came upon a young couple standing there, studying the sign, as if memorizing the suggestion that, in the face of a charging bear, one might want to SLOWLY DETOUR OR BACK AWAY. If a bear attacks, victims are advised to PLAY DEAD. DROP TO THE GROUND, LIFT YOUR LEGS TO YOUR CHEST, AND CLASP YOUR HANDS OVER THE BACK OF YOUR NECK. WEARING YOUR PACK WILL SHIELD YOUR BODY. Especially if it’s one of those bulletproof Kevlar ones.

  The young couple and I exchanged greetings. They were, it turned out, from Virginia and quite familiar with black bears. When they learned that I lived in the area, they asked me about grizzly bears. I told them the truth, that I’d seen quite a few, some from the safety of a vehicle, some while I was on foot. The bears I’d seen while on foot were always a goodly distance away, and I’d never feared greatly for my life.

  As we walked along, we passed one more sign, apparently posted for the dullest of the dull, the ones who simply refuse to “get it.” In huge letters the sign said, THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF YOUR SAFETY WHILE HIKING OR CAMPING IN BEAR COUNTRY. The advisory continued, DON’T TRAVEL ALONE (as I had been, until I met up with the couple perusing the signs). The sign said that it was a bad idea to travel after dark and that it was wise to USE CAUTION WHERE VISION IS OBSTRUCTED. Some of the advice seemed fairly self-evident: AVOID BEARS WHEN SEEN. Good thinking. NEVER APPROACH OR ATTEMPT TO FEED BEARS. I could do that.

  The three of us decided that the signs themselves were almost as scary as the possibility of a marauding bear. This was our way of whistling past the graveyard. WHEN CAMPING, the sign continued, DON’T CAMP IN AREAS FREQUENTED BY BEARS. D’oh! DON’T CARRY OR USE ODOROUS FOODS. Other advice included: SLEEP 100 YARDS FROM FOOD STORAGE AND COOKING AREAS. . . . USE A TREE TO HANG ALL FOOD, COOKING GEAR, AND TOILETRIES: HANG THIS STUFF TEN FEET UP AND FOUR FEET FROM THE TRUNK OF THE TREE. . . . WHEN FISHING, DISPOSE OF THE ENTRAILS OF THE FISH BY PUNCTURING ITS AIR BLADDER AND THROWING THE GUTS INTO DEEP WATER.

  One bit of information was not entirely obvious on its face: AVOID CARCASSES; BEARS OFTEN DEFEND THIS SOURCE OF FOOD.

  This sign reminded me of a bear-and-carcass story. I related it to the couple as we passed the final signs and walked the flat part of the trail at the edge of Gibbon Meadows. I told them about the time I fell asleep while watching a grizzly that was less than 200 yards away. There was a carcass involved in the story as well.

  This is the way it happened. I voluntarily went with a friend to watch a grizzly bear feast on the carcass of something that had once been a bison. This was off trail, out in the Hayden Valley, over on the other side of the Great Loop. The bear was in a small dell—call it a basin—in the middle of a huge Yellowstone meadow, very like the one the couple and I could see from the trail, Gibbon Meadows. As in Gibbon, there were almost no trees to climb in the Hayden Valley. My friend Tom Murphy (who makes an appearance in many of my Yellowstone experiences) had been out “dinking around” the day before. About four in the afternoon he spotted a grizzly feeding on the carcass of an adult bison. At sunset it began assiduously digging a hole. The muscular
hump on the grizzly’s back powered this steam-shovel action of its front legs. It took very little time—a matter of minutes—for the bear to bury the bison and cover it over with loose dirt. Tom knew his bear would dig the bison up the next day and feed again.

  That night he asked me if I wanted to go back up to the park to watch this culinary whoop-dee-do. I did, I really wanted to see it, but bears scare me badly, and I didn’t sleep at all that night. Not a wink. It hardly mattered because we were up well before dawn and had parked at a turn-off in the Hayden Valley very early indeed. The valley had once been an arm of Yellowstone Lake. Over the centuries very fine silt and clay were deposited on the lake bottom so that when the water retreated, the soil was almost impermeable, and very few trees grow there as a consequence. So, for instance, if you go there to see a ravenous grizzly bear devour the remains of the largest land animal in North America, you have no place to hide. There are no trees to climb. You are out in the open—and out of luck if the bear’s charge isn’t a bluff.

  Tom and I walked toward this bear, moving over marshy hillocks that sometimes quivered like jelly under our boots. We walked five miles, at a guess, through a herd of rutting bison, then dropped and belly-crawled the last few hundred yards until we came to the small indentation in the earth. Our only cover was a stand of sagebrush, maybe two and a half feet high. We hid there, upwind of the bear below, and I trembled in my parka.

  In this bear pit was a hole that looked like a big freshly dug grave. At sunrise the bear, which had been sleeping nearby, dug into the grave for a while, reached down, and with one paw—one paw!—flipped the bison up out of the hole and dropped it beside the grave. The carcass had to weigh well over a thousand pounds. The bear had buried it there for safekeeping.

  The grizzly began eating. He was an older male, with long white claws, and was obviously the boss bear in the neighborhood. No one challenged him for his meat, even though dozens of lesser bears must have smelled the carcass. Our griz ate for hours: he ate until his stomach became visibly distended. At about noon, in the heat of the day, he climbed into the empty grave, which must have been cooler, and took a nap. All I could see of him was his silly-looking bear-nose pointing up at the sky and a great curve of distended bear-belly projecting out of the hole.

  Because I’d spent an entirely sleepless night, slumber beckoned. It was almost seductive. I could feel my eyelids flicker. After an hour of watching the bear sleep, I myself—this is hard to admit—I myself fell asleep no more than 200 yards from a grizzly bear.

  I told my new friends about this incident as if it were a joke. It was supposed to be a funny story, but the young couple did not laugh. Rather they regarded me in a silent and suspicious manner. I am not sure whether they thought I was a moron or a liar. In any case, we continued on, trudging along silently.

  Relatively few people visit Monument Geyser Basin, but not, I think, because of all the signs warning of bears. There are many such signs located in dozens of “bear frequenting” areas in the park. No, the reason you can often have Monument Geyser Basin to yourself is because it is a stiff uphill climb, rising 640 feet in about half a mile. People would rather be mauled by a bear that take a stiff forty-five-minute uphill hike, or so it would seem.

  The first half-mile or so, before the trail turns uphill, we all looked out into Gibbon Meadows, where the deer and the antelope play. Actually, I’ve never seen an antelope in Gibbon Meadows and doubt they exist there. The antelope is the fastest animal in North America: they’ve been clocked at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. They naturally prefer open fields and meadows—in such places they can see for miles and simply outrun any approaching predator.

  What probably limited the antelope in the area is that this meadow of the Gibbon River, like the Hayden Valley, is full of little hillocks of marshy ground. It’s a bad track for a fast antelope. These speed demons can’t put the pedal to the metal on ground that quivers like jelly under the foot. Or more properly, under the hoof.

  The fact is, at Gibbon Meadows, hikers who are not busy encountering bears are more likely to see herds of elk and bison. Sometime there are moose. Late in the day sandhill cranes can often be heard making their eerie “loon on amphetamines” call. It sounds a bit like ululations of Arab women at war, that odd thing they do with their tongues.

  This is what I especially like about Yellowstone: the conjunction of meadow and mountain. It is a place where wildlife congregates. Part of the reason Yellowstone is the Serengeti Plain of North America is that all the creatures of the plain and the mountain converge in this landscape of marvels, a wonderland originally preserved solely for its thermal features. Back in 1872 no one knew that wildlife itself would eventually become so scarce that some folks would value it even more highly than all the thermal features contained in the park.

  The couple and I walked along the trail to Monument Geyser Basin, which moves parallel to the immense meadow for half a mile or so. Nearby fumaroles howled and flushed, belching out their distinctive villainous odor. We turned left and began the uphill grade that led to a long narrow basin filled with fumaroles and bubbling thermal ponds. The fires of 1988 had been particularly fierce near the basin, and whole forests of standing dead trees, either charred black or weathered gray, leaned against one another at odd angles.

  The eponymous Monument Geyser, which looks a bit like a Thermos bottle and is often called Thermal Bottle Geyser, is ten feet high. The cone of the geyser was formed from silica, rock dissolved in the molten bowels below Yellowstone, and then deposited with the erupting waters on the surface of the earth. Monument Geyser steams a bit and splashes some water, but most of the odd-shaped cones in the basin are inactive. Roger and Carol Anderson, in Yellowstone Day Hikes, write that “through the years, people have conceived of the most unusual images in these sinter (formed of silica) cones, giving them names like Sunning Seal, the Dog’s Head, and the Sperm Whale.”

  The young couple and I tried to pick out Dog’s Head and Sperm Whale, but most everything looked more or less like a sunning seal. The woman was the best of us: she saw alligators and penguins and ducks and Oprah Winfrey. Soon enough the couple decided they’d had enough. I elected to stay.

  There was a symphony in progress. Fumaroles were providing a constant bass, a roaring that played like the soundtrack of every documentary you’ve ever seen on Antarctica. Meanwhile, in a minor key, I listened to the sound of gently bubbling boiling water and the burble of a thermal spring, all interspersed with various birdcalls and the sigh of the wind though burned timber.

  The standing dead trees were silhouetted against perfectly blue sky. Those that had weathered the most were the color of tarnished pewter. Some still sported a few fire-shortened branches, twisted against the sky like arthritic fingers raised in supplication. Others were charcoal black and had lost all their branches. They leaned at odd angles, and many of them had lost their shape to the fire so that they looked like ebony totem poles, fire-scorched in such a way that one could see in them a screaming mouth, a tortured face, and empty burned-out eyes.

  I stayed alone in the basin for hours, listening to the symphony, examining the geyser cones, and contemplating the burned-out forest, all of which I thought of as the Art Out of Hell.

  Ice Lake

  ON THE WAY FROM NORRIS TO CANYON VILLAGE, up near the top of a hill, there is pull-out to Ice Lake and camp 4D3. What I particularly like about this very short walk is that Ice Lake camp 4D3 is totally wheelchair accessible. There is a boardwalk across the ditch by the side of the road, and the smooth wide dirt track is suitable for wheelchairs. I doubt if the camp is more than a quarter of a mile from the road. It has a handicapped-accessible toilet, appropriate tent sites, and a wonderful view of blue and frigid-looking Ice Lake.

  I strolled out around the lake, thinking about America. Is this a great country or what? Where else would the wilderness—or one lovely part of it, anyway—be made accessible in such a way that the disabled can spend entire sleepless nights w
orried about being eaten by a bear, just like any able-bodied hiker?

  The trail continued around the lake. The firestorm of 1988 was very fierce there. In places at the north end of the lake, for instance, I saw fallen dead trees more than two and three and sometimes four deep, forming a raggedy sort of fence. Someone—a ranger, of course—had done an awful lot of work with a chain saw just to make the trail walkable.

  I was going toward Grebe Lake, but a sign at the Ice Lake trailhead had said that this was a bad idea: there were bears frequenting Grebe Lake at the moment. Never mind. I didn’t have to come out at Grebe Lake. Bill Schneider’s Best Easy Day Hikes Yellowstone had informed me of a nifty shortcut that would let me avoid Grebe Lake altogether and drop me on the road about half a mile above my car. I had to ford the Little Gibbon River, which might have been a problem early in the year, but it was late September and the water was low. I just stepped across on the rocks.

  My problem was that it was getting dark. I needed to move. I had a headlamp—I always carry one—but I didn’t want to be out in bear country after dark. The trail was a little hard to find in the twilight, and I was moving through stands of silvery burned trees, many of which had fallen. New lodgepole pine, some of them twelve feet high, grew in the interstices of the ghost forest, so that there was a riot of green against the high silver of the decimated trees.

  The trail dropped down to the Little Gibbon River. There was another ford, a steep rise, and then I found myself looking down at a small waterfall on the river. It was a fall I’d never heard about, hidden away in a corner of sculpted yellow rock. Other people had certainly seen this fall. It was close to the road, after all, but it was well off the main trail, and here it was, cascading over slick rock, as if for me alone. I felt something expand inside my chest.