SHOSHONE LAKE – YELLOWSTONE NP
CDT Day 99: 33 miles/53 km
CDT SOBO Mile 982.0 – 1015.0
Wednesday July 24, 2019
What is going on with mosquitos in Yellowstone? Hammer joked that maybe along with other wildlife they are protected here. Extraordinary numbers and activity greeted us as we broke camp in the dark. We hiked through old burnt forest with lots of fallen logs to step over and around.
It was a pretty uninteresting 16 mile introduction to Yellowstone NP. We’ve visited Yellowstone before so we knew what to expect. Now we joked that we were being ushered through the servants entry.
It was pretty exciting to quite suddenly emerge into the full Yellowstone tourist experience. It was great to have thousands of people to share the mosquitoes with.
It is still a jaw dropping amazement to see the hot springs with the incredible colours and water clarity. The true nature of this planet we call home is on display in this wonderland.
We got to the Old Faithful backcountry rangers office around 12pm and within 15 minutes had a camping permit with our allocated campsites. Super friendly park rangers, it was all very efficient.
We got lunch at the General Store and sat outside waiting for the Old Faithful geyser to blow. We had seen it before but it’s still exciting when it happens.
It was tempting to hang around with the other park visitors and enjoy this wonderland but we had many more miles before we made camp. So we left before Old Faithful geyser erupted. Back on trail we took a detour to another geyser, The Lone Star, hoping to see it erupt. But no luck here, although we did see a smaller one erupt almost right on trail later in the afternoon.
It was a mostly nice afternoon of hiking, passing active hot springs, walking along crystal clear creeks and the magnificent and huge Shoshone Lake. The only unpleasant part of the afternoon was walking through a muddy section that was ankle deep and very sucky along the swampy section that lead to the lake.
We had a crossing of Moose Creek just before we made camp. It was wider then the other creeks we crossed in the afternoon and was flowing quite swiftly. We made it across just as it started to get dark. Hammer filtered some water and we got to camp well after dark. Such a relief to get horizontal.
