CDT Days 95-97 – Yellowstone National Park

This stretch of the trail took us into a Yellowstone National Park, our second national park on the CDT.

Day 95 – Mile 1927.3 – NOBOS, SOBOS & horse parties

Today turned out to be a social day on the trail. We saw Tex and Bud, who are NOBOS like us (northbound hikers). We also saw over 10 SOBOS (southbound hikers), including a German couple who we chatted with for awhile and plan to meet up with this fall when we’re back in Germany. And we saw some horses and riders out camping and fishing. It was nice to have some people to chat with. The highlight of today was Two Ocean Creek, which splits into two creeks — one which drains to the Pacific Ocean and one which drains to the Atlantic Ocean. Pretty neat. We had some large creek crossings today. The first big one was icy cold and higher than my knees. The cold was painful on the feet. When our shoes and socks were finally dry, another big creek crossing appeared. We saw some small snakes today near some streams. This evening we also heard elk near our tent making their crazy elk screaming noises. -R

Day 96 – Mile 1956.1 – Yellowstone!

The highlight of today’s hike was our entrance into Yellowstone National Park in the morning. On our way there it rained and rained and rained. We were pretty cold and miserable, but right when we crossed the park boundary there was a ranger station with a covered front porch that we decided to warm up on. There were some other hikers there too, so we all enjoyed a very long lunch break complete with coffee and comraderie. Shortly after we arrived, the sun came out! Still, we took our time getting going again. In Yellowstone we had to reserve our campsites ahead of time, so after the long lunch break we had to move very fast to get to our site. We did 20 miles post-lunch with virtually no breaks. Fortunately the trail is pretty flat here so it wasn’t too bad. While hiking we saw a porcupine! Neither of us had ever seen one before. As we approached camp it started raining again, but our spirits were lifted when we spotted steam vents or geysers (not sure which) just beyond our site. We are camped on the shore of a lake that is somewhat warm from Yellowstone’s thermal activity, but we got here too late to go swimming. Our campsite was crowded with six other CDT hikers, but chatting as we all cooked and ate was nice. -T

Day 97 – Mile 1988.1 – Bathtub stream soaking

We were motivated to get moving this morning. After a mile and a half, we got to our first destination of the day… A bathtub temperature stream. We hopped in and soaked for almost an hour. The water temperature was 100°F! The stream is heated by geysers. It was super foggy out and there was also lots of steam coming off the stream. We enjoyed two coffees while soaking. It was amazing!! We got back to hiking and the fog finally cleared up revealing sun, which stuck around for the rest of the day! We walked past lots of geysers right next to the trail at different points throughout day. It was super neat. One geyser we saw shot out boiling water about once every minute! After lunch we also walked past a nice, big lake and took a quick swim. The only downside of the day was all of the large stream crossings. Our feet were wet and soggy all day. At around 8 pm after hiking over 30 miles, we made it to Old Faithful Village. We enjoyed dinner at the buffet and slept at the inn. There is a permit system for camping in the Yellowstone backcountry, and there were no camping spaces available on the CDT near Old Faithful Village. -R