Thursday the 21st of July will be known in the US as the day that four Dutch adolescents entered Yellowstone National Park. We entered this geological heaven from the north, coming across the small town of Mammoth Hot Springs First. We bought ourselves a place on the campsite (all the campgrounds are full around noon everyday so we have to grab every change for a spot) before exploring the hotsprings which gave the town its name. The lovely sulphur (rotten eggs) smell accompanied us as we walked through the terraces made by the precipitation of minerals from the hot springs water. The lovely colors on the wet parts of terraces were created by bacteria, so the signs told us over and over again. Somewhere along the afternoon we came across the Backcountry office were we planned a backcountry trip for the following two days. We finished the day by hiking up a mountain just outside of town to clear our heads from the sulphur and enjoined a great view over the Northern part of Yellowstone. Even the snowy peaks of the Tetons way down south were visible.
On Friday morning we made our preperations for the backcountry trip which would take us to a campsite along the way to a nice peak. With fully packed backpacks we hiked to the campsite through the burned forests created by the big forest fire of ’88 (36% of the park burned down in that fire). After setting up our tents we tried to hike to Trilobite lake but lost the trail in all the chaos created by the new interactive song ‘ei ei ei, gebakken ei’ (egg egg egg, fried egg). After warming ourselves by a campfire, we tried to sleep through the cold night with mixed succes.
At breakfast we inspected our packs for food and came to the stunning conclusion that our food (a factor that killed a lot of our backpack trips already) wasnt sufficient enough to maintain four people for a whole day. So we decided that Nienke and me (Frans) would head back without climbing the mountain, graciously offering our lunch to Sander and Jasper. We arrived back at the Hoff around ten in the morning, in time for a cup of coffee as I forgot my cafeine shots too. The rest of the day we hang around our campsite and in Mammoth Hot Springs writing postcards before heading back to the trailhead to pick up Jasper and Sander.
Sunday was skype and groceries day. After these exciting things we headed out to Canyon Village, more south and east in Yellowstone. Canyon village is named after, taadaa, the Canyon the Yellowstone River created. It was since May we met a canyon and the return to this geomorphic feature was heartbreaking. The Yellowstone River plummits down from the big Caldera into softer layers of volcanic ash, thereby creating two amazing waterfalls and a pretty deep canyon. Deeply impressed and memory cards full of pictures, we returned to the campsite to dream about a river of jus d’orange (as Herman van Veen describes in one of his songs) roaring through the canyon.
The day after we had a quiet ‘tourist’ day in which we visited (by car) a number of the geologic oddities of Yellowstone. Late in the afternoon we were trying to find a campsite, but somehow Yellowstone doesn’t have sufficient camping spots for the crowd of people which visit the park during the high season and consequently, every camping was completely full. Luckily, we could squeeze the Hoff in on a campsite which was operated by the national park service and the day after we went to Grand Teton National Park which lies just south of Yellowstone. This park consists of a 80 km long mountain range which rises 2000 meters from a completely flat plain. For our nerdy geology friends back in Holland, the Tetons (boobs in French) are formed along a normal fault which pushed the rocks west of the fault up relative to the terrain east of the fault. Glaciers subsequently filled the plain with sediment, creating a flat plain with some moraines on it.
Anyway, we went hiking in a canyon with pretty nice view with the four of us and the day after, Frans and Sander went to Jackson Town to do laundries and groceries (this is Jasper writing by the way) and Nienke and I went for a fantastic hike to Solitude Lake with awesome views on the Grand Teton range behind us. After 30 km of hiking, we were pretty tired and went for pizza while the other two waited in the Hoff (we didn’t have any water left so they couldn’t cook until we were back on the campsite). On Saturday, the four of us hiked to yet another lake which lay in between white peaks and provided us once again with pretty nice views of the Grand Teton. On the way down, Sanders knee went out of the pipe permanently so his hiking days in America are over, unfortunately.. The timing couldn’t be better though, because in three days Frans and Sander will be going back to Edmonton by bus while Nienke and I will be exploring Glacier National Park for another 6 days before driving back to Edmonton as well and saying a heartbreaking farewell to our faithful Hoff.
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