Yellowstone Itinerary - advice needed

Hi

We will be leaving Red Lodge via Beartooth highway on Friday 26th June. We plan to get up early that day so we can drive the Beartooth in the morning and hopefully see some wildlife. We would like to do an easy/moderate hike. Any suggestions? The rest of the day we will travel the Beartooth and visit the Tower Roosevelt area before booking into Canyon Lodge for 4 nights.

Day 1 in YNP - We will explore the Canyon area - Artist Point, Point Sublime. Possibly do Ribbon Lake or Mt Washburn hike?

Day 2 - Old Faithful, Madison/Norris area. Obviously see Old Faithful then take to the boardwalks to visit other Geysers in that area. Then move North towards Fairy Falls and Sentinel Meadows. Visit Fountain Paint Pot, Norris Geyser Basin, etc...

Day 3 - Mammoth Hot Springs area, down to Norris. Any easy/moderate hikes we must try and do?

Day 4 - Drive to Lake Village - is there anything really to see and do here? Then drive South out of the Park to spend 2 nights at Jackson.

Any suggestions regarding the above planned trip? I%26#39;m not sure whether I am overplanning some days but I would prefer to have a full day planned with what we could see then to get home and realise that we potentially missed something. I would prefer to have to miss things than think, what are we going to do now???

Ideally we would love to see a Bear in it%26#39;s natural environment but appreciate that this is unlikely. Where are the best places to wildilfe spot? What time of the day or night should we aim to be at these places?

What is the situation with road closures in YNP? Is it still possible to do the North loop and South loop or will we have to keep driving over the same pieces of road?

Sorry for all the questions but we only have 3 full days to cram as much YNP in as we can. I appreciate that we will only see a small amount but it is better than nothing! Any advice you could give me would be fantastic. I can%26#39;t wait, less than 6 weeks to go...

Yellowstone Itinerary - advice needed

Are you in good physical shape and accustomed to high altitudes? Beartooth pass is 10,974 feet (3,345 meters) and much of the Beartooth Plateau is near 3000 meters high which will make hiking there difficult.

You will be entering the park at the northeast corner and driving through the Lamar Valley on your way to Canyon. You will almost certainly see animals in the Lamar because of the wide open expanse with food for the grazing animals which in turn bring in the predators.

As you drive through the area, watch for groups of cars stopped along the road and people with binoculars and spotting scopes. This is your best clue of animals of special interest, be it wolves, bighorn sheep or bears. Many of the people with spotting scopes will let you have a look if you don%26#39;t have your own. As you turn toward Canyon at Roosevelt Junction, keep your eyes open for animals here too and again watch for a group of people stopped. Dunraven Pass area seems to be attractive to grizzly bears because of the vegetation on the slopes. (grizzlys are omnivores and spend a lot of time grazing)

All the roads in Yellowstone should be open when you are there but there may be some delays due to the construction.

I hope you get to hike Mt. Washburn. There are 2 routes you can take, the one from Dunraven Pass and the Old Chittenden Road. We took the Chittenden road and found that it was pretty open so we had good views as we climbed. Watch for bighorn sheep and bears as you climb. Take a look at the webcam on Mt. Washburn to get an idea of the view you get from there.

nps.gov/archive/…index.htm

Yellowstone Itinerary - advice needed

As for short hikes in the Beartooth Pass area the following are my recommendations:

Island Park Campground (25.8 miles east of Cooke City or just a bit east of the ';Top of the World Store';) has a fantastic, well-traveled trail that goes along Island Lake, Night Lake and numerous smaller lakes. You can go as far as you want and turn around. The views are spectacular and the trail is very easy to walk. My daughter, 10 year old grandson, %26amp; I hiked it last August and went back about 3 1/2 miles before turning around. You can go as far as you want and turn around. There is one wide creek you have to cross at the beginning. Take sandals to put on for the crossing just in case the water is too high for rock hopping. If you do have to wade across in sandals its not dangerous. When we were there the the last week of July we needed to use sandals but when we went back the 2nd week in August we were able to easily rock hop across (though I%26#39;ve rock hopped across the creek in early July in the past years- this last year was unusual in the late snow runoff).

Another really nice hike starts at the Clarks Fork Trailhead (3.4 miles east of Cooke City). The first part of it is a historical (wheelchair accessible paved) trail head that leads to where a powerplant was built in early 1900%26#39;s. It is well worth the stop especially to get some walking in. If you want to you can cross a bridge and hike the trail to Kersey Lake which is only 1 1/2 miles down the trail. This trail is very well-traveled (its called ';The Beaten Path'; because its the trail used to hike 26 miles over the mountains. My daughter and a friend hiked the 26 miles mid August). She wanted to take my grandson and I there after we hiked Island Park but we ran out of time. She said to Kersey Lake was an easy hike especially if you%26#39;re just carrying a day pack with water/snacks. My goal is to get into good enough shape this year to make the 26 mile hike with her in August (it will be our big birthday celebration- I%26#39;m turning 50 and she%26#39;s turning 30 this year!)

Another very easy but beautiful trail is Crazy Creek about 11 miles east of Cooke City. Its not marked and most people drive by it before they realize its a trailhead. You cross a very long and high bridge over the creek and just east of the bridge is long pullout. Cross the highway and walk just a short distance to a foot bridge over the creek and falls. If you want you can take the trail as far as you want uphill following the creek. This trail is more strenuous then the above trails but you just take your time. I%26#39;ve hiked up about 100 yards and come back down. There are some really huge boulders right next to the creek that you can walk out on and get the neatest pictures with the creek/falls as background.

There are a lot of trails near the top of the pass but since it tends to be windy there so we don%26#39;t hike them a whole lot.

Another neat thing to do if you have time is visit the Clay Butte Fire Lookout just east of Cooke City. There is a sign at the turnoff but its not as well marked as it should be. You drive up a dirt/gravel bumpy switchback road to the top of a hill where there is an old fire lookout that is now an interpretive center. It is manned by a volunteer and you can go inside and look around. The views from the top are amazing. In my 30+ years of going over Beartooth Pass this last August was the first time we%26#39;ve stopped there. There is a functioning fire lookout inside YNP that you can hike up to but this one you can drive to and park right next to it.

If you are able to, and want to get some hikes in, plan for the majority of the day for the pass. Without stopping for hikes you can easily go over it, even with stops for pictures, in 4-6 hours. As many times as we%26#39;ve gone over it when my daughter was young and now my grandson, neither of them (and myself) have ever grown tired of it. I don%26#39;t stop anymore for just scenery pics cuz I have tons of them but I always stop for wildlife pics and hiking.

If you go to my profile there are some pictures of the trail at Island Lake Campground. I made a mistake on one pic and wrote Island Park when I should have written Island Lake. The one of me fording the creek is at Beartooth Lake Trail Head which is about 5 miles west of Island Lake. Its a beautiful trail but not as well marked as the Island Lake Trail. You can also see what the top of Beartooth Pass looked like last year on June 26th went my grandson and I went over it for a week of camping in YNP. Last year was an unusually wet and cool spring. It was the first time in a long time that I%26#39;ve seen that much snow and runoff in streams that late. If the pass opens up next weekend I%26#39;m thinking of going over it for a quick day trip. I%26#39;ll let you know what the snow looks like at the top.

Deb