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Wyoming: Yellowstone National Park
🌋 About Yellowstone National Park
We finally made it to Yellowstone — and honestly, it felt only right to find out a bit about the place before we blundered into it like a couple of confused tourists with the wrong shoes on.
Yellowstone National Park was officially established when the U.S. Congress passed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, and President Ulysses S. Grant — Civil War general, occasional drinker, and 18th President of the United States — signed it into law on the 1st of March 1872. That made it not only the first National Park in the United States, but very possibly the first properly designated national park anywhere on earth. Which is rather impressive for a country that, at the time, was still very much arguing about whether trousers should have buttons or not.
Getting the whole thing up and running was, predictably, not entirely straightforward. The local population — ranchers, settlers, hunters, and various people who had perfectly good reasons for being there — weren’t especially keen on being told they no longer had any rights to the land. Funny that. And so, in the grand American tradition of sorting things out with the military, the U.S. Army was called in to manage the park. They did so from 1886 right through to 1916, when the newly created National Park Service finally took over and presumably told the soldiers they could stand down and go and find something else to argue about.
The park itself covers a frankly ludicrous 3,468.4 square miles — that’s 8,983 square kilometres for those of us who went metric somewhere around 1975 and never quite recovered. Within that enormous space you’ll find mountains, canyons, rivers, and lakes, all doing their scenic best to make you feel suitably small and inadequate. Yellowstone Lake sits at an elevation of 7,733 feet above sea level, making it one of the highest large lakes in North America, and it sits — and this is where it gets properly interesting — directly above the caldera of a supervolcano.
Yes. A supervolcano. The kind that, when it last had a proper eruption around 640,000 years ago, ejected roughly 1,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash into the atmosphere. To put that in perspective, Mount St. Helens in 1980 managed about one cubic kilometre. Yellowstone is essentially sitting on a geological loaded gun, and the whole park is still very much alive — hence all the geysers, hot springs, and bubbling mud pools that make the place look like something out of a particularly dramatic episode of Planet Earth.
We were very much looking forward to seeing it all. From a safe distance.
What to see?
🏔️ Yellowstone Lake
Let us be clear from the start — Yellowstone Lake is not just a large lake. It is the largest high-elevation lake in the whole of North America, sitting at a rather giddy 7,733 feet (2,357 metres) above sea level. To give that some perspective, that’s roughly the height of a small Alpine resort, except instead of overpriced fondue and smug skiers, you get geysers and extremely cold water. The lake stretches about 20 miles (32.2 km) from end to end and 14 miles (22.5 km) across, with a shoreline that winds on for 141 miles (227 km). We spent a good while just trying to take that in.
Every winter, without fail, usually sometime in late December or early January, the whole thing freezes solid. Not just a thin crust you might nervously poke with a walking stick — we’re talking ice that can be anywhere from a few inches thick to well over two feet in places. It stays that way until late May or early June, when it finally decides to thaw out. June. In some years, the lake is still frozen when summer has technically begun elsewhere. That tells you something about the character of this place.
Even when it does thaw, the water stays bitterly cold. The average temperature year-round is 41°F, which is 5°C, or — as any sane person would describe it — absolutely freezing. Swimming is not recommended, and we would be inclined to say that anyone who fancies a dip deserves what they get. Survival time in water this cold is estimated at somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. That is not a lot of time to regret your decisions.
The lake is also home to the largest population of wild cutthroat trout in North America, which raises a question that puzzled scientists for rather a long time. The cutthroat trout is a Pacific Ocean fish. So what on earth was it doing in a lake that drains eastward towards the Atlantic? For years, experts scratched their heads over this. The answer, as it turned out, was rather elegant. Scientists now believe that Yellowstone Lake once drained westward via Outlet Canyon and the Snake River, all the way to the Pacific. The fish, at some point in geological history, made their way across the Continental Divide through a place called Two Ocean Pass — where a small creek literally splits and flows in two different directions, one towards each ocean. It sounds made up, but it isn’t.
Sadly, things are rather more complicated these days. Lake trout — an entirely different species and not a native one — were illegally introduced into the lake at some point, and they are now a serious problem. They eat the cutthroat trout, compete with them for food, and breed far more effectively in deep water where the cutthroat cannot easily reach their eggs. The National Park Service has been waging a rather grim campaign against the lake trout for decades, spending millions of dollars netting and removing them. Progress has been made, but it remains an ongoing battle — the kind of environmental mess that starts with one person doing something idiotic and ends with generations of scientists cleaning it up.
If you could somehow drain the lake — and one imagines it would take a very long time and a very large plug — what you would find beneath it would look remarkably familiar. The geology underneath mirrors everything above ground: geysers, hot springs, deep canyons, and hydrothermal vents pushing superheated water up through cracks in the lakebed. Some of these underwater vents and fumaroles operate in conditions similar to those found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where volcanic activity creates extraordinary environments. Down there, far below the surface, nutrient-rich water produced by these vents supports a whole range of life that has no business existing in a frozen lake in Wyoming. Nature, it seems, does not particularly care what we think is reasonable.
🌊 West Thumb Geyser Basin
We pulled up at West Thumb Geyser Basin not entirely sure what to expect, and if we’re honest, the name alone sounds like something a GP might refer you to a specialist about. But there we were, on the south-western shore of Yellowstone Lake — one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America, sitting at around 7,730 feet above sea level — and the view was, to use a technical term, absolutely smashing.
West Thumb itself is actually a geologically distinct lobe of Yellowstone Lake, formed by a hydrothermal explosion roughly 174,000 years ago — because apparently Yellowstone doesn’t do anything by halves. The basin sits right on the lake’s edge, and in places the thermal features actually extend beneath the water itself, which means you’ve got boiling hot springs bubbling away just metres from an enormous, freezing cold lake. The contrast is frankly absurd, and yet somehow it works rather brilliantly as a spectacle.
Now, fair warning: if you’ve come here expecting the dramatic water-spewing theatrics you’ll find up at Old Faithful or the Upper Geyser Basin, you’re going to be mildly disappointed. There are no towering plumes here, no great jets of steam-driven water shooting skyward on a schedule you can set your watch by. West Thumb is more the quiet, contemplative cousin of Yellowstone’s more showy thermal areas — the one who reads poetry and doesn’t feel the need to make a fuss about it.
What you do get, however, are some genuinely beautiful hydrothermal pools and hot springs, many of them displaying that extraordinary range of vivid blues, greens, and oranges produced by heat-loving microorganisms called thermophiles. These microscopic organisms, which thrive in water temperatures that would dispatch the rest of us fairly promptly, were first seriously studied here in the 1960s and went on to have a rather outsized impact on modern science — including contributing to the development of the PCR technique used in DNA analysis. So yes, this lot are basically responsible for solving crimes on television. Good on them.
The thermal features here include the Abyss Pool, one of the deepest hot springs in Yellowstone at around 53 feet, with that impossible shade of deep blue that looks like someone’s dropped a Caribbean postcard into a science experiment. There’s also Fishing Cone, a small geyser cone that juts out into the lake itself, which was historically — and somewhat optimistically — used by anglers who would catch a fish in the cold lake and then boil it in the hot spring without even having to move. The National Park Service has since put a stop to this practice, which we suppose makes sense, though it does sound like exactly the sort of thing our grandfathers would have considered the pinnacle of efficiency.
We made our way around the roughly two-thirds of a mile trail that loops through the basin. It’s a well-maintained mix of packed dirt path and boardwalk, and importantly it’s fully wheelchair-friendly — a genuine relief, because some of the trails in Yellowstone are about as accessible as the top shelf in a supermarket. The path meanders at a civilised pace among the thermal features, close enough to feel the heat radiating off the ground and smell that distinctive sulphurous tang that follows you around Yellowstone like a mildly antisocial acquaintance.
The backdrop of Yellowstone Lake throughout the whole walk is really what elevates West Thumb from merely interesting to genuinely memorable. On a clear morning the lake was calm and blue, with the Absaroka Mountains visible along the far shore some twenty miles distant. It’s the sort of view that makes you feel briefly philosophical, before your knees remind you that you’re 60 and you’ve been walking since breakfast.
🌊 3. Midway Geyser Basin
We’ll be honest — when we first heard “Midway Geyser Basin,” we weren’t exactly expecting much. Midway. It’s not exactly a name that sets the pulse racing, is it? It sounds like something you’d find halfway between the services on the M6. But as it turned out, this modest-sounding little corner of Yellowstone’s southwestern reaches quietly delivered one of the most jaw-dropping things we’d ever clapped eyes on.
The Midway Geyser Basin is, technically speaking, the smallest of the three main geyser basins in this part of the park — sandwiched, as the name rather helpfully implies, between the Lower and Upper Geyser Basins. It doesn’t have the sheer quantity of features you’ll find elsewhere, but what it does have, it makes count. Quite spectacularly, as it happens.
The undisputed star of the show — and indeed one of the great highlights of the entire national park — is Grand Prismatic Spring. And for once, something lives up to the billing. This is a genuinely enormous oval pool, stretching some 370 feet across and plunging down to around 120 feet in depth, which makes it the largest hot spring in the United States and the third largest in the world. It was first recorded by European-American explorers in 1839, and was later properly surveyed and named during the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 — named, as you might expect, for the way sunlight splits through its brilliant colours like a prism.
What makes Grand Prismatic so extraordinary isn’t just the size — it’s the colour. Surrounding the deep, almost impossibly vivid blue of the central pool are rings of algae and heat-loving microbial mats in vivid shades of orange, yellow, green and red. These aren’t random splashes of colour; they’re living organisms called thermophiles and cyanobacteria, each species occupying the temperature band it’s most comfortable with, which is rather more organised than most things in nature manage. The outermost edges, where the water has cooled, blaze with the most intense oranges and reds. The effect is extraordinary — and from above, as the aerial photograph below shows, the whole thing looks like a giant blue star surrounded by a corona of fire.
The pool constantly bubbles and steams, sending up rolling clouds of hot mist that drift and swirl on the breeze. On a cooler day, these clouds can be so thick that the pool itself becomes frustratingly difficult to see properly — which is maddening when you’re standing right next to it. On the other hand, it does add a rather theatrical, otherworldly quality to the whole experience, and nobody was complaining too loudly.
A half-mile boardwalk trail winds partway around the spring, giving visitors a reasonable close-up view, past two considerably smaller but still rather attractive pools — Opal Pool and Turquoise Pool — before arriving at the adjacent crater of Excelsior Geyser. Now here’s a story. Excelsior was once, incredibly, the largest geyser on Earth — erupting in the 1880s with columns of water and steam said to reach 300 feet into the air. The eruptions were so violent and so sustained that they eventually destroyed the geyser’s own plumbing. By the 1890s, it had largely gone quiet, and hasn’t erupted properly since a brief, final rumble in 1985. What remains today is a vast, simmering, steaming pool — brooding and blue and looking rather sorry for itself, like a retired prize-fighter who once terrorised the world and now just sits in the corner. Still, it’s no slouch: even in its diminished state, the pool pumps out an astonishing 4,000 gallons of superheated water every single minute, which drains away in a series of colourful, algae-lined channels before tumbling into the Firehole River below.
It’s a lot to take in, frankly. And we were very glad we made the effort
🌊 4. Gibbon Falls
Driving around Yellowstone, you quickly develop a habit of pulling over every five minutes with your mouth hanging open. There is just so much to look at. One of the spots that genuinely stopped us in our tracks was Gibbon Falls, and the good news is that you barely have to make any effort at all to see it — it sits right alongside the Grand Loop Road, roughly five miles east of Madison Junction. Which, for those of us whose knees aren’t what they used to be, is something of a relief.
The falls themselves drop 84 feet down a rocky basalt cliff face, carrying the waters of the Gibbon River as they go. The Gibbon River, for what it’s worth, was named after John Gibbon, a U.S. Army general who passed through the region in 1872 — the very year Yellowstone became the world’s first national park, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on 1st March of that year. So the place has history, as well as impressive plumbing.
What makes Gibbon Falls particularly interesting — beyond the obvious fact that a large quantity of water is throwing itself off a cliff — is that the falls sit almost entirely within the caldera rim of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Yes, that supervolcano. The one that, if it ever decides to have a bad day, will apparently ruin everyone else’s day too, across most of the northern hemisphere. Standing next to a pretty waterfall while that thought rattles around your head does add a certain frisson to the experience.
The viewing area is right there from the road, so you can pull in, take your photographs, feel suitably insignificant in the face of nature, and be back in the car within fifteen minutes. We found it absolutely worth the stop
🌋 Norris Geyser Basin
We’d been to a fair few of Yellowstone’s thermal areas by this point, and thought we had a reasonable handle on what to expect. We were wrong. Norris Geyser Basin turned out to be something else entirely — the hottest, oldest, and frankly most unsettling patch of ground we visited in the entire park.
The numbers alone are enough to make you a bit queasy. A scientific drill hole sunk at Norris recorded a temperature of 459°F (237°C) at a depth of just 1,087 feet (326 metres) below the surface. That’s not deep at all — in geological terms, it’s practically the back garden. The result of all this subterranean fury is that almost nothing at Norris sits below the local boiling point of 199°F. For context, that’s the temperature at this particular elevation, slightly lower than the standard 212°F at sea level because of the altitude. Everything here, in other words, is essentially at full boil.
Geologists reckon Norris has been doing this for at least 115,000 years, which puts it comfortably in the “older than anything you can meaningfully imagine” category. That predates modern humans in North America by some margin. The other unusual thing about Norris, which distinguishes it from most of Yellowstone’s other thermal areas, is that the vast majority of its waters are acidic rather than alkaline. Acid geysers, it turns out, are genuinely rare on a global scale, and Norris has them in abundance. You’d never know it to look at them, but the chemistry bubbling away underfoot is quite unlike anything else in the park.
The star attraction is Steamboat Geyser, which holds the record as the tallest active geyser in the world. During a major eruption, it can throw water 300 to 400 feet (91 to 122 metres) into the air — roughly the height of a 30-storey building, if you need a frame of reference. Steamboat does erupt continuously in a minor fashion, but the big performances only come every few days, and there’s no predicting exactly when. You either get lucky or you don’t. We were somewhere in the middle — we saw it steaming impressively but didn’t catch the full show. Such is life.
What really got our attention, though, was the warning sign in the car park. After a major Steamboat eruption, the droplets that drift back down are acidic enough to damage the paintwork on your vehicle. The rangers and park staff who work at Norris apparently cover their cars as a matter of routine. We looked at our hire car, looked at the sign, and quietly moved it a bit further away. Whether it made any difference, we genuinely have no idea.
Also worth mentioning is Echinus Geyser, which has a pH of around 3.5 — roughly the same acidity as vinegar, or a can of fizzy drink. Cheerful thought.
The basin itself divides into two distinct sections. Porcelain Basin is the more dramatic of the two — completely barren of trees, which gives it a bleached, otherworldly quality. The colours across the ground shift between whites, yellows, pinks, and pale greys depending on the mineral content and the microbes living in the water (yes, things actually live in it). A three-quarter-mile (1.2-km) trail of bare ground and boardwalk loops through the area, and the noise — hissing, gurgling, the occasional deep thud from below — is constant. The smell is exactly what you’d expect. We didn’t linger over lunch.
Back Basin is altogether different in character. It’s more heavily wooded, with conifers scattered throughout, and the thermal features are dotted about rather than concentrated in one barren expanse. A 1.5-mile (2.4-km) trail of boardwalks and bare ground circles this part of the basin, taking you past geysers, hot springs, and fumaroles hidden among the trees. It’s quieter, a bit more mysterious, and in some ways more impressive for it.
Between the two, Norris covers a lot of ground — literally and figuratively. If you only have time for one thermal area on top of Old Faithful, this would be our suggestion
🌋 Mud Volcano Thermal Area
We pulled up at Mud Volcano feeling rather expectant. The name alone conjures something magnificent — a towering cone of rock hurling great gobfuls of mud hundreds of feet skyward, with perhaps a dramatic rumbling soundtrack and a whiff of genuine peril. Yellowstone, after all, has form for that sort of thing.
We were, of course, completely wrong.
To get here, we drove 5.9 miles north of Fishing Bridge Junction — or, if you’re coming the other way, 9.7 miles south of Canyon Junction along the Canyon to Fishing Bridge section of the Grand Loop Road. It’s a straightforward enough drive, and you’ll find the whole area sits directly above one of the Yellowstone Volcano’s hydrothermal vents, which does at least explain why everything smells so appalling.
The Mud Volcano itself turned out to be a squelching pit of brownish, bubbling mud belching sulphurous gases into the surrounding air with all the charm of a blocked drain. It’s not exactly the Sistine Chapel. That said, it has genuine geological interest — this whole thermal area has been active for thousands of years, and the pools and mud pots here are extraordinarily acidic. The Sulphur Cauldron, one of the area’s star features, registers an average pH of just 1.2 — roughly equivalent to the stomach acid currently digesting whatever you had for lunch. Lovely.
Happily, most of the better attractions are conveniently clustered just outside the car park. There’s the Mud Volcano itself, naturally, plus Mud Cauldron and Mud Geyser within easy walking distance. We also spotted a couple of bison ambling about near the thermal features, apparently quite unbothered by the sulphur fumes. Bison, it turns out, either have terrible taste or very different priorities to the rest of us.
The highlight of the area, though — and genuinely worth the visit — was Dragon’s Mouth Spring, a short walk from the main car park. Over centuries, boiling water has slowly carved out a cavern in the hillside, and the result is rather extraordinary. Stand at the entrance and you hear it before you see it: a deep, rhythmic roaring as superheated water surges in and out of the cave, echoing off the rocky walls. It really does sound as though something large and thoroughly bad-tempered is living in there. We did not go in to check
🌋 Mammoth Hot Springs — Where the Earth Gets Seriously Creative
We’d been driving through the northern reaches of Yellowstone National Park, which is roughly the size of a small European country and about as unpredictable as British summer weather, when we finally pulled into Mammoth Hot Springs. And honestly, nothing quite prepares you for it.
Unlike most of Yellowstone’s famous thermal features — your geysers, your mud pots, your various bubbling horrors — Mammoth is built on limestone rather than the harder silica-rich rock that dominates elsewhere in the park. That seemingly minor geological detail turns out to matter enormously. Limestone is comparatively soft stuff, which means the travertine terraces here grow at a rate that would astonish a geologist. Travertine formations elsewhere in Yellowstone take ages to build up; here, they’re practically sprinting by comparison. The result is something that looks like a giant wedding cake left out in the rain, except considerably more magnificent and considerably less edible.
The whole process starts, as most things in Yellowstone tend to, with what’s sitting underneath your feet — specifically a partially molten magma chamber of frankly alarming proportions. This chamber is the remnant of a cataclysmic volcanic explosion that occurred around 600,000 years ago. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the same period when our early human ancestors were wandering around Africa with only slightly more hair than we have now, utterly unaware that North America was having something of a bad day.
Each year, rain and snowmelt seep down through the ground. The water starts cold — this is Wyoming, after all — but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Deep underground, the heat radiating up from the magma chamber warms it considerably, and the water begins moving through what geologists rather elegantly call a “plumbing system” — a network of fissures and channels that would cost an absolute fortune to replumb. As it travels, the hot water mingles with gases rich in carbon dioxide rising up from below. Some of that carbon dioxide dissolves into the water, forming a weak carbonic acid solution. Not strong enough to worry about, but more than enough to cause significant geological mischief.
In the Mammoth area specifically, this mildly acidic hot water rises up through layers of limestone, dissolving large quantities of it along the way. Think of it as the world’s slowest and most elaborate dissolution experiment — one that’s been running continuously since long before anyone thought to look. When the water finally reaches the surface and hits the open air, carbon dioxide escapes from the solution. And here’s where it gets interesting: without the carbon dioxide to keep everything in solution, the dissolved limestone has nowhere to go. It reverts to solid mineral form, depositing itself layer by layer as the brilliant white travertine that builds these extraordinary terraces.
Lower Terrace Boardwalk
The Lower Terrace Boardwalk is accessible directly from the car park or from Grand Loop Road, which is handy because the car park can get quite busy. Americans do love their national parks, to their very great credit.
The first thing that stops you in your tracks — literally, because several other tourists had stopped in front of us without warning, which is apparently mandatory in national parks — is Liberty Cap. This is a hot spring cone that rises some 37 feet into the air, which is roughly the height of a four-storey building and considerably more interesting to look at. It was named in 1871 by members of the Hayden Geological Survey — the expedition that formally catalogued many of Yellowstone’s features — because of its resemblance to the peaked caps worn by French revolutionaries in the late 18th century. Those caps, incidentally, were themselves modelled on the ancient Phrygian cap, a symbol of freedom worn by freed slaves in the Roman Empire. So there’s rather more history packed into that cone than you might initially expect.
The cone shape itself formed because, for perhaps hundreds of years, the hot spring’s internal plumbing maintained a continuous, high-pressure flow — enough pressure to push water to considerable height. Over that extraordinary stretch of time, mineral deposits simply accumulated, layer upon layer, building the cone from the bottom up. Eventually the pressure dropped or the plumbing shifted, as it tends to do here, and the spring went dormant. What’s left is this solitary, slightly surreal pillar standing in the middle of the terrace like a geological exclamation mark.
Minerva Spring was another favourite of ours, and not just because the name sounds considerably more dignified than “that bubbling chalky thing over there.” It’s the range of colours that gets you — oranges, yellows, browns and whites created by heat-loving microorganisms called thermophiles, which have presumably adapted to living in near-boiling water because they enjoy being contrary. The travertine formations here are particularly intricate, all rippled edges and tiered pools.
What’s rather fascinating is that Minerva Spring has been anything but reliable. Records have been kept since the 1890s, which was when Yellowstone was beginning to attract serious scientific attention following its establishment as America’s first national park in 1872. The spring was completely dry in the early 1900s — silent, drained, apparently finished — but then quietly started flowing again by 1951. Nobody told it to. It just did. Yellowstone operates on its own schedule, and really, you’ve got to respect that in a landscape
🏔️ Upper Terraces
We took the Upper Terrace Drive — a one-way road that winds its way for about 1.5 miles through a genuinely otherworldly landscape of steaming, bubbling, mineral-crusted springs before looping back for a final half-mile to the car park. The parking area sits right alongside the boardwalk, which is reassuringly good news if, like us, you’ve already done rather more walking than your knees had bargained for that morning.
What greets you up here is a collection of formations that would look completely at home in a science fiction film, and yet here they all are, entirely real and entirely free of CGI. The Upper Terraces take in Prospect Terrace, New Highland Terrace, Orange Spring Mound, Bath Lake, White Elephant Back Terrace, and Angel Terrace — a roll call of names that sounds like it was put together by a Victorian explorer who’d had a very long day and was running out of ideas.
Orange Spring Mound is exactly what it sounds like — a mound, and orange. That vivid rusty-amber colour comes not from the minerals themselves, though there are plenty of those, but from the communities of heat-loving bacteria and algae that thrive in the warm, mineral-rich water. These microscopic organisms — thermophiles, if you want to sound clever at dinner — produce pigments that paint the mound in shades ranging from deep burnt orange to pale yellow, depending on temperature and water chemistry. The shape of the mound is equally down to biology and geology working together in slow motion. The water here flows at an almost glacially unhurried pace, depositing travertine — a form of limestone — in gentle, accumulating layers over thousands of years. The result is a rounded, lumpen form that looks rather like nature tried to make a soufflé and ran out of patience halfway through.
Angel Terrace, meanwhile, is the drama queen of the Upper Terraces. In its active periods it puts on quite a show, producing the sort of brilliant white travertine formations that make you reach for your camera and then immediately feel inadequate about your photography skills. The white colour comes from relatively pure calcium carbonate, and the vivid splashes of colour threading through it — pinks, yellows, greens — are again the work of those astonishing microorganisms doing what they do best. But Angel Terrace is famously unpredictable. It can be spectacularly alive one season and almost entirely dormant the next, depending on shifts in the underground hydrothermal plumbing that nobody can really forecast with any confidence. We were, we felt, rather lucky to catch it on a good day.
🌋 Old Faithful Geyser
We’d heard about Old Faithful long before we got anywhere near it, which is either a testament to its fame or a warning about how much time you can spend reading travel guides instead of actually going places. It was first discovered in 1870 by the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition — a rather grand name for a group of blokes essentially wandering around Wyoming on horseback, pointing at things and writing them down. They named it Old Faithful on account of its regular, somewhat predictable eruptions, which was apparently considered quite remarkable at the time. Since Yellowstone became the world’s first national park in 1872 — a genuinely pioneering idea that the Americans deserve enormous credit for — Old Faithful has erupted more than a million times. A million. You’ve got to admire that kind of dedication.
The geyser sits in Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin, tucked into the southwest corner of the park. The viewing area is, to its considerable credit, extremely well set up. There’s proper bench seating so you don’t have to stand around like a lemon for an hour, a large car park that actually has space in it if you arrive at a sensible time, and a ranger station where the staff diligently track each eruption’s timing, height, and duration in order to predict the next one. It’s like a very specialised form of meteorology, except it actually works.
And here’s the thing — it really does work. Old Faithful currently erupts around twenty times a day, and the rangers can predict each eruption with a ninety per cent confidence rate, within a ten-minute window, based purely on how long and how high the previous eruption was. The mathematical average between eruptions sits at around seventy-four minutes, though it can range anywhere from sixty to a hundred and ten minutes depending on what the geyser feels like doing. In terms of height, it shoots somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and eighty feet into the air, averaging around a hundred and thirty to a hundred and forty feet, and each eruption lasts between one and a half to five minutes. Standing there watching it go off is one of those rare occasions when the reality actually lives up to the reputation, which doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.
What we hadn’t fully appreciated beforehand was that Old Faithful isn’t some lonely geyser standing in isolation — it’s part of an entire basin full of the things. There are several other geysers dotted around the same area, and you can visit them all by following a well-maintained boardwalk trail that loops through the basin. We’d recommend doing this. It adds a good hour or so to your visit, but you get a proper sense of just how extraordinary the geology beneath your feet actually is.
While you’re in the area, it’s also very much worth having a look at the Old Faithful Inn, which sits just a short walk from the geyser itself. It was designed by a young architect called Robert C. Reamer and completed in 1904 at a cost of a hundred and forty thousand dollars — which sounds modest until you remember what a hundred and forty thousand dollars bought you in 1904. The building is enormous: a vast, rambling, entirely timber construction that rises up out of the landscape in a way that genuinely takes you by surprise. The lobby alone soars to seventy-six feet, all exposed logs and rough-hewn woodwork, and it resembles nothing so much as a rustic, wooden Hogwarts School of Magic — which is either wonderful or slightly alarming depending on your feelings about boarding schools. The inn has a hundred and forty rooms, remains one of the largest log-structure buildings in the entire world, and is a designated National Historic Landmark. They really don’t build them like that anymore. Mostly because nobody would be mad enough to try
🏞️ The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone & Yellowstone Falls
Right then. If you’ve ever stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and felt your stomach quietly try to relocate itself somewhere safer, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about here. This is not a gentle stroll to a nice view. This is nature doing something genuinely outrageous, and doing it with complete indifference to how small it makes you feel.
The canyon itself was carved by the Yellowstone River over hundreds of thousands of years, though the dramatic gorge we see today owes much of its character to volcanic activity and hydrothermal erosion following the last great glacial retreat around 14,000 years ago. The river simply kept going — cutting down through the rhyolite rock, which had been weakened by hydrothermal activity into something closer to the consistency of wet chalk — until it had chiselled out a gorge stretching roughly 20 miles long, up to 1,000 feet deep, and as wide as 4,000 feet in places. The canyon walls glow in brilliant shades of yellow, orange, red and white — the result of iron oxidation in the hydrothermally altered rock. It is, frankly, absurd.
There are three sets of falls along this stretch, though it’s the two main events — the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls — that everyone comes to see, and quite rightly so.
The Lower Falls is the big one. At 308 feet, it’s the tallest waterfall in the entire park, and to put that into some sort of perspective that actually means something: it’s more than twice the height of Niagara Falls. Twice. Niagara, which has had its own gift shops, honeymoon hotels and barrel-related misadventures since the early 19th century, and is generally considered rather impressive. The Lower Falls would eat it for breakfast. The volume of water thundering over the edge varies enormously depending on the time of year — at peak snowmelt in late spring, around 63,500 gallons per second roar over the brink. By autumn, when the flows have calmed considerably, that drops to around 5,000 gallons per second. Still a lot of water, obviously. Just somewhat less terrifying.
The Upper Falls, at 109 feet, gets rather less attention — a bit like the dependable middle child who nobody makes quite as much fuss about. Which is a shame, because standing on the viewing platform at the Brink of the Upper Falls, with that wall of churning, surging water crashing past you at close range, is genuinely extraordinary. It looks every bit as powerful as it is, which is saying something.
Both the North Rim and South Rim trails give you access to a series of viewpoints that offer different perspectives on the canyon and the river far below. The trails are well-maintained by American standards — which is to say they are perfectly good, though some of the viewpoints do involve enough steps to remind you that you are sixty and perhaps should have done more exercise in the 1990s. Artist Point on the South Rim is widely regarded as the finest vantage point in the park, and it’s hard to argue. The combination of the yellow canyon walls, the white roar of the Lower Falls and the deep green of the surrounding forest is, to use the technical term, quite something.
We did it all, shuffled along at a reasonable pace, took far too many photographs that will never adequately capture what we actually saw, and agreed that it was worth every one of those steps.
🐺 Hayden and Lamar Valleys
We’d heard Lamar Valley described as “America’s Serengeti,” and honestly, after spending a morning there, we weren’t about to argue. Tucked into the northeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the valley runs alongside the Lamar River through a broad, sweeping landscape of open grassland and rolling hills that feels almost impossibly large. On a clear morning, with the light coming in low over the Absaroka Range to the east, it looked like something out of a David Attenborough documentary. Which was rather the point.
The valley has been a wildlife corridor for thousands of years, long before Yellowstone was formally established as the world’s first national park back in 1872. The Lamar River itself carves through ancient volcanic terrain, and the wide floodplain it created has always attracted large animals in serious numbers. Native American tribes — including the Shoshone and Bannock — hunted bison here for centuries. These days, thankfully, the hunting is done exclusively with telephoto lenses.
The wolves are the big draw. Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction programme, which began in 1995 after the animals had been absent from the park for some seventy years, is rightly regarded as one of the most significant wildlife conservation stories of the twentieth century. The grey wolves were brought in from Canada — fourteen of them initially — and released into the Lamar Valley, which had the right mix of prey and open terrain. What followed was nothing short of remarkable. The wolf population grew, the elk herds changed their behaviour (they stopped hanging about in river valleys and became more cautious, which allowed vegetation to recover), and the whole ecosystem began to shift in ways that scientists are still writing papers about. It’s called a trophic cascade, apparently, which sounds very grand for what is essentially wolves frightening elk into moving around more.
These days, the most celebrated residents are the Junction Butte pack and the Lamar Canyon pack. Wolf enthusiasts — a dedicated, thermos-clutching, slightly obsessive breed — gather at the roadside pullouts most mornings armed with spotting scopes and rather more patience than we possessed. They track individual wolves by their radio collars and can identify them by markings and behaviour. We chatted to one fellow who had been coming back every year since 2003. He knew the family histories of individual wolves going back multiple generations. We nodded along politely and pretended we could see what he was pointing at.
Beyond the wolves, Lamar is heaving with wildlife. Enormous herds of American bison — technically not buffalo, though everyone calls them that, and they’re not particularly fussed — lumber across the valley floor in numbers that genuinely take your breath away. At peak season, thousands of them may be moving through at once, and the road through the valley simply has to wait. Bison have right of way in Yellowstone. This is not a metaphor.
Pronghorn — the fastest land animal in the Western Hemisphere and capable of sustaining speeds of around 55 miles per hour, which puts most sports cars to shame — graze in the open grasslands alongside the bison. Grizzly bears patrol the valley fringes, particularly in spring when the elk calves arrive, which is nature being nature and best observed from a reasonable distance. Bald eagles circle overhead with the studied nonchalance of creatures that know exactly how impressive they look. Osprey work the river. Coyotes trot along the road margins looking shifty. Badgers — proper, chunky, no-nonsense badgers — pop up occasionally to remind you that not everything here is enormous.
The road through the valley is lined with pullouts at regular intervals, and the advice is simple: if you spot anything moving, pull in at the nearest one. Do not, under any circumstances, stop in the middle of the road. We watched people do exactly this. It does not make you popular. Pull over, get the binoculars out, and give yourself a proper chance to take it all in. The Lamar Valley rewards patience, and rather a lot of it.
🦌 Wildlife Viewing
One of the genuinely brilliant things about Yellowstone — and there are quite a few, even if the sheer size of the place is slightly terrifying — is the wildlife. The park is absolutely heaving with it. We’re not talking the odd squirrel and a hopeful robin. We mean proper, large, could-actually-kill-you wildlife.
The animals you’ll see most reliably are bison and elk. The bison in particular are everywhere, and the Hayden Valley — a broad, open grassland valley carved out by glaciers during the last ice age, roughly in the centre of the park — is where you’ll find them in their greatest numbers. The valley has been prime bison territory for thousands of years, and the Shoshone and other Native American peoples hunted here long before anyone thought to build a national park around it. These days the bison roam more or less wherever they please, which is both magnificent and occasionally deeply inconvenient when a herd decides your road is their road.
If you’re lucky — and we mean properly lucky, not “found a fiver in an old coat” lucky — you might also spot black bears, grizzly bears, coyotes, and wolves. Wolf sightings in particular feel like a genuine gift. Wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone by the 1920s through a combination of hunting and government culling programmes, and weren’t reintroduced until 1995, when 14 grey wolves were brought in from Canada in a move that proved controversial at the time but has since become one of the great conservation success stories of the 20th century. Today there are around 100 wolves in the park across several packs, but spotting one still requires patience, binoculars, and a willingness to stand in a cold car park at dawn looking faintly ridiculous.
Which brings us to a useful tip. As you drive around the park, you’ll regularly come across clusters of cars pulled over on the verge with their hazard lights on and people peering purposefully into the middle distance. This is what’s known locally as a “wildlife jam,” and it almost always means something worth seeing is nearby. Don’t just drive past in a huffy British manner — pull over and have a look. You’ll thank yourself for it.
That said, do bring binoculars or, better still, a spotting scope. Bears and wolves are rarely obliging enough to pose at close range, and getting close is very much not advisable. The park service is quite firm on this point. The animal responsible for the most human injuries in Yellowstone isn’t the bear or the wolf — it’s the bison. These things look like particularly shaggy cows, but they can run at 35 mph and weigh upwards of 3,000 lbs, which means a bison in a bad mood is essentially a hairy sports car aimed at your ribcage. Keep your distance, use your optics, and everyone goes home happy
Planning your visit
📍 Location
Yellowstone National Park is situated primarily in the north-west corner of Wyoming, USA, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. It is the world’s first national park, established in 1872, and spans more than 2.2 million acres — larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The park straddles the Rocky Mountains and encompasses a vast volcanic plateau, earning it the nickname “the world’s greatest concentration of geothermal wonders.” Its nearest gateway towns include West Yellowstone (Montana), Gardiner (Montana), Cody (Wyoming) and Jackson (Wyoming).
🌐 Website
The official National Park Service website for Yellowstone is: https://www.nps.gov/yell (opens in new tab)
📞 Contact
Telephone (recorded park information): +1 307-344-7381 Road updates: +1 307-344-2117 Geyser predictions: +1 307-344-2751 (option 2) Emergencies: 911
Postal address: Yellowstone National Park P.O. Box 168 Yellowstone National Park WY 82190-0168 USA
Email (general enquiries): https://www.nps.gov/common/utilities/sendmail/sendemail.cfm?o=72A0F797A2FAA1BA9BA91EAEED1EA4A36693569C12B18389&r=/yell/contacts.htm (opens in new tab)
Please note that due to the high volume of correspondence received, email responses may take five to ten business days.
🎟️ Entry Fees
All fees listed are in US dollars and are valid for seven days, granting access to both Yellowstone and the adjacent Grand Teton National Park. Visitors should retain their receipt on each entry.
Private non-commercial vehicle (includes all passengers): $35.00 Motorcycle or snowmobile (per individual): $30.00 Single entry on foot, bicycle or skis: $20.00 Annual park pass (valid for 12 months from purchase): $80.00 America the Beautiful Annual Pass (all federal recreation sites): $80.00 America the Beautiful Senior Pass (one-time purchase, age 62+): $10.00 America the Beautiful Access Pass (for those with permanent disabilities): Free
Children aged 15 and under are not charged an entrance fee. Non-US residents aged 16 and over are subject to an additional $100 non-resident fee. Passes may be purchased in advance online via Recreation.gov or at any park entrance station upon arrival.
🕐 Opening Times
Yellowstone National Park is open year-round, though access varies significantly by entrance and season.
The North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana) and the North-east Entrance are open to wheeled vehicles throughout the year, though winter tyres or chains may be required during periods of heavy snowfall.
The West Entrance typically opens to wheeled vehicles from the third Friday in April through to the first Sunday in November. It then becomes available to over-snow vehicles (snowmobiles and snowcoaches) from mid-December through to mid-March.
The East Entrance is open to wheeled vehicles from the first Friday in May through to the first Sunday in November, and to over-snow vehicles from 22nd December through to 1st March, subject to road and avalanche conditions.
The South Entrance is open to wheeled vehicles from the second Friday in May through to the first Sunday in November, and to over-snow vehicles from 15th December through to 15th March.
Operating dates for individual facilities — including visitor centres, campgrounds, restaurants and lodges — vary within these periods. It is strongly advisable to check current operating dates on the official website before travelling, particularly during spring and autumn shoulder seasons.
🏔️ About the Park
Yellowstone sits atop one of the world’s largest active volcanic systems, and this geological drama shapes everything above ground. The park contains more than 10,000 geothermal features — geysers, hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles — representing roughly half of all such features on earth. It is a landscape of extraordinary scale and variety, where boiling pools of vivid colour sit alongside mountain forests, sweeping river valleys and one of North America’s most significant wildlife ecosystems.
💦 Geothermal Highlights
Old Faithful is Yellowstone’s most celebrated geyser and one of the most reliably predictable in the world, having erupted with remarkable consistency for centuries. It is located in the Upper Geyser Basin, which contains the largest concentration of active geysers on the planet — more than 150 geysers packed into a single square mile, connected by an accessible network of boardwalks.
The Grand Prismatic Spring, found in the Midway Geyser Basin, is the park’s largest hot spring and is widely regarded as its most visually stunning feature. Its extraordinary rings of vivid colour — from deep blue at the centre through turquoise, green, yellow and orange — are produced by heat-loving microbial mats. The short Midway Geyser Basin boardwalk trail (approximately 0.7 miles) passes directly alongside it, and a viewpoint on the nearby Fairy Falls Trail offers a remarkable aerial perspective.
Norris Geyser Basin is Yellowstone’s hottest and oldest active thermal area. It is home to Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest active geyser, capable of erupting to heights of between 90 and 120 metres. The basin is divided into two walkable zones: Porcelain Basin and Back Basin.
Mammoth Hot Springs, in the park’s northern reaches, presents an entirely different spectacle: a series of striking travertine terraces formed by hot water depositing calcium carbonate as it flows across the hillside. The terraces are in constant flux, and their appearance changes noticeably over time. Upper and lower terrace boardwalk trails allow visitors to explore around 50 individual springs.
🦌 Wildlife
Yellowstone supports one of the most intact temperate-zone wildlife ecosystems remaining anywhere on earth. Bison are the park’s most iconic residents, and herds may be encountered throughout the park, particularly in Hayden Valley and Lamar Valley.
Lamar Valley, in the park’s remote north-eastern corner, is frequently described as “America’s Serengeti” owing to the remarkable density and diversity of its wildlife. Grey wolves — reintroduced to the park in 1995 — are regularly spotted here alongside grizzly bears, pronghorn antelope, elk, bald eagles and coyotes. Dawn and dusk are the most productive times for wildlife observation.
Hayden Valley, a broad grassland north of Yellowstone Lake, is the park’s other premier wildlife-watching area. It is home to the largest gathering of free-roaming bison in the world and also offers regular sightings of grizzlies, wolves, moose and osprey. Visitors should remain at least 100 yards (91 metres) from bears and wolves, and at least 25 yards (23 metres) from all other wildlife at all times.
🏞️ Landscapes and Scenery
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of the park’s most dramatic non-geothermal attractions. This 1,200-foot (366-metre) canyon, carved by the Yellowstone River, exposes vivid yellow and orange rock walls and is home to two spectacular waterfalls: the Upper Falls (33 metres) and the Lower Falls (93 metres). Vantage points including Artist Point and Lookout Point offer superb views, while Uncle Tom’s Trail descends via a staircase into the canyon itself.
Yellowstone Lake is the largest high-altitude lake in North America, sitting at an elevation of approximately 2,357 metres. Spanning 20 miles by 14 miles with over 100 miles of shoreline, it reaches depths of more than 97 metres. The lake offers boating, guided fishing tours and scenic cruises, and is ringed by mountains, meadows and forests.
🥾 Activities
Yellowstone offers an enormous range of activities suited to all levels of fitness and interest. The park’s boardwalk systems allow visitors of all abilities to experience its most famous thermal features safely at close quarters. There are more than 900 miles of hiking trails, ranging from short, accessible nature walks to multi-day backcountry routes. Backcountry permits are required for overnight hiking and horseback trips.
Wildlife watching tours, geology excursions, stagecoach rides and ranger-led programmes are all available within the park. In winter, guided snowcoach and snowmobile tours provide access to areas otherwise unreachable, and the dramatic contrast of rising steam against snow-covered landscapes offers a uniquely atmospheric experience.
Visitors are reminded that Yellowstone’s geothermal features are extremely dangerous. Water in geysers and hot springs can cause severe burns. Visitors must stay on designated boardwalks and trails at all times and keep hands and feet well clear of the water.
Best time to visit Wyoming
🌸 Spring (April–May)
Spring in Wyoming is a season of transition and reward for the patient traveller. Temperatures range from around 4°C to 18°C, though higher elevations remain cold and snow lingers well into May in places such as Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Rain is common at lower altitudes, and mountain passes may still be closed or subject to sudden closures. The advantage is a landscape coming alive: wildflowers begin to carpet valley floors, rivers run high and fast with snowmelt, and wildlife is highly active — bison calves appear in Yellowstone, bears emerge from hibernation, and bird migration is at its peak. Crowds are minimal compared to summer, making it easier to secure accommodation and move freely through the parks. It is an ideal season for photographers and wildlife enthusiasts willing to accept changeable conditions.
What to pack: Waterproof hiking boots, a mid-layer fleece, a packable down jacket, waterproof trousers, layering base tops, a rain jacket, sun cream (UV is strong at altitude), binoculars, and a warm hat and gloves for early mornings and higher elevations.
☀️ Summer (June–August)
Summer is Wyoming’s most popular season and for good reason. Temperatures are warm and often hot, reaching 25–30°C in the valleys, while the mountains remain pleasantly cool. All park roads are open, accommodation is plentiful, and the full range of outdoor activities — hiking, rafting, horse riding, fly fishing, and wildlife watching — is available. Grand Teton National Park is breathtaking under clear blue skies, with the Teton Range reflected in the Snake River. Yellowstone is in full swing, with geysers, hot springs, and abundant wildlife on display. July brings festivals across the state, including the famous Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. The trade-off is significant: this is peak season, and roads, campsites, and lodges fill quickly. Afternoon thunderstorms are frequent, particularly in July and August, so morning starts are advisable. Book months in advance.
What to pack: Lightweight hiking layers, a waterproof shell jacket, UV-protective clothing, a sun hat, high-SPF sun cream, insect repellent, sturdy trail shoes or hiking boots, a refillable water bottle, and a light fleece for evenings.
🍂 Autumn (September–October)
Autumn is arguably Wyoming’s finest season. Temperatures cool to between 0°C and 18°C, crowds thin dramatically after the Labour Day weekend in early September, and the landscape undergoes a spectacular transformation. Aspen trees turn vivid gold across hillsides and valleys — particularly striking in the Bridger-Teton National Forest and around Jackson Hole. September is prime elk rut season in Grand Teton, with bulls bugling at dawn and dusk, one of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles in North America. Bears are active and feeding heavily before hibernation, making wildlife sightings excellent throughout Yellowstone. Prices drop noticeably after the summer peak, and accommodation is more readily available. By late October, early snow becomes likely, and some facilities begin to close. Timing a visit for mid-September to mid-October offers the best balance of colour, wildlife, weather, and value.
What to pack: Waterproof hiking boots, thermal base layers, a warm mid-layer, a windproof and waterproof outer shell, hat and gloves, warm socks, binoculars for wildlife, and a camera for the foliage.
❄️ Winter (November–March)
Winter in Wyoming is dramatic, demanding, and deeply rewarding for those who seek it out. Temperatures frequently drop to -15°C or colder in January and February, heavy snowfall transforms the landscape, and many roads and facilities close entirely. However, winter reveals a different side of Wyoming that few visitors experience. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is one of the finest ski destinations in North America, offering expert terrain and reliable snowpack. Yellowstone becomes an otherworldly scene of steaming geothermal features set against frozen silence, accessible by guided snowcoach or snowmobile tour — the only way to enter the interior of the park in winter. Bison and wolves are more easily spotted against white snowfields. Costs and crowds are low outside of the ski resorts themselves, where prices peak in January and February.
What to pack: Heavyweight thermal base layers, insulated waterproof trousers, a down-filled parka, ski gloves or heavyweight mittens, a balaclava and wool hat, wool socks, insulated waterproof boots rated to -25°C or below, hand warmers, and UV-rated goggles or sunglasses for snow glare.
🗓️ The Best Time to Visit Wyoming
For most visitors, late September strikes the ideal balance across every measure. The summer crowds have gone, accommodation prices have fallen, and yet the weather remains crisp and manageable. The elk rut delivers one of the most electrifying wildlife encounters anywhere in the world, aspen gold is at its peak, and clear autumn light makes for exceptional photography. Serious hikers and outdoor adventurers are best served by July, when all trails are accessible and conditions are reliably good, despite the crowds. Those seeking true solitude and a genuinely remote encounter with the landscape should consider a guided winter visit to Yellowstone — an experience that has very few rivals anywhere. Spring, while underrated, is best reserved for wildlife enthusiasts with flexible schedules willing to accept unpredictable conditions. Whenever you go, Wyoming rewards those who venture beyond the car window.
Where to stay?
There are places to stay inside Yellowstone itself, including campsites and lodging (throughout the Park), including lodge rooms and cabins. These places fill up quickly so you will need to book well in advance. Generally, if you plan to bring a motorhome or 5th wheel trailer and park inside the park your option will be limited unless your trailer or motorhome is closer to 30ft.
Outside the Yellowstone, there are plenty of options.
- From the South Entrance, you will have to travel a bit further. The nearest town of any size is Jackson, Wyoming, a travel destination in its own right – which is about 60 miles (or about an hours drive). Here you’ll find plenty of hotels and AirBnbs.
- The closest city to the East Entrance is Cody, Wyoming, which is about 57 miles out. There are a few campgrounds between the entrance and Cody but if you want apartments or hotels then you’ll have to hit Cody.
- The North Entrance is very close to one of Yellowstone’s main features Mammouth Hotsprings. Just outside the entrance is the town Gardiner, a small place but that has a few hotels and B&Bs.
- Close to West Entrance is the small city of West Yellowstone. As you might expect with its proximity to the National Park there are plenty of hotels and bed and breakfasts to choose from.
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