I have wanted to do this hike in Yellowstone for a long time. There were a couple things that made it difficult. One was mosquitoes. I have heard the mosquitoes are bad and I get eaten alive whenever there are mosquitoes. Second, getting to the trail is kind of a pain (actually it's a big pain but I didn't know that before, just that it was over two hours away and a lot of dirt road). Third, it's kind of long. 17 miles according to AllTrails, though we ended up with 18 total. 17 miles is not that big of a deal, but it's flat. I know you are probably thinking that would be better, but flat makes me want to run. And I have not been conditioned to run 17 miles for awhile. I really enjoy hiking up and running down, and that's not what this is. There are two big waterfalls I have wanted to do, this one and one close by called Dunanda Falls. We had planned Dunanda last September and we all bailed because September is so busy and it's hard to leave everything behind for a long day.
Sherri had a friend from California (living in Utah now) coming up to visit and wanted to do a hike, so she planned this one and invited the rest of us to come. Unfortunately it was on a Saturday, and not just any Saturday, but Pioneer Day Saturday when we are in Utah every single year. I was bummed but didn't see how I could make it work. BUT things kept coming up, Dylan had high adventure and he wasn't going to be back in time to come with us on Friday. Then my brother couldn't get work off on Friday (we usually spend the day in Bear Lake with them, or at least in Logan). So they were going to drive up Saturday morning. The Jr/Member golf tournament was also scheduled that day and Ryan wanted to play in it with Kaden since Kaden has been taking lessons at the club this summer. We started thinking about leaving our house at 7am on Saturday just to go watch the little parade in Newton and visit with my family for an hour or two. It gets really hot and everyone gets cranky and wants to leave after that and it just didn't seem worth it to me to miss all the things we would miss, leave early and only be there for a couple hours. So I cancelled. I had a hard time because it's the only time I see my brothers in the summer (though I did see Brian in June). Jeff's kids are all older now and two are graduated so it gets harder and harder to get together with everyone but I know if I stop putting in the effort, it just won't happen. So it was a hard decision but I still felt like it was the right one. And on the plus side, I was home for the hike!!
We stayed the night at Sherri's cabin, just for fun, not because it was any closer. Tracy was Sherri's friend and she brought a friend Leah. And Julie and I came too. Party! We had fun chatting way too late. I did not sleep well. That's not too uncommon on hike days with 5am wake up calls, but this day was particularly bad. Not sure why.
Then we drove for like almost two hours to realize google maps was telling us to park and walk three more miles for our trailhead... what the heck! We had no service, but because I have downloaded maps on my trail apps I was able to look at what I thought were dirt roads and find out we had gone pretty far on the wrong road. I think it took us a full hour more than it should have. We had to go back on the dirt road, then go on another dirt road, ignore google maps as it tried to tell us to take a longer route, and finally found the really stupid dirt "road" that led us to the trail head. This road was the worst! It was so narrow that Sherri's husband's truck was getting scraped by branches on both sides. There were huge craters in the road, around bends and up and down hills. It was nuts. If we had run into oncoming traffic, I don't know what we would've done because I don't see how we could've backed up and there was no place to pull off the road either. It's crazy to think this trail is so popular and the road to get there is bananas. I don't know if a normal car could do it, but I guess they must. And then we started thinking about people taking horses on this trail, which they do a lot. And how they could possibly get a horse trailer up that road. It was about a mile of that and honestly next time I might prefer to just walk that mile too.
But we made it and we covered ourselves in bug spray and sunscreen (I had treated my clothes with permathrin, which is why I wore pants even though it was a hot day.) There were 3-4 river crossings, and not just little streams. Tracy and Leah hike differently than me and my friends usually do so I had to have a little patience. There was no running. Which is fine. I don't mind walking when we are not in a hurry. But I needed to keep moving because if I slowed down I would get bitten by bugs. They also changed their shoes to water shoes during the crossings. Then they hiked in their water shoes for a bit, then changed back, etc, etc. They also changed into shorts at the hot pool and we had to wait for Leah to try to get her pants back on while we and getting eaten by horse flies! They were relentless! I really didn't get bothered by mosquitoes too much but those horse flies did not care about my bug spray at all. I was covered in bites the next day. Everyone else said they felt them biting them but they didn't have any bites the next day. What is with that??
Anyway, the waterfall was magnificent and I loved it so much. It was a quick little jaunt from the waterfall over to the hot pool (warm, not hot) and mini waterfall and that was a lot of fun. Then it was a long walk back for almost 9 miles. Oh, I can't forget to mention we ran into a bear. Probably the closest I've ever gotten to a bear. Definitely the only time a bear has every paid any attention to me. And we are pretty sure it was a grizzly, small one, but still. I was looking and looking to try to find wildlife for these Utah girls. I was sure we would see a moose at least. I rounded a corner and saw brown fur right next to the trail. I didn't even flinch until it lifted it's head and looked at me and I realized it was a bear and I was much too close for comfort. I immediately started backing up while staring it down waiting to see if it was going to get mad or just walk away. It looked annoyed, kind of turned in a circle, then stalked off into the woods. It was a lot of excitement! I was too busy staring it down to try to get a picture. I just wasn't sure what it was going to do. I assume I would've grabbed my bear spray that I had in my front pocket at the ready if he started coming at us, but I didn't grab it right away. It's always interesting to see what your instincts are in these situations. Anyway, that was all we saw. That and some horses (with people, obviously). It was a beautiful hike! But definitely long. I had a couple sore muscles, because we use different muscles when climbing or running. Just walking that long was harder on my feet and I had just a couple oddly sore muscles in my thighs. Sherri told us that her friends were dead the next day and super impressed that the rest of us were just fine, lol.
We passed by Fish Lake at the beginning. It was pretty!
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