9/14 - Yellowstone, Day 6

We had great day investigating two areas of the park we hadn't seen yet. The weather produced a little of everything (except snow)....cloudy and cold (low-40's), partly sunny and warm (low 50's), windy to calm, dry to drizzly. We had a collection of coats with us and at each stop had to decide which would work best. Other tourists were in everything from shorts and sandals to winter coats and toboggans. 

The first stop was Gibbon Falls which we'd passed before and not seen. It was well worth the stop.

The next stop was Virginia Cascade. It's a 60-foot rock slope where the water speeds down the slope rather than free-falling over a ledge. It's right off the road but there's no place to pull over so it's a matter of grabbing a picture on the run. The road is one lane and one way, very narrow with a crumbly-looking edge and big drop-off. We found out later it's the old road from Norris to Canyon so it must have been two-way at one time. What a ghastly thought.


The main destination for the day was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It turned out to be absolutely spectacular. The river has cut an ever-widening and lengthening canyon through the volcanic rhyolite rock which has been softened by eons of geothermal activity. The river runs north through the canyon. The Lower Falls and "down the canyon" are therefore north. This is confusing because "down" and "south" belong together.

The 109-foot high Upper Falls with the Chittenden Bridge upstream.  

The 309-foot Lower Falls, the largest volume waterfall in the Rocky Mountains.

Once through the falls the river enters the canyon it's been cutting for eons. The walls are extremely colorful from the various minerals deposited by geothermal activity.  

Most of the canyon is around 1,000 feet deep although parts are deeper. It's width stretches to 4,000 feet in some places.  It will continue to get deeper and wider as time goes on.

Geothermal activity is still going on along the river's edge. That where the color is the most vibrant.

Trees hanging on with everything they've got. It's unbelievable that they can grow on such steep slopes in loose rock.

Our second destination was Tower Fall in the Tower-Roosevelt section in the northeast part of the park.  Most of the 19-mile road was going up Dunraven Pass and down the other side.  The pass is around 8,900 feet and is the highest section of road in the park. It is easy to see why it's the first road to close for the season (Oct. 7th this year) and the last to re-open in the spring (May 26th next year).  

132-foot Tower Fall on Tower Creek.....1,000 feet from where it flows into the Yellowstone River.  The rock towers above the fall give the creek its name.

We went over Dunraven Pass to see the falls, but it turned out the drive over the pass was the real event. The views were magnificent.

Washburn Hot Springs steaming with Monday's snow covering the mountains behind.

View from the Canyon-Tower road with the Absaroka Range in the background.

Gorgeous view from the road coming down from the pass.

Mount Washburn - 10,243 feet high. Dunraven Pass goes over it to the right.

So much of the park has been burned, these fire scars are everywhere. There are thousands of trunks of fire-killed trees with new growth coming up between them.

We're keeping our fingers crossed the weather will cooperate with our plans for tomorrow. It's our final day here and we still haven't been to Grand Teton National Park. It's a long day-trip so we had hoped to do it earlier in the week but the weather has made it impossible. Tomorrow is our last chance.