Day 3 - Osprey Falls, Norris Geyser Basin

Day 3 –

Yawning and stretching, the first night in the tent serves us well. Today we have no driving to do, no cars to pack, only trail to hike. We feast on a breakfast of bacon & eggs (we are luxury eating car campers, and we make no excuses or apologies for it whatsoever.) we roll down the five miles to the Bunsen Peak trailhead where we depart for the secondary location of Osprey Falls. While we saw none of the destination’s namesake along the way, this was a relatively kind introduction into a week of hiking. The round trip was about 10 miles, with the middle three miles being a down then up task of about 800’.

Climbing down the walls of sheepeater cliffs, you don’t actually get to see the falls until you are nearly on top of them. Once you get there, though, you realize that the falls are actually on top of you. Before we were able to get within 100 feet of the base of the falls, liz and I were soaked head to toe on our fronts from the impressive misting that the falls was creating. And this is not just some playful description of getting a little water on our faces, we were quite literally swimming in our clothing with beads of mountain cold water running down our noses.



To sane people, this would be a bit of a drag, but for some reason it only enamored us to the falls more. The spring run-off is so late, and so strong this year that every river is swelling and every set of falls is moving at a brakeneck speed and capacity. We have already had to change our plans for both parks a number of times due to the fact that snow has still not melted (due to its enormous depth on the year) or the fact that an area is still an ankle high marsh with runoff and is not really passable.

Eschewing the guidebooks suggestion of having lunch at the bottom of the falls, we head back up and enjoy peanut butter bagels overlooking the whole of the Gardner River. We see only 4 other people on their way in when we hump out of the area, and relish in the fact that we are at one of the busiest parks in the country and managed to avoid most everyone there.


Since we made good time on the trip, I suggest that we take the rest of the afternoon to see the Norris Geyser Basin which we didn’t get to see the previous day. The basin is full of geothermal activity and impossibly green and blue lagoons that seem more at home on another planet. Running down enough ponds and springs makes you tired, and so we attempted to take a soak in the Boiling River, a section of the Gardner river that heads out of the North Side of the park that just so happens to intersect with a number of hotsprings at just the right mixture and provides a backcountry hot-tub just off the road.

Sadly, the late season conditions struck again, though, as the boiling river trail was closed due to extremely high levels and fast water, and we were stuck paying the mammoth hotel for shower tokens that night instead. (Word to the wise, if you just walk into the first floor of the mammoth hotel and go use the bathrooms in the hallways – just save your $3.25 and do it. Wish we would have known that.) Dinner that night was at Helen’s in nearby Gardiner, where we each ate a half pound buffalo burger somehow and also split a huckleberry shake. (that fruit is going to become a theme later on, just watch. At the time we thought it was a cute novelty to get a huckleberry shake…)

The evening fell and we got to see the whole heard (36!) of elk that we simply heard the night before, lounging outside the campground. We went to bed again to the sound of the bugling masses, with plans to wake up and make our to Montana the next day.

Shots from the entire day can be found here - and shots from the entire trip are over here. And if you want to see the larger versions of the pictures, just click the 'all sizes' link above the image.