Bethany's Yellowstone Adventure: Parents to Yellowstone/Republic Peak

This is going to be super short and sweet because I don’t have a lot of time. My parents are awesome and came to visit me last Tuesday-Thursday so I played chauffeur/tour guide and took them all over the park. On Tuesday we went to Mt. Washburn, Canyon, and Norris Geyser Basin. Wednesday was the Grand Prismatic Overlook, Old Faithful, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Lake Overlook, Mystic Falls, and then Grand Pris Overlook again since it was so darn cold and foggy that morning. Thursday we went to the Pebble Creek area. I told my mother she’d hate me for the first two miles of the hike (we started at the Warm Creek trailhead) and she did. I was right. But the views were great!

Lake Overlook (West Thumb area)

Pebble Creek meadow area

Range west of Pebble Creek meadow

Barronette Peak

Yesterday for my rec trip, we went to Elephant Back. It was quite the experience. Four of my students were great hikers and one student was a horrendous hiker who then rolled his ankle and became even slower. It was a real challenge. Enough on that though.

Yellowstone Lake from Elephant Back

Today I went up Republic Peak from the U.S.F.S. side of the range because it was so much shorter. It’s only 4.0 miles to Republic Pass from Cooke City instead of almost 20 miles via Cache Creek. The most challenging part of this hike, aside from the last mile which is an insane amount of uphill to get to the pass, is finding the trailhead. Holy crap. It took me 30-40 minutes to find it and I knew where it was supposed to be. I took this random old mining road south of Cooke City (Erma Mine) and followed it until I got to these two houses with a bunch of “Keep Out”/”No Trespassing” signs, so then I turned around and went back down. It was terrible and my car kept bottoming out, no matter how slow I went. So I went to the Chamber of Commerce/Visitor Center and talked to the lady there. She said I was in the right place and just needed to go further on that road. The signs confuse lots of people. So I redid that and low and behold, I should’ve gone another 300 yards around the corner from the houses and I would’ve been at the trailhead. Grrrrrrr. Other than that, it took about two hours to get to the summit and a little over an hour and a half to get back down. The ¼ mile scramble to the summit was super chill and really easy peasy compared to lots of other hikes!