Yellowstone’s Elephant Back Trail

Beautiful sunny day today with high in the 60s—yea!

It’s Father’s Day so Jere gets to pick today’s activities. We start the day attending the church service at the Fishing Bridge amphitheatre; followed by lunch; and then the afternoon hiking Elephant Back Trail:

The trail starts off innocent enough:

But after the first mile the trail becomes a snow-covered obstacle course:

We were told that trail would have about 2 feet of snow, so we were not completely surprised.

However the snow is much deeper (3-4 feet deep) at many places. We only sink down 2 feet into the wet snow, but it is definitely deeper than 2 feet.

Besides the challenge of walking in deep, wet snow; we rely on following the footprints in the snow (you definitely cannot see the trail under the snow). This works fine until we get to a place where the footprints go two different directions and we cannot find a blaze marking. We hear voices, so we proceed in the direction of the voices, only to find that they are also lost. We all backtrack and finally find a blaze marking to lead us to the lookout.

After a long break of enjoying the scenery and talking to other hikers, we head back down the mountain. Joe loves the snow!

Of course I’m not sure which I prefer, snow at the top or the slop at the bottom of the mountain:

We drive back to the campground for dinner and an evening of relaxation (the slip-sliding in the snow has wreaked havoc on my bad hip).