This was one of the first western hikes I did, back in August 1994. Chris and I were driving cross-country from Minneapolis to San Francisco, on our way to my first year at Cal-Berkeley. We camped along the way because I had always wanted to recreate a trip my grandmother took in 1947 to the National Parks of the West. We nearly didn't make it into the park on our first night, because long road-construction delays made it nip-and-tuck to reach the east entrance before nightfall. [The roads inside the park were also being re-paved, so entrance from the east was barred at night.]
Being nervous campers, we stuck to basic trails inside the park: the bear warnings scared us away from back-country hikes. This hike, down the gorge below Yosemite falls, was the closest we came to real hiking in Yellowstone. The trail begins at a parking lot below the falls, down river from the main lookout above the river. The parking lot was crowded and there are a fair number of people on the early stretches of the trail. Once we hiked down the valley a ways, though, we had the trail almost to ourselves.
About a half-mile below the parking lot, with its staircase clearly marked, is a platform offering views of the waterfall from just above the gorge. The staircase descends down the side of the gorge, after several switch-backs near the top. This is the most crowded section of the hike, and is a down-and-back trail. The views of the water make it worth the climb back, though, and the stairs are shaded by trees and so remain quite cool. Back at the top of the stairs, the trail continues down from the falls, offering great views of lower Yellowstone Valley. The trail comes close to the edge, but is well-groomed: I was never nervous about the height.
Coming Someday: Signing the Backcountry Register
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