Jasper, AB to Jackson WY on a tandem: Day 16, West Yellowstone to Flagg Ranch

West Yellowstone to Flagg Ranch

Today was a long but very fund day on Das Bike – 75 miles, 4,000 ft. of climbing and over the Continental Divide three times. We are staying at Flagg Ranch, which is a small but very nice outpost about 3 miles south of the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park. We took a few detours from the route shown above based on advice from locals.

We were glad to leave West Yellowstone early, at 6:00 a.m. The sky was gray and there had been some rain overnight, but nothing was coming down. It was just twilight and with our tail light and head light flashing, off we went. There was no traffic but the park entrance gate was open already. We showed our pass and were on our way.

The first stop on our list was the Fountain Paint Pots geyser basin. A few miles before we got there, we came over a hill and there was a large cow elk in the road. She just looked at us as we rode by, and as we passed her we saw her calves just over the edge of the road.

Cow elk in Yellowstone; her calves are just over the hill

Then, about ¼ mile down the road Lorie spotted a big bison just off the road, snoozing in a pasture. We turned around for the photo op as we rode slowly by. He twitched his ears a bit at us, but didn’t seem to mind our riding by.

Bison waking up

Just as we arrived at the Fountain Paint Pots the rain started to fall. We parked the bike and locked it, and geared up in rain gear to walk the boardwalk around the geyser basin.

Here’s a few photos.

Celistine pool, Yellowstone

Paint pots (the color is from a variety of unique bacteria)

Mud pots

Random pool at Paint Pots

A different view of Celestine Pool

There are a lot of warning signs to stay on the boardwalks because, among other things, the area is fragile and the hot pools are close to boiling. It looks like some of them are actually boiling. Despite the warnings we saw folks climbing onto the native ground to get a better view.

After leisurely walking the loop and avoiding being in too many people’s selfies, we straddled the bike again and headed towards Old Faithful, the next stop on our list and about 12 miles up the road. The ex-Ranger that we’d met the other day told us a trick to get to the lodge and geyser easy while avoiding the crowds. We followed his instructions and it worked perfectly; we arrived at the lodge and were right in front of the geyser, which unfortunately, had just erupted 10 minutes earlier (it erupts about every 90 minutes, give or take 10 minutes). No matter, we were cold from the rain and wanted to explore the lodge. Coffee first and it warmed us up quickly.

The lodge is pretty cool and has woodwork that reminds of Timberline but with lodge pole pine rather than massive Douglas fir. Here are some photos of the interior. There was some significant damage in a big 1989 earthquake, but it appears to remain in good shape. It has a huge dining hall that was pretty full, and the hotel is full every night.

Old Faithful Lodge

Great Hall in the lodge

Unique structural components

We had leftover bagels and hummus with our coffee and that was our lunch. After we’d had our fill we strolled out to the boardwalk that surrounds the geyser. There were thousands of people; no kidding. It looked like most had arrived by bus and cars, and all eagerly awaited Old Faithfull’s show! There is a phone hotline that you can call to get predicted eruption times. We had mis-predicted the prior eruption, but we didn’t have to wait long this time as the geyser performed its magic right on queue. It is pretty impressive and the crowd enjoyed it very much. We, did too!

Old Faithful

Right on time!

Old Faithful

Old Faithful winding down for another 90 minutes

From Old Faithful our route continued in an easterly direction but the road turned decidedly upward. We had three passes to climb today, each going over the Continental Divide. The hills started right off and the first pass climbed to about 8,300 feet. The gradient was not super steep, typically about 6 to 8 percent with a few ramps to 9, but it went for a long way.

Here’s the Continental Divide sign at our first pass crossing; the sign says that the elevation was 8,262 but our GPS said it was about 25 feet higher:

Our first pass over the Continental Divide

Shoshone Lake

Near the top of the first pass; 1 down, 2 to go...

From the top of the first we dropped sharply about 2,000 feet and started the process again. Here’s the second pass. According to the sign the elevation is 8,391, but we had actually topped out at 8,540 about 1 mile prior to the divide:

2 down, 1 to go...(and the third is a bit lower)

From the second pass we dropped down to the “West Thumb” of Yellowstone lake, which showed itself to be quite huge. There is a geyser basin that we wanted to look at and so we took the short side road – it was easy to find since there were scads of busses and cars. The hot pools and fumaroles are amazing and I’m not sure that the photos do them justice. Beautiful! Yellowstone is not terribly beautiful in terms of mountains and forests. It’s beauty lies instead in the unique geology.

West Thumb geyser basin; Blue Bell pool

West Thumb Pool

West Thumb pool

Abyss Pool

Abyss pool

Black Pool

Black Pool one last time (it is amazing!)

One more pass to cross and the third one was only about 8,011 ft., but according to the sign, 7,988:

Third of three. It is all downhill from here!

From the top of the pass it was 23 miles to our stop for the night, just outside of the southern park boundary at Flagg Ranch. It was mostly downhill with some rollers and it was mostly fast the rest of the way. The Yellowstone Nat’l Park information had warnings about the road from West Thumb to the south entrance. They say that the road is not good for cycling because it is narrow and rough. We agree with them that the road was super narrow with no shoulder, but the surface was very good. I think that the concern is over car/bike conflict. Traffic was light and it came in bunches. I could comfortably maintain 30 to 35 plus mph downhill, but the cars usually wanted to go faster. The speed limit is 45. Whenever there was an oncoming car I would just take the lane until it was safe for the overtaking car to pass us. Most of the drivers were super courteous; occasionally there was the driver that just couldn’t slow down but it was never a bother (and I trust that I didn't spoil their day, too!).