Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park (Part 1)

Old Faithful Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park

There is more to Old Faithful area than Old Faithful Geyser. However, coming to Old Faithful with limited idea what was around, except Old Faithful, we started by following 95+% of the tourists. We crowded near the Old Faithful area waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. Though I was quiet at all times during the wait, but deep inside me, I was like the whining kids, crying to their mom, "MOM, I am bored! Can we do something else?" And mom had to explain, "shhhh, let us wait a little bit, for in just a short while, Old Faithful will erupt!"

chipmunk (?) entertaining us while waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

After Old Faithful erupted, majority of the crowd disappeared! Instead of disappearing with the crowd, I told my husband to take a walk since I saw a few people up the hill. We did not know that there was a boardwalk trail from Old Faithful to Geyser Hill, to Observation Point, and to Morning Glory.

Blue Pool in elevated boardwalk between Old Faithful Viewing area and Geyser Hill

In short, there was a network of trails, some paved, some elevated boardwalk, that starts from Old Faithful area. 

the blue path highlighted follows the trail we took in the South portion of Upper Geyser Basin

the red path is Geyser Hill

source of map: http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/tours/oldfaithful/oftourmap.htm

The hike can be as short as possible, to up to about 5 miles one way to the further geysers in the Upper Basin. I highlighted with blue ink in the above map the route that we took. From Old Faithful Viewing platform, we walked North then looped right down the hill and then back up to Geyser Hill loop, then, continued towards the North Section of the Upper Geyser Basin. Geyser Hill loop (the one I marked with red ink in the map above) is a 1.3 mile loop with over 40 geysers, vents and pools. This post (part 1) will focus only on the Geyser Hill loop.

Hiker Surprised by Erupting Anemone Geyser

Because there are 40 or more geysers in this small section, it was so fun walking here especially for someone like me who had never been surrounded by so many geysers before. Sometimes, the geyser could surprise you, because the surrounding would change from being quiet to something venting their anger through the rushing of steam and streams upward. The anemone geyser was the first attention-grabbing geyser we experienced in the Geyser Hill coming from the south bottom hill. 

Anemone Geyser, Geyser Hill, Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park

You will see from the above picture that the anemone geyser is actually 2 geysers next to each other. Since they erupt every 10 minutes, they are the easiest to be seen geysers in the Geyser Hill. After the anemone geyser erupted, I enjoyed seeing how the low light made the rocky surface of the geyser looked like a lit stream.

Low Light Hitting the Surface of Anemone Geyser after Eruption

Perhaps, we were so very lucky, that we actually saw a lot of geysers erupting here at Geyser Hill. From being bored waiting at the Old Faithful area, I was filled with excitement and giddiness at Geyser Hill. Who would not, when it seemed, walk after walk, geysers surprised us!

Plume Geyser, Geyser Hill, Upper Geyser Basin

And if it was not enough, after the Plume Geyser, Old Faithful erupted again, this time, we caught a rainbow with it because the sun was behind us!

Old Faithful Geyser from Geyser Hill

Old Faithful erupts every 35- 120 minutes. The first time we saw it erupted, we waited 45 minutes because we belonged to the unlucky 10% where Old Faithful's eruption prediction took longer than the +/- 10 minutes prediction time. After our dinner, we saw a lot of people at the viewing platform, and asked them if they know when Old Faithful will erupt. They told us, "a few minutes, in 7:15 according to the prediction sources inside". It was 7:00 pm, so we told each other since we just finished dinner anyway and had already more than 6 miles of hiking at Grand Teton to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point from String Lake Trail head, "we will take it easy waiting." By 7:10, crowd came in rush, by 7:15, unbelievably, the platform was transformed into one full stadium, by 7:25, people started being fidgety. Now, probably you would understand why I mentioned in the very first paragraph why I was bored waiting. The 15 minutes wait turned out to be 45 minutes wait for us. We were at Geyser Hill when we saw for the second time Old Faithful erupted. But it was a sweet surprise since we did not expect it to erupt in less than 90 minutes, with a bonus of a rainbow. 

Beehive Geyser

However, not all geysers erupted for us at Geyser Hill. We were not able to see Beehive Geyser erupt which was predicted to erupt at 11:45 pm. The other Giant geyser in Geyser Hill, Giantess Geyser, erupts very rarely, occurring only a few times a year, and not predictable unlike the other geysers. 

Reflecting Spring Pond, Geyser Hill

Aside from geysers, the Geyser Hill has scattered clear reflecting spring pool, vents and wildflowers. There were still a few more geysers erupted for us in our walk at Upper Geyser Basin, but I will continue it in my next post. They were not part of Geyser Hill loop, but in the Northern portion of Upper Geyser Basin. We walked and walked until we could no longer get any more pictures because it was dark. In my next post, the other parts of Upper Geyser Basin (Castle, Grand, Daisy and Riverside Geysers), will have more sunset pictures.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with one of our sunset pictures from Upper Geyser Hill, with Old Faithful, taken by my hubby.

Old Faithful @ Sunset

I will continue sharing more of our Upper Geyser exploring in my next post, part 2 of Upper Geyser Basin.

Please click here to continue to Part 2 of Upper Geyser Basin, and click here for Midway Geyser Basin.

♥♥