WYOMING

Yellowstone and Grand Teton

By Foreign Natives

September 16^th, 2015

We left Canada feeling overwhelmed by it’s massive nature. There was no choice for us but to keep following the route of National Parks, now that we were back in the US.

We would had loved to have a chance to explore Montana, but winter was chasing us and with our poor insulation in the van, we had to chase the warmth. So our first stop was a bit further south go the border, in Yellowstone, Wyoming, probably one of the most popular natural parks in the country.

Yellowstone is famous for its high density of wildlife, and that was so easy to appreciate. Just as we were entering the first village in the park, a herd of elks had taken one of the gardens, and the alpha male was protecting his harem hitting violently with his horns at any moving thing that came by…like cars!

Just driving around Yellowstone allows you to see so many animals. It has the highest population of Bisons in the world, but it’s also easy to spot goats, deers and even bears. That’s all pretty much without leaving your car, which is nice but it might end up feeling a bit too easy sometimes, and that’s what makes this park so popular: you don’t have to earn your sights. We like sweating for the reward of a nice view, it’s usually wilder and more adventurous.

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The entire park sits on top of a volcano, so this makes for a lot of weird lakes, basins and geysers. I can’t explain the phenomenon exactly, but basically there’s gas being freed from the underlying volcano and that warms up the water in the surface, which allows the growth of different organisms that color the water.

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Walking around is just beautiful, mystical and specially stinky.

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After spending a couple of days in the park, we finally arrived to one of the destinations that had been on our list for a while: the Grand Teton mountain range.

Our goal was to summit the Grand Teton…without ropes…and almost in October. That turned out to be too optimistic and while we got pretty high (we got up to 4000m), we couldn’t scramble the last section because of the amount of ice and the lack of gear. We got incredible views anyway, and it was a hike/run that we’ll remember for sure. We’ll have to come back again in the summer!