Article Contributed on: 8/11/2009 10:05:05 AM
Mystic Falls is a 70-foot waterfall on the Little Firehole River near the
Biscuit Basin thermal area in the Old Faithful part of the park.
The trail includes two options: a direct, out-and-back hike to Mystic Falls or a three-mile loop that climbs a plateau to a lookout above Biscuit Basin with sweeping views of the river valley and multiple geyser basins below,as far as Old Faithful and its namesake village.
We hiked the loop, starting with the 500-foot climb up to the overlook. The beginning of the trail is dense new-growth pine forest with some small streams and swamps cutting through the trees, so bring bug spray as the mosquitoes will pester you until get a good distance up the plateau.
As we were approaching the overlook, we could see Old Faithful erupting in the distance below, but I was not at a good vantage point for a photo.
The trail continues along the top of the plateau through burned-out forest with a lot of windfall, but the trail had recently been cleared.
On the way back down to the valley, you start to get glimpses of Mystic Falls from above as the trail comes within view of the falls and then switches back away.
The falls are impressive, and although you can descend all the way down to the riverbank, it's not advised because of a scattering of thermal areas around the base of the falls.
While we did cross paths with other hikers on the overlook trail, the out-and-back trail to Mystic Falls is extremely popular and had many hikers traveling along it. The highlight of the hike was seeing a big bull elk grazing along the banks of the Little Firehole River after leaving Mystic Falls.
He was close enough to attract quite a crowd and had a large rack, still covered in velvet.
Riddle Lake, just south of Grant Village on the south entrance road,
got its name from some confusion about its location, which was believed to sit astride the Continental Divide and flow into both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans simultaneously.
While
Isa Lake near Craig Pass does straddle the divide and flows both to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Riddle Lake drains to the Atlantic Ocean via Solution Creek and Yellowstone Lake. The five-mile round-trip out-and-back trail to Riddle Lake does cross the Continental Divide early in the hike, however.
The trail begins by weaving through alternating dense new-growth pine forest, old-growth lodgepole forest and marshes, so bring bug spray. After about 1.5 miles, it opens up and follows the shore of the lake with views of the Red Mountains in the distance. The trail is as level as any in Yellowstone get, but was still quite muddy in places even in mid-July.
Although the trail is closed until July 15 each year for bear-management purposes, we didn't see any bears or signs of bears' presence on our trip. And even though the marshes and lakeshore are prime habitat for moose, we saw no signs of them, either.