Howard Eaton trail in YellowstoneNP
The Howard Eaton trail in Yellowstone NP is a point to point trail that goes from the Fishing Bridge area to close to Canyon Village. I didn’t have a second car, so I decided to hike from the West side up to Hayden Valley and back.
The main feature of the hike is complete solitude and elevated views of the Yellowstone River as it flows from Canyon to Fishing Bridge. You are on the opposite side of the river as the people driving along it on the road.
The hike (from the west side) starts at a parking lot for other hikes that take you to the South Rim of the Yellowstone River. The first part is in wide open spaces.
As always, you will run into lone bison here and there. I took water shoes since I saw some creek crossing on the topo maps. The real creek is at I guess two miles in; you briefly enter a forest (I was a bit spooked since I was expecting to run into bears ………….. parts of the trail were closed early in the week due to a carcass) and then arrive at a nice creek.
And once you cross the creek, you will start getting elevation and the views open up. And I was constantly going off trail to avoid the bison on the trail. The views are beyond amazing and you haven’t reached close views of the Yellowstone river yet !!!!
And then you can start seeing the Yellowstone River ………….. the views were all mine !!!!! You realize the immensity of this place and how little can be seen from the road.
Somewhere in there, opposite the river, is the park road and I started seeing people stopping at the pullouts watching small herds of bison. The funny part is that some of them were using binoculars to see other bison farther away (on the other side of the river) and I was among them. From their viewpoint I looked like I was hiking among them, but in reality I was keeping a healthy distance from them.
The trail disappears at times. I don’t get it why there are no better signs or trail maintenance, but I came to the realization that hiking in Yellowstone is not the main attraction and I think the rangers assume that whoever hikes in there knows what he is doing and can find trails eventually. I am not talking about the short tourist trails, but trails like this one. Anyway, I carry a GPS so I never get lost and as a bonus I can see on the GPS areas of interests (ie, lakes).
Close to the turnaround point I arrived at HAYDEN VALLEY and on an early morning you would see the road full of parked cars scouting the valley for wolves. That day there were bison all over the place. I saw a hill to my right before the trail would take me into a forest, so I decided to climb the hill and admire the view.
I then decided to turnaround and also made a note to hike the trail from the East side. I think that is better since I can see the cool stuff in the Fishing Bridge area, get to Hayden and follow a bit the Yellowstone River.
I was the only person on the trail that day and even though I hate crowds, I want to run into people on the trail. That is how I get information of other areas that are cool to explore (that is how I found out about Howard Eaton, I was hiking with a woman off trail in Hayden Valley and she mentioned this trail to me).
Anyway, this is a must do trail in YellowstoneNP.
Enjoy …
Second Visit to Howard Eaton trail
I wanted to enjoy the river views again from Howard Eaton and decided to take another trip to the trail.
Just about a mile into the trail I ran into a large herd of elk. Unfortunately, I was not carrying my long lenses so the pics were not as close as I wanted. Also, I was out in the open and the elk would run away if they saw me moving towards them. These are some images and videos of the herd:
You will notice in some of the images that there is always one dude staring at me, so they knew I was there all the time.
Once I crossed one of the creeks, I was in wide open spaces and, of course, bison were all over place.
I will never get tired of these views ……….
