Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(see 4)
B3
NORTHEAST ENTRANCE TO TOWER-ROOSEVELT
It's 29 miles from the Northeast Entrance to Tower-Roosevelt. A couple of miles inside
the Northeast Entrance the road enters Wyoming and follows Soda Butte Creek, offering
fine views of the craggy ridgeline of towering Barronette Peak (10,404ft) to the west. It
was Jack Baronet who rescued Truman Everts (see boxed text
Click here
)
for a promised
$600 reward; not only did he not get the reward, but the park misspelled the peak they
named after him! Near Pebble Creek Campground at tiny Icebox Canyon, the lovely val-
ley warms up and opens wide. Southeast is a ridgeline known as the Thunderer (10,554ft),
after the frequent storms that gather here.
Two miles past Pebble Creek is the trailhead for the short 0.5-mile walk through fir
forest and summer wildflowers to scenic
Trout Lake
, named after the abundant cut-
throats who spawn here in early summer. The 10-minute uphill hike to the pretty lake is
steep enough to leave you puffing, but this is still one of the park's best short family hikes.
It's popular also with anglers, who are allowed to keep their catch of rainbow (but not cut-
throat) trout.
THE TALLEST TALES IN THE WEST
Jim Bridger is famed as a mountain man and trapper who explored the Yellowstone region in the 1830s, but he
was also the West's consummate teller of tall tales. Level-headed lowlanders may have dismissed his outrageous
stories with a patronizing slap on the back, but as with most enduring stories, much of the fiction was actually
based in fact.
Bridger's most famous tales told of Yellowstone's petrified trees (fact, though he couldn't resist upping the ante
to 'peetrified birds singing peetrified songs'); a 'mountain of glass' that acted as a giant telescope (fiction, but
based on the volcanic glass of Obsidian Cliff); a river that flowed so fast that friction made it hot on the bottom
(actually thermal runoff on the Firehole River); and a spot on Yellowstone Lake where you could throw out a line
and reel in a cooked fish (fact, a technique proved by early tourists at Fishing Cone, with the help of an underwa-
ter geyser).
He also told of a place where fish could cross the Rocky Mountains (actually Two Ocean Plateau, just south of
the park), where a stream atop the Continental Divide branches into two, one stream leading to the Atlantic, the
other to the Pacific. (Lake Isa does the same thing between Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake but has no fish.)
