venturing4th: South Rim Trail

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

South Rim Trail

After exploring the Old Faithful area yesterday, we headed north 17 miles to the Canyon area and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Every day, when we cross the Yellowstone River on the Fishing Bridge (where fishing is no long allowed), we pass over water that is destined to flow over the two falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Today we chose the South Rim Trail; the North Rim Trail will wait for another day.

The trailhead was at the south end of the canyon, right above the Upper Falls. These large rock islets upstream from the Upper Falls are remnants of a lava flow resistant to erosion.

Rapids just above the Upper Falls.

Plenty of water flowing over the rocks just before it...

drops over the 109-foot Upper Falls.

The South Rim Trail was tricky because just at the brink of the Upper Falls viewpoint, above, the trail was closed for maintenance. There are several other viewpoints along the South Rim Drive so we backtracked to the trailhead and drove to a viewpoint further along the Drive - Artist Point Viewpoint.

An intervening viewpoint parking lot for Uncle Toms Trail was closed, so we parked at Artist Point parking area and hiked back to the closed Uncle Toms Trail. Along the way we had this view of the 308-foot Lower Falls.

At the closed parking lot we stopped for our lunch and had this...

terrific view down the Canyon.

After lunch we headed down Uncle Toms Trail which is a steep staircase descending 500-feet to a breathtaking , up close view of Lower Falls.

Brink of the Lower Falls from the platform at the base of Uncle Toms trail.

After hauling ourselves up out of the canyon on the over 300 metal steps, we continued to the Artist Point Viewpoints. This is from the lower viewpoint and...