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The big kahuna!
From here it’s just a couple miles to the Upper Geyser Basin and the park’s main tourist attraction, Old Faithful.
This geyser is so important to the park and so famous that there’s a welcome building with museum (yes, a gift shop too), and several inns and hotels surrounding the giant geyser that since the giant 1959 earthquake has slowed its eruptions somewhat. It now has estimated eruption times, roughly 1 hour 20 minutes apart, but can vary by up to 8 minutes, so get there early to see the whole show.
There were probably 100 people gathered around the geyser to see it erupt shortly after 1 p.m. this day, but in summer there can be several thousand folks standing 8-10 people deep. Old Faithful sometimes gives a little false alarm spout, which it did during our visit, a teaser. A few minutes later it rockets steam and water 150 feet into the air. Its biggest burst has been 185 feet and the eruption can last up to 5 minutes, but 2-3 minutes is more standard. For the record, it can spray up to 8,400 gallons of boiling water into the air. Impressive!
Lunch is available at a building across from the Visitor’s Center. Service is slow and my advice is avoid the burgers, which take a while to make and aren’t very tasty. The barbeque looked better.
After lunch we climbed back aboard the snowmobiles and headed roughly 32 miles back up the road, sometimes falling in behind other tour groups and often passing parked snow coaches. Cruising along about 35-45 mph it’s easy to take in the sights and enjoy a leisurely ride.
On our way back we stopped at the Fountain Paint Pot in the lower basin and took about a half-mile walk around the paint pots that look like mini-volcanoes and several geysers, one of which bubbles and shoots water nearly constantly. Again there was a sapphire colored pool, plus a summer-like micro-organism area where tiny bugs skittered around on the warm water in the dead of winter.
Some folks are drawn to these steaming hot springs and think sitting in them is possibly therapeutic. But Bron tells us the bubbling springs are subject to sudden warm-ups that can actually cook a person, or elk, or bison, that has wandered too deep into the warm water. In the last year a dog wandered in and its owner died trying to save the poor pooch.
Note too, Bron tells us to never leave any backpack behind on a sled. The park ravens are pretty smart and can actually unzip bags and packs in search of food.
From here we remount our sleds for the rest of our return ride, again stopping briefly to see bison and elk, some nearer the road and many happily lounging in the snowy fields adjacent to the Madison River.
Roundtrip took us about 6½ hours, including waiting for Old Faithful to spurt and the luncheonette crew to dish up some burgers. It’s a leisurely ride, not a speed run, that any level snowmobiler can enjoy, for now. We promise you will!