Yellowstone (West Yellowstone)

Top things to do in Yellowstone (West Yellowstone)

1. 01

   Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin - the densest geyser field on earth

   nature wildlife scenic 👍 Popular

   The famous cone is only the front door. The basin behind it holds the greatest concentration of geysers anywhere, and a couple of hours of walking the boardwalk and river loop takes in Castle with its shaggy fortress cone, Grand erupting in bursts, Riverside arching over the Firehole and Morning Glory Pool at the far end, its colours ruined decades ago by coins and rubbish thrown into the vent. Predicted eruption times for the big named geysers are posted at the visitor centre, and planning a loop around two or three of those windows is what separates a good morning here from a queue at one railing.

2. 02

   Grand Prismatic Spring - the rainbow pool at Midway Geyser Basin

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   The largest hot spring in the country and the park's signature image: a blue centre too hot for anything to live in, ringed by bands of orange, rust and yellow where bacterial mats grade out with the cooling water. From the boardwalk you mostly get steam and colour at eye level, so the trick is to also walk the short spur off the Fairy Falls trailhead to the overlook on the hillside above, which is where the whole disc resolves. Cold, still mornings drown it in steam; a warm breezy afternoon is better.

3. 03

   Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - Lower Falls from Artist Point

   scenic hiking 👍 Popular

   The river drops twice and then saws a canyon through hydrothermally cooked rock, leaving walls in sulphur yellows, pinks and rust that give the whole park its name. Artist Point on the south rim is the classic head-on view of the Lower Falls; the north rim road adds Lookout and Inspiration Points, and steep stairway trails drop to the brink of both falls if you want the noise and spray. Ospreys nest on the pinnacles below the rim.

4. 04

   Lamar Valley - wolf and bison country on the northern range

   nature wildlife off beaten path ⭐ Highly recommended

   A wide glacial valley in the park's northeast corner, often called the American Serengeti and the best big-mammal watching in the country. Bison herds hold the valley floor year-round, and the wolf packs reintroduced in the 1990s are watched here more closely than anywhere on the continent, usually at first light from pullouts along the road, in the company of a line of people with spotting scopes who will happily let you look. The road in from Gardiner and Mammoth stays open all winter, which makes this the one part of the park you can drive to in February.

5. 05

   Norris Geyser Basin - Steamboat and the bleached Porcelain Basin

   nature wildlife scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   The hottest, oldest and most volatile of the basins, and the one that feels least like a park attraction: acidic, unstable, prone to reorganising itself in thermal disturbances that turn pools cloudy and shift plumbing overnight. Porcelain Basin is a bare white shelf of hissing vents with almost nothing growing on it, while the wooded Back Basin holds Steamboat, the tallest active geyser in the world, which goes through years of silence and then runs streaks of major eruptions nobody can predict.

6. 06

   Hayden Valley - the bison herds and the river bends

   nature wildlife scenic

   The park's central grassland, an old lake bed with sticky clay soils that keep the trees out, and the most reliable place to be stuck in a bison jam. Grizzlies work the far treelines in spring and early summer, sandhill cranes and trumpeter swans use the river meanders, and dawn and dusk are the only times worth being here. Just south of it, Mud Volcano and Dragon's Mouth Spring add the park's foulest-smelling, most churned-up acid features.

7. 07

   Mammoth Hot Springs - travertine terraces and Fort Yellowstone

   nature wildlife history

   Utterly unlike the geyser basins: here the hot water rises through limestone rather than volcanic rock and deposits chalky travertine as it cools, building tiered terraces and frozen-looking cascades that are constantly changing as springs switch off and break out somewhere new. Below the terraces sits Fort Yellowstone, the stone barracks and officers' quarters of the thirty-odd years the US Army ran the park, with elk that treat the lawns and pavements as theirs.

8. 08

   Yellowstone Lake and West Thumb Geyser Basin

   scenic nature wildlife

   A vast, cold, high-altitude lake taking up the park's southeast quarter, itself sitting in a younger crater blown out of the older caldera. West Thumb is the reason to stop: a small basin of pools right on the shoreline where thermal features vent under the water itself, including a cone that anglers once used to cook their catch straight off the hook. Bridge Bay is where the scenic launches run from, and the lakeshore hotel above it is the oldest in the park.

9. 09

   Mount Washburn - the fire lookout above Dunraven Pass

   hiking scenic

   The classic day hike in the park's middle, a steady climb on an old service road from Dunraven Pass to a staffed lookout at just over three thousand metres, with the caldera rim laid out and the Tetons on the horizon on a clear day. Bighorn sheep are common on the upper slopes and the summit building has a shelter and telescopes. The pass road is one of the last to open each spring and one of the first to shut.

10. 10

    Fountain Paint Pot and Firehole Lake Drive - mudpots and the big fountain geysers

    nature wildlife scenic

    The Lower Geyser Basin holds all four thermal types within one short boardwalk: geyser, hot spring, mudpot and fumarole, with the paint pots thickening to a plopping clay through the summer as the water table drops. The one-way Firehole Lake Drive loops off it past Great Fountain, a rare geyser that erupts from a broad terraced pool in a series of bursts, with predictions posted at the turn-in.

11. 11

    Fairy Falls and the Grand Prismatic Overlook

    hiking scenic

    A flat, easy walk from the steel bridge over the Firehole, first climbing the short spur to the hillside overlook above Grand Prismatic, then continuing through the ghost forest left by the 1988 fires to a tall, thin waterfall dropping off a rhyolite cliff into a shaded pool. Push a little further and the Imperial and Spray geysers sit at the end of the trail with hardly anyone at them.

12. 12

    Lone Star Geyser - the bike-and-walk approach up the Firehole

    hiking off beaten path

    An old service road follows the river a few kilometres from the Old Faithful area to a big lone cone in a meadow that erupts roughly every three hours, and you can ride a bike most of the way. There is no boardwalk, no crowd and no prediction board, just a logbook where visitors record eruption times for each other, which is the closest most people get to the park as the early visitors found it.

13. 13

    Tower Fall and the Northeast Entrance road

    scenic nature wildlife

    A slim waterfall dropping between volcanic spires near the Roosevelt junction, on the stretch of road that runs out through the Lamar Valley to the park's quietest gate. The drive itself is the draw: basalt columns above the river at Calcite Springs, the petrified trees of Specimen Ridge, and the old rustic lodge at Roosevelt where the horse rides and wagon cookouts still go out.

14. 14

    Old Faithful Inn - the log cathedral by the geyser

    history culture arts

    A 1904 hotel built from local lodgepole pine and rhyolite that essentially invented the national-park lodge style: a seven-storey lobby framed in gnarled logs around a huge stone chimney, with balconies stacked up under the roof. It survived the 1988 fires with the flames at the doorstep. Walk in and look up even if you are not staying, and take the guided tour if one is running.

15. 15

    Fly fishing the Madison, Firehole and Gallatin

    nature wildlife adventure

    One of the most storied trout fisheries in the world, and the reason the base town is full of fly shops and rod racks. The Firehole runs warm from the thermal inflow and fishes best in the cool ends of the season, the Madison below the park draws hunters of big autumn run-up browns, and the Gallatin canyon north of town is classic pocket water. Park waters run on their own permit system and a stack of local rules about barbless hooks, closures and native-species handling.

16. 16

    Snowcoach and snowmobile tours - the winter interior

    snow adventure

    From roughly mid-December to mid-March the interior roads carry guided oversnow traffic instead of cars, and Yellowstone in that state is a different park: geyser basins steaming into hard cold air, bison shovelling snow with their heads, ice-caked trees and hardly anyone there. Tracked snowcoaches run out of the west and north gates to Old Faithful and the canyon; guided snowmobile tours cover the same routes with more exposure and more noise.

17. 17

    Rendezvous Ski Trails - the base town's nordic loops

    snow adventure

    A groomed cross-country network starting from the southern edge of West Yellowstone, high and cold enough to hold reliable early snow, which is why national teams and clubs come here to train before the rest of the country has any. Loops range from short and flat to long rolling circuits through lodgepole forest, and the same trails see fat bikes and snowshoes.

18. 18

    Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center - West Yellowstone

    nature wildlife history

    A non-profit sanctuary in the base town for bears and wolves that cannot be returned to the wild, plus a raptor aviary and a river-otter enclosure. It is the honest answer for families who did not manage to see a bear from the road, and the bear-resistant container testing they run, with grizzlies set loose on coolers and food canisters, is oddly compelling.

Getting to & around Yellowstone (West Yellowstone)

Know before you go