Almost.....

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6:53 am - Tuesday - 51º F, humidity 67%, wind - 2 mph out of the east northeast......cloudy.  Forecast high for Gardiner, MT is 80º F, and 75º F for Mammoth Hot Springs, WY.

We set an ambitious goal for Monday's hiking.....15 miles.....and we almost got there.  We left for the trailhead of our first hike around 8:20 am and arrived at the Dunraven Pass and the Mt. Washburn trailhead some 33 miles later around 9:30 am.  Dunraven Pass sits at 8,859' elevation, and the Mt. Washburn summit sits at 10,219' elevation, which means we had a 1,360' elevation gain ahead of us as we began the 3.65 mile climb to the summit......

.....the sign says the elevation gain is 1,400', but if you subtract the Dunraven Pass elevation from the Mt. Washburn elevation you get 1,360' elevation gain.  Then again, our Strava GPS program showed our elevation gain at 1,576' so who knows what is correct?  The sign also says it is 3 miles to the summit, however, our GPS showed 3.6 miles to the top, and 7.3 overall.....

.....the sign also says it can take 4-5 hours to do the round trip hike, but we did it in 2 hours 24 minutes and 12 seconds (moving time)........

.......the grade was perfect for our hiking style, and we averaged better than 3 mph for the entire 7.3 miles, burning 1,316 calories.....

 You can see the trail in the background....a nice, gentle grade

  I walk faster than TLE going uphill, but she walks faster than I going downhill.....go figure?

 This is literally a 360º pano shot....you can see the fire watch station behind TLE

.....from the Dunraven Pass trailhead we drove another 4 miles to 'Tower' to visit with our good friend Art Young who works at the Delaware North 'Adventure Store' there.  You may recall that it was Art who helped us get our jobs at the Mammoth Hot Springs General Store.  We bought a couple of salads from the General Store and sat outside with Art talking about the last two months since we departed TVC.  

Art and I at TVC this summer before things went 'sideways'

All too soon it was time to move down the road to our next hike, another, what turned out to be, 7.3 mile trek over much more level ground......we arrived at the Wapiti Lake Trailhead just before 2 pm, and were on the trail by 2 pm sharp......we connected a couple of trails together to do a loop we thought would be about 6.1 miles, but it ended up being the aforementioned 7.3 miles!

Our first goal of this second hike was Clear Lake, a hot springs fed lake, and you could smell the sulfur as we stood there taking this 'usie'.....just past Clear Lake we came upon several steam vents, boiling water pots, and 'paint pots'......

.....I got a short video of one of the boiling water pots......again the smell of sulfur was everywhere for about 1 mile......

.....our next goal of the day was the overlook for part of the 'Grand Canyon' of Yellowstone.....I got this great pano (above)......

......next up was to find the trail which would take us back to the Wapiti Lake trailhead.....

 TLE studying her tail guide book....

......after TLE spent a few minutes studying her trail guide book we located the trail.....

....eventually we sighted Ribbon Lake in the distance.....there seemed to be no way to get closer than this......there was a large, swampy meadow between us and the lake so I settled for this long distance shot......

......we walked through a heavily forested area for a couple of miles, and then suddently burst out to this large meadow......

.....we arrived back at the Wapiti Lake trailhead just before 5 pm having covered 7.3 miles averaging just over 3 mph, and burning another 1,327 calories.

Our total mileage for the day came to 14.6.....almost the 15 mile goal we had when we began the day!  The drive home (some 44 miles) took almost 90 minutes due to traffic.....we arrived home around 6:30 pm quite tired, and ready for showers, and naps!  We are now at 60 miles hiked of the 100 we need for our '100 Mile Hiking Cllub'!

Thanks for stopping by!

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