Every trail description contains the approximate trail length and the overall elevation gain and loss over the course of the trail. It’s important to use both figures when considering a hike; on average, plan one hour for every 2 miles, and add an hour for every 1,000 feet you climb.
This important measurement is often underestimated by hikers when gauging the difficulty of a trail. The Top Trails measurement accounts for all elevation change, not simply the difference between the highest and lowest points, so you can identify rolling terrain with lots of ups and downs.
The calculation of vertical feet in the Top Trails series is accomplished by a combination of trail measurement and computer-aided estimation. For routes that begin and end at the same spot—such as loop or out-and-back—the vertical gain exactly matches the vertical descent. With a point-to-point route, the vertical gain and loss will most likely differ, and both figures will be provided in the text.
Finally, all trail entries with more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain include an elevation profile—an easy means of visualizing the topography of the route. These profiles graphically depict the elevation over the length of the trail.
Surface Type
Each trail entry describes the surface of the trail. This information is useful in determining what type of footwear is appropriate. Surface type should also be considered when checking the weather—on a rainy day early or late in the hiking season, a dirt surface can be a muddy slog; a boardwalk jaunt or gravel surface might be a better choice.
Top Trails Difficulty Ratings
1. A short trail, generally level, that can be completed in one hour or less.
2. A route of 1 to 3 miles, with some up and down, that can be completed in one to two hours.
3. A longer route, up to 5 miles, with uphill and/or downhill sections.
4. A long or steep route, perhaps more than 5 miles, or with climbs of more than 1,000 vertical feet.
5. The most severe route, both long and steep, more than 5 miles long, with climbs of more than 1,000 vertical feet.
Introduction to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks
Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks compose the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the world’s largest intact temperate-zone crucible of raw, wild nature. The Greater Yellowstone concept originated in the early 1970s, based on a pioneering study of grizzly bear population dynamics directed by brothers John and Frank Craighead. After 12 years of field research, they calculated that the year-round range of the region’s bears exceeded 5 million acres, an area larger than Connecticut.
Jazz lovers may beg to differ, but many have called our national park system “the best idea America ever had.” Yellowstone was set aside as the world’s first national park in 1872 and named a United Nations World Biosphere Reserve in 1976. The establishment of National Elk Refuge near Jackson in 1912 opened public access to the region’s southern flank. Much of the area eventually set aside as Grand Teton National Park in 1929 was part of a 1918 proposed enlargement to Yellowstone.
These two world-famous parks are surrounded by a buffer zone consisting of six national forests, six wilderness areas, three national wildlife refuges, 125,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management rangeland, and more than 1 million acres of private property and tribal lands.
All told, this vast complex of wild lands encompasses 28,000 square miles, about the size of West Virginia. Yellowstone alone protects 2.22 million acres (3,468 square miles), roughly the same size as Puerto Rico, or Delaware and Rhode Island combined. In contrast, Grand Teton’s wilderness punch is concentrated in a mere 311,000 acres.
To give you a better idea of just how big the region is, Yellowstone’s seasonal Thorofare patrol cabin in the park’s bottom right corner is around 30 trail miles from the nearest road—a long day’s horseback ride—making it the most remote inhabited wilderness outpost and the farthest spot from a road in the Lower 48.
Long-range planning for holistic management of the buffer zone, home to a rapidly growing human population of well over 200,000 residents, is increasingly seen as the key to preserving this unique region, which is often described as “Island Yellowstone” or “an island of mountains in the high, dry plains.”
Teton Range and Jackson Hole
Geography and Topography
The topography of Greater Yellowstone is the result of an underlying magmatic hot spot and millions of years of volcanic influence. The massif of high, moist plateaus, peaks, and valleys is surrounded by arid plains.
The region contains the headwaters of many of the continent’s grandest waterways: two of the three forks of the Missouri; the headwaters of the Snake River, which flows into the Columbia and eventually into the Pacific Ocean; and the Yellowstone River, the United States’ longest free-flowing river, which runs north and drains approximately 70,000 square miles.
The Continental Divide, the crest of the North American continent, zigzags across the southwest corner of Yellowstone. The region’s landforms channel westerly storm systems onto Yellowstone’s Central Plateau, where most of the park’s snow drops. The Tetons’ topographic extremes create their own semiarid microclimate, with most storms approaching from the southwest. Here, snowfall averages 190-plus inches, but annual rainfall hovers around just 10 inches.
The majority of Yellowstone consists of broad volcanic plateaus scored by deep river canyons, with an average elevation of 8,000 feet. There are 370 miles of paved roads and more than 1,000 miles of maintained hiking trails. Yellowstone is covered 5% by water, 15% by grassland, and 80% by lodge-pole pine forest. The highest point is the seldom-scaled Eagle Peak (11,358 feet), near the park’s remote southeast corner. The lowest point is near the North Entrance at Reese Creek (5,282 feet), just north of the prominent Electric Peak (10,992 feet).
Grand Teton’s centerpiece is the 40-mile-long Teton Range, an active fault-block mountain front. Twelve peaks exceeding 12,000 feet tower over the Snake River Plain and the valley known as Jackson Hole, which averages 6,800 feet in elevation and tilts subtly southward toward the gateway town of Jackson. In addition to the string of morainal piedmont lakes at the base of the range, the park is home to more than 100 alluring tarns (steep-banked glacial lakes). In Yellowstone, more than 600 lakes and ponds cover approximately 107,000 surface acres, 94% of which can be attributed to Yellowstone, Lewis, Shoshone, and Heart Lakes. Some 1,000 rivers and streams account for more than 2,000 miles of running water.
Geology and Hydrothermal Activity
Glaciers and supervolcanoes are the primary influences in Greater Yellowstone’s dynamic landscape. In the past 2.1 million years, three cataclysmic eruptions have rocked the region. The most recent massive volcanic explosion, which occurred around 640,000 years ago, created the gigantic Yellowstone Caldera, a vast, collapsed crater that defines the park’s Central Plateau.
Since 2001, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory has tracked the uplift of the dome beneath Yellowstone Lake resulting from the pressure exerted by superplumes of near-surface magma in what it calls the “largest volcanic system in North America.”
