This was a pretty strenuous hike with no reward for those reading, as we forgot our camera! We plan to make it back up to the fossil forest again this summer as it is truly a wonderful place. As for the hike...
Katrina, Ilija, and I headed out on our first weekend hike as a family (Katrina took off Wednesday the 4th and the rest of the week as the following week she had some 12 hour days!) We got up early and headed due east to Roosevelt/Tower regions of the park. The trailhead is unmarked, but using our super-duper YCERP hiking guide we were able to locate the trailhead and begin out journey. We hit the trail at about 9:30 AM. The trail begins relatively even, though you can see the ridge in the distance. According to Katrina's keen sense of smell, Bison had been there recently, so we hiked carefully, making some noise on the way over small hills where we had bad field of vision. After about a quarter/half-mile we hit the hard stuff.
The climb is about 1700 feet in 1.25 miles, so pretty brutal for our virgin Yellowstone calves. As we quickly ascended the ridge (Speciman Ridge to be exact) we passed through two stands of what appeared to be Doug Fir. As we reached the first stand we had already stopped twice, even after I boasted about waiting until we reached the stand for a water break. I was really doggin it, Ilija seemed to be fine and was bucking me on...Katrina provided moral and also some physical support :) I looked at the experience as making me stronger and getting me in shape for backpacking.
After passing through the first stand, I was pretty tired, looking ahead I thought no way could it get any steeper. I was wrong. Good thing my calves are strong from my soccer days, I think by the end of this Yellowstone thing they will be bigger than my thighs. Katrina said, 'Stay to the right', I said, 'Look, the trail goes over to the left and seems to have more switch backs, looking like the correct trail.' As usual, we should have stayed right, instead taking the shallower but longer route up to the top of the ridge. We would pay for this later.
As we emerged from the second stand of trees we entered a large meadow, with a final steep trek up the side of the ridge. We popped out up on top of the ridge wonder 'Where is this fossil forest?'. We stopped to catch our breath and looked around. Slowly but surely we began to see fallen petrified logs, stumps, and roots in the ridge. Truly amazing! In many cases the petrification was so perfect you could easily discern individual tree rings, what was bark, etc. You can literally count the rings to age an individual tree as well as make out the specie. We spent some time examining each stump and the logs, including some of those burned in a long ago forest fire. We looked around for the 26 foot diameter redwood stump that we should have seen on our way up. Turns out it was on the trail that went up the 'right' side. We tried back tracking down the right trail to find the stump. It got very steep, very fast, with the family at times scrambling down the ridge side on loose soil. When the trail guide and your wife say stay right, stay right! We ended somehow completely missing the redwood stump, but because we took the different route, we ended up going higher on the ridge than most people do (most stop at the stump and head back as it is about 400 feet lower in elevation) and were rewarded for our hard climb.
Once we got to flatter terrain we let Ilija out of the pack and run the rest of the way to the car, convincing him to avoid all the bison chips along the way. Round trip it was about 3.6 miles and 1700 feet gain of elevation, all completed in about 2 hours, even with Ilija trotting along at the end.
Here is a nice shot someone took of our missing redwood stump:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethchristie/6010283013/
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