Get Out! Getting away from the crowds in Yellowstone

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- "You will see bears."

That is what the ranger at the backcountry office in Yellowstone National Park told me when I checked in with him before embarking on a seven-mile trail that would take my friend Jane and me far from the throngs of tourists and into the wilderness.

The ranger spoke so casually about bears that he might as well have said, "Oh, by the way, you will see squirrels."

Judging by his reassurance, my countenance must have screamed "Total Gumby!"

But hey, there was something about trekking through "griz" country that set me on edge. Maybe that came from Googling "grizzlies maulings Yellowstone" every week for six months leading up to the trip. Maybe it was because the size of the skull on display at the lodge near our cabin looked like it belonged to a creature out of the Jurassic Period, not a grizzly.

We didn't want to experience Yellowstone from a car or the benches at Old Faithful, so into the untamed country we ventured, mindful of all the tips we had learned about hiking in an area populated by hundreds of grizzlies: Eat odorless food, make noise continuously, and keep the bear spray --which, by the way, may or may not work -- within reach.

Jane and I agreed that this would be a bad time for one of us to give the other the silent treatment.

By the end of our stay, we were hiking on a trail near Yellowstone Lake, where signs warned people that they were entering prime grizzly habitat.

We were never completely at ease, but we were no longer riding that edge of panic. That was a relief because it's hard to absorb the park's boundless wonders when you jump every time a pine tree creaks or a bird sings.

The beauty here is larger-than-life, and at times, I felt as if I had stepped into one of those giant Thomas Cole paintings where the landscape is bathed in celestial light.

Trying to write about the beauty of Yellowstone is as daunting to me as standing at the trailhead to Mount Everest. I used the words "majestic" and "glorious" so many times, that by the end of the trip, sometimes I just muttered "jeepers," which is a wholly inadequate way to describe a mighty sweep of snow-capped mountains towering over an alpine lake or a herd of bison grazing near a placid stretch of the Yellowstone River.

The park, which sits in the northwest corner of Wyoming, is nearly 2.2 million acres. I had seen enough Westerns and read enough history to expect the big sky, the jagged-toothed mountains and thickets of quaking aspens.

I had no reference point for the belching mud pots, the gurgling hot springs and the clouds of hydrogen sulfide that smelled like rotten eggs. Those and other geothermal features were bizarre and, at times, otherwordly.

Take an area in Mammoth Hot Springs at the north end of the park where the stark, colorless landscape conjures up images of what a post-apocalyptic world might look like. Here, dead trees jut up from terraces that appear as stacks of ice. The terraces form as hot water carrying carbon dioxide moves through the limestone deposits in the area.

This bleak terrain, most of which is accessible on boardwalks, contrasts sharply with the surrounding lushness.

The most celebrated geothermal feature in Yellowstone is Old Faithful. And this amounted to our only disappointment in the park. There's a bit of an amusement-park quality to this area, with packs of tourists and a lodge with a huge plate-glass window where a person can watch the geyser spout without stepping foot outdoors.

Of course, we stayed to watch it blow then walked a mile to Solitary Geyser, which gushes about every five minutes. It was a much more satisfying experience.

There are a lot of signs here warning people not to step off the boardwalk because a boiling spring could be bubbling just beneath the thin crust of earth.

Turns out that we put ourselves at risk only one time. We were strolling through a meadow speckled with yellow from clusters of glacier lily and arrowleaf balsam root. Just ahead, two bison grazed at an uncomfortably close distance.

One had his back to us. The other was giving us what Jane calls the hairy eyeball. In all the reading I did on Yellowstone, I was able to recall exactly two things about bison -- they injure more people than grizzlies do, and you should stay 30 yards away from them.

"How far do you think we are from them?" I asked.

"Twenty-nine yards," she said. That put a kick in my step.

We charged up the hill, breathlessly announced our presence to bears as we reached the crest and left the meadows to the bison.

■ Lisa O'Donnell can be reached at 727-7420 or at lo'donnell@wsjournal.com.