Author: Dillon Kunz
Dillon grew up near Jackson Hole, going to the national parks so often with his family that he took it for granted. Spending all day on Saturdays studying inside during college taught him how good he had it, and he now spends as much time in the mountains as possible.
Top-Rated Hikes of Yellowstone, Part 2
There’s an interesting phenomenon with hikes on the AllTrails app, namely that it’s almost impossible for a short hike to have a perfect 5-star rating, yet there are far more long hikes with perfect grades than short hikes. There are probably a few contributing factors in this, like that shorter hikes generally have many more reviews and longer hikes are only hiked by dedicated outdoors-people. However, there is one exception to this rule in Yellowstone NP—but there’s a catch. The...
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Top-Rated Day Hikes of Yellowstone National Park
Last month we analyzed the top-rated hikes in Grand Teton National Park. Yellowstone, being such a large park, will be covered in several editions. This is the first and will cover the shorter hikes. All ratings come from AllTrails, the hiking app. If trails overlap, they are counted together for our purposes. Without further ado--the day hikes rated 4.8/5 (6 hikes; sorted roughly by difficulty): Brink of Lower Falls Trail Distance: .7 miles, 265 ft elevation gain Description: Tre...
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The Top-Rated Hikes in Grand Teton National Park
Among the beauties (no pun intended) of Grand Teton National Park is that there is so much to do and see. There are so many spectacular scenes, lovely lakes, glorious glaciers, and majestic mountains that how does one know where to start? Today we’re going to take a look at the top-rated moderate-to-easy-level hikes on the hiking app, AllTrails, starting with number 5 (though all of these have an average rating of 4.8): 5 Hidden Falls via Jenny Lake Trail &nbs...
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The Mysteries of Mummy Cave
9000-year-old history. 7000-year-old artifacts. 1500-year-old mummies. Is this Ancient Egypt? It is not, but rather Cody, Wyoming. More accurately, Mummy Cave is a nearly enclosed and long-excavated alcove that was full of priceless discoveries, just to the east of Yellowstone National Park and just west of Cody. The excavation was divided into almost 40 layers, each representing a certain period of time in the cave’s history. Items found include, but are not limited to, deer and mounta...
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The First Explorer of Yellowstone
Batman or Superman? Drake or Kendrick Lamar? MJ or LeBron? There are many ‘who is better?’ controversies in our day. Among the great controversies of our time is one that should not be overlooked—who was the first great explorer of Yellowstone? There are two main candidates: John Colter and Daniel Trotter Potts. Let’s dig into the evidence for each. John Colter John Colter got his mountain man start as part of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition commissioned by Thomas J...
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