Northern Loop, Yellowstone Cliffs and Windy Gap & Elysian Fields — Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022

This was part of a multi-day trip cross country, bisecting the Northern Loop from near Tyee Peak, across the Windy Gap, past Elysian Fields and Vernal Park, then over Old Desolate and through Moraine Park.  I haven't seen any trip reports on the WTA site about these amazing (and challenging to reach) locations, so I wanted to post this report.  

The Northern Loop is really an amazing park of the Mount Rainier National Park.  It's harder to get to and there are fewer people.  After our initial start, in 4 days we saw 0 people and 4 bears.  We started from Carbon River entrance.  Because the road damage back in '06, 5 miles of road past the ranger station towards the trail start are open only to hiking and bikes.  This is the second time I've started this journey by biking to the trailhead.  It's a rough dirt/gravel road, fine to navigate with just a hybrid bike or a full mountain bike.  A few spots to walk through but otherwise a modest slight uphill ride on the way out, about 40-60 minutes for the 5 miles. 

First night I like to stay in backcountry zone XTYE.  There are easy camp spots about 3/4 mile past Yellowstone Camp, just north of the main trail, near two snow fed lakes - look for the hikers trail right off the main trail.  There is a hikers trail up to the top of Tyee Peak there too.  The little lakes always have lots of frogs and have soft mud which feels nice to walk on with bare feet.  Twice I watched bears swimming in the lakes on this hot day!  This spot alone is a fun single night out and back trip. 

Just down the main trail from that spot, there is a hikers trail up to the Windy Gap on the south side, past a small lake.  (We missed it and had a harder traverse from further east).  The uphill to Windy Gap is a reasonable steep hike, some loose rocks/scree to cross.  It's the other side, towards Elysian Fields that is much more challenging - large, loose, steep boulder field.  Took us about an hour to carefully traverse down this into the beautiful alpine.  I'm a fit 54 and it was challenging but not crazy hard.  We decided to navigate above Elysian Fields (zone XEYS) and Vernal Park (XVER).  We used Gaia to travel SE through forest and dropped down just north of Old Desolate. Nice spot there with some remaining water where we made camp the second night (zone XOLD).  Next day we traversed up Old Desolate and camped in Moraine Park.  I'm submitting another trip report for that.  

Bugs were generally ok, better further away from the water sources.  Tons of bear and elk tracks and poop.  Just all over the place.  But almost no signs of humans, we left some of the only boot prints of the year on this trip.  Lots of yummy berries along the way.