Yellowstone: Hiking Mallard Lake

This last weekend, we did a quick backpacking trip in Yellowstone National Park around Mallard Lake.

The north entrance of Yellowstone is a quick hour and a half drive from Bozeman, making it ideal for a weekend trip! We have the America the Beautiful pass ($80 for one year), which waived our $35 entrance fee, so only paid the $3 per person per night backcountry fee (for a total of $6).

I had previously spoken to a ranger on the phone about potential weekend backpacking trips and she had given me several options but suggested that we go to the office with an open mind since backcountry permits are (generally) only able to be obtained at a visitor’s center 48 hours or less before your trip and a morning walk up can leave you with slim pickings.

When we stopped into the visitor’s center at the north end of the park (Mammoth Hot Springs) Saturday morning, the ranger was helpful but new to this part of the park and largely unaware of good overnight trips in the area, so we ended up deciding between Fairy Falls and Mallard Lake – two options that had been provided to me over the phone.

Both locations are near Old Faithful (an hour and a half drive from the north end of the park) and we chose Mallard Lake for the slightly longer hike. The trail was an 11 mile loop starting and ending near the Old Faithful parking lot. The trail had a modest 700 ft of elevation gain and three (single?) campsites OB2, OB3, and OB4 next to the lake (unfortunately, as I’ll later explain). It’s 8 miles to the sites on the western leg and 3.5 miles to the site on the eastern leg. Essentially the lake is at the highest elevation, so we did the longer portion our first day (all uphill) in just a little over three hours and the shorter leg the next morning (all downhill) in under 2 hours.

Honestly, it was shorter than we wanted (we were hoping for something closer to 15-25 miles) but it did make for an easy short hike and very relaxing afternoon.

We started the hike late (around 11AM) and still reached the site around 3PM, which gave us ample time to set up camp, take a nap, gather wood, and start a campfire.

As a few learning experiences from this trip, while Yellowstone in July is more crowded than other times of the year due to the lovely weather, there were very little people backpacking – at least on the more random trails, like the one we took. We only ran into three groups on the trail over our two days and we appeared to be the only campers that stayed the night.

As an additional thing I learned, there are so many mosquitoes in Yellowstone in July.

When I was last at Yellowstone, six years ago, we stuck to drier more populated tourist areas and didn’t have any issues but this time, due to going to a more “moist” area and the time of year, it was killer.

At certain points, such as when we were in our tent napping during the afternoon, we counted over a dozen bloodthirsty skeeters trying to get us (leading to some excellent “Let the Right One In” references). We tried our best with bug spray but, honestly, the mosquitoes were just so prolific and annoying that we still each got over a dozen bites and were constantly swatting.

Here are my biggest suggestions and takeaways:

Bring plenty of water. We brought 4 liters and still ended up needing to filter water from the lake (probably not advisable) for another 2 liters. Here’s to hoping for no Giardia but the proof will be in the pudding in another few days.
Bring either a bear canister OR rope to hang your food. We brought both but honestly only needed one form of bear/chipmunk proofing the food.
Bring bear spray. We had this and fortunately didn’t need to use it. I did see a bear from the car and we heard a (potentially bear) sound twice at night, but at a distance.
Bring bug spray and sleep in a netted tent. Fortunately, we had both of these, for the small amount of good it did.
Mosquitoes can, and will, bite you through leggings.
Lots and lots of chipmunks.
There is a good amount of firewood but it burns quickly. The firewood you collect in the area is mostly very airy, dried out wood, so it burns very quickly.

Except for the mosquitoes, which made our life hell, we had a great weekend! Below are some of my pictures from our brief time in the park; we skipped some of the bigger attractions because we caught them last time and we were getting a little hike-antsy.