Backpacking Yellowstone National Park – Heart Lake Lollipop Loop

Fun is an improper adjective to use in describing most max-effort trips. There is little that is fun about reaching camp at the end of an arduous day with what you’re convinced of, at the time, is the last possible step your body could take.

The reflection back on those trips after the fact is what becomes fun – Type II fun, as it’s called – at least to we masochists. The sense of accomplishment will sear itself into your memory alongside the views you worked so hard to see once the blisters heal and the muscles un-tear and your back gets used to sleeping on a mattress once again.

At the time of function, however, max-effort trips require the kind of focus, schedule, and pace that can only become the single driving force that powers the trip. Dedicated campsites, huge mileage, daunting elevation gains, crossings and cliffs and the like mean you can’t just wing it and still, y’know, actually get where you’re going on time. So while they aren’t technically races in their purest sense, one overriding thought ends up occupying your mind throughout your trek:

Have we covered enough ground?

That may seem an odd way to preface a chronicle about a Yellowstone backpacking trip that was, by no means, max-effort. But in contrast to some of my previous chronicles of trips that ground me to pulp, I never viewed our trip up the Snake River and around Heart Lake as something that would require a monumental effort, a trip that would sap every last drop of energy I could muster every waking moment of every day.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve sat on this aspect of the recount for so long. While it was breathtakingly beautiful, the company was perfect, the bears were bears and the eagles were eagles, that there was never a premise of having to accomplish a feat meant that, when finished, there just didn’t seem like an accomplishment tale that needed telling.

There is no tale of gut, no tale of glory. We were not perched on the precipice of doom, nor did we ink our names into the alpine recordbooks. We did not move mountains, swim trenches, or push ourselves harder than a human entity has done before.

Rather, we simply set out to have a hell of a time, and we did so. You can do this trip – you meaning just about every single one of you. You should do this trip, and should drop just about everything you can to make it happen. You can have some serious, serious Type I fun here.

You’ll get wet if you do, which is just fine. I think we crossed the Snake, the Heart River, and Red Creek a time or twenty, so you’ll need some shoes you can get muddy or don’t plan to see again.

You’ll have to carry a pack for a while, obviously. We ended up covering nearly 55 miles over our five days on the trail, though our elevation change daily was usually measured in the dozens of feet rather than in the thousands. Again, move mountains we absolutely did not.

This trip featured us finding five of the absolute best camping spots in the south-side of Yellowstone National Park, figuring out how to get to each one with plenty of time to enjoy their offerings each night, and finding as much time physically possible to take our eyes off our phones, our laptops, and even off the trail in front of us so we could, y’know, look around for things. As it turns out, when you put your priority settings on look around for things in the location that, y’know, has more things than anywhere else on the continent, you’re going to get to see some things.

We did not max-effort our legs and lungs on this trip. We did, however, max-effort our eyes, and in the process saw things we’d never have seen had we been racing around elsewhere.

We were knee-deep in cold water thirty seconds into our route – on purpose. We parked the car, got our packs ready in the parking lot at Yellowstone’s south entrance, and our first steps were made in the respective water shoes we had brought with us.

It is one of the more odd trailheads from which I’ve departed, as you’re swishing your way across the Snake River and into the bush while looking right at the line of cars, RVs, and truck-trailers who are lined up to enter the park’s southside and do things their way. Who knows how many kids sat in back seats watching movies on iPads while sat-navs barked orders in the front seat as we tried our best not to misstep on a slick rock and end our journey before it began.

I couldn’t help but realize that’s how the non-human residents of Yellowstone get by, lurking just out of view of the hordes of humans who are there to see them but not always there to look for them. That hit me as I splashed some cold water on my face on the far side of the Snake, reminding myself that I, human, was there precisely to do some looking.

With that, we put the cars and RVs out of sight, out of mind, and plunged into Yellowstone’s depths for the next five days, with Heart Lake and Mount Sheridan our ultimate goal.

The Route

The John D. Rockefeller Parkway is actually the ‘short’ way to refer to the road that runs from Jackson, Wyoming north through Grand Teton National Park and to the South Entrance of Yellowstone. It’s an amalgamation of US-191/89/287/26, and it’s the road that gets you easiest access to the South Boundary Trail – there’s a trailhead at the entrance with a ranger station and ample parking.

That’s where this route both begins and ends, the South Boundary Trail serving as alpha and omega for this particular journey. (I should note here, however, that there is much more direct access to Heart Lake from the more northern Heart Lake Trailhead, the Heart Lake Trail following the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) to the lake’s northernmost tip. Should you want to just see the lake and make this a short trip, that should be right in your wheelhouse. For us, though, the Heart River and Snake River floodplains and canyons south of the lake were just as high on our to-see list, so we approached from the south.)

The Snake River’s headwaters sit just east of the South Boundary Trailhead, up on the Two Ocean Plateau on the backside of the Continental Divide – one ridge over from where the Yellowstone River and Thorofare Creek carve their way through The Thorofare. The Snake actually flows northwest for a dozen or so miles as more of a creek before it finally meets the Heart River as it flows through the Heart River Canyon out of the south end of Heart Lake.

The Snake snakes around south of the Red Mountains, of which Mount Sheridan (10,305 feet) is the tallest. It picks up steam thanks to runoff in the form of Red Creek, Forest Creek, and Basin Creek, and it’s through these lush valleys we would walk our way north to Heart Lake – first up the South Boundary Trail to campsite 8C2 for a night, then across the Snake River Cutoff Trail, north on the Snake River Canyon Trail, and east on the Heart River Trail to campsite 8C5.

With 11 designated backcountry campsites in the meadows and along the creeks and rivers south of Heart Lake, you’ve got ample options/routes to spend a couple of days working your way north to the lake. If you’re lucky, you might even pick one that’ll let you get hailed on only to pick you right back up with a friendly rainbow.

There is little to no elevation gain on this route. The Snake River sits at roughly ~6,850 feet where we entered it at the intial trailhead, and Heart Lake – which we reached early on Day 3 after some 20 miles of hiking – has an elevation of 7,455 feet. There are some minor ups and downs as you jockey between river drainages, but never more than a couple hundred muddy feet.

Instead, you mostly walk along the waters running south between the Red Mountains and both Big Game Ridge and Chicken Ridge. The subtle yet gorgeous Heart River canyon was a highlight, as was watching the bald eagles fish the Snake before it.

We hiked our way to the northeast corner of Heart Lake on Day 3, as we’d scored the chance to stay at campsite 8J1. It’s a true 5-star site right on the water with perfect views of Mount Sheridan – and the sun that sets on its shoulder – across the lake.

I need not tell you what to do when you’ve reached a backcountry lake where the only access comes via foot. The ways you choose to recreate once there are endless, as there’s fishing, the Rustic Geyser basin, a series of hot springs, and no fewer than 11 different backcountry campsites around the lake where you can spend days, or even weeks, on your trip. On this particular edition, we chose to jump just a quick ~3.5 miles to campsite 8H3 on the lake’s west side on Day 4, as it would give us a basecamp from which we could drop our packs and climb the nearly 3,000 feet up to the top of Mount Sheridan.

The views atop Sheridan were tremendous, with all of Yellowstone Lake in view to the north and the Teton Range in sight to the southwest. There’s a fire lookout at the summit, too, which serves as a perfect spot for a snack after the climb kicks your butt for an hour and a half.

Our Day 5 plans were initially to begin to work our way back to the car, first taking the Heart Lake Trail south along the lake’s western shore. We’d leave the lake after boomeranging around it, pass Sheridan Lake and Basin Creek Lake, and eventually find ourselves within the beatiful Red Creak meadows. We were set to camp where the Heart Lake Trail met back up with the South Boundary Trail – campsite 8C1, which we had seen and passed on Day 1.

Two things conspired to prompt us to bypass that campsite and huff it a full ~15.5 miles back to the car that day, cutting our trip short by one night. The first was that we were making great time – as I mentioned before, there was precious little incline on the way in, and the way out featured a comfortably gradual decline that dropped some 50 feet per mile. The second, and perhaps more important variable, was that we saw a mother grizzly bear with two cubs on a ridge above us roughly a mile or so from our camp, and after watching them intently for 15 or so minutes decided we need not try to sleep in the same vicinity as them.

We were back to the car by 5, and back to Jackson by 6. Four sweaty, muddy dudes in a hastily booked basement hotel room, with visions of a shower, cheeseburgers, and cold beer dancing in our heads.

And visions of those bears, of course.

If You Go…

• This route was approximately 55 miles, and given the time of year when we visited (August), there was enough daylight for us to probably accomplish it comfortably in just 4 days had we tried to push it. As I mentioned earlier, though, you could spend a week and a half up there simply enjoying the beauty and still find things to do.
• A similar southern route can be accomplished by approaching up the Fox Creek Trail from the Fox Creek Trailhead east of the South Entrance. The Fox Creek Trail actually doubles as the CDT, which quite literally follows the Snake from its actual headwaters near Two Ocean Pass.
• This route is entirely within Yellowstone National Park, meaning you’ll need a permit to pull it off. Here’s my guide for how to land one of those backcountry permits, as well as my guide to choosing routes and campsites should you land a permit. The early-access window for 2024 backcountry permits opens on March 1st – just a week away!
• For my money, the best map of the area is Trails Illustrated #305 (Yellowstone Lake/Yellowstone National Park SE). The first couple of miles of the South Boundary Trail run off this particular map (so, the final miles on the return), but roughly 95% of the route is on this lone map. If you want a map with those few miles and a smaller portion of this route just to be sure, you can add Trails Illustrated #302 (Old Faithful/Yellowstone National Park SW), too.
• Plan at your own risk. Even the most straightforward on-trail day hikes in Yellowstone can involve varying terrain, changing weather, and off conditions. Every additional variable added to the most basic of hikes – overnight camping, food storage, unpredictable wildlife, water conditions, etc. – ony serves to augment the risk. Always check with Yellowstone backcountry rangers for updated conditions before beginning any trip, and I’d advise you to consult with them before booking one, too.