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Yellowstone Lake

In Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Permit: non-motorized permit available at the marinas and are $10.00 for the week per craft. Check with the Parks Service for recent regulations.

Where to Launch: Mary’s Bay, east of Fishing Bridge RV park.
Other places are beautiful too, but with wind you may be able to catch some waves in Mary’s Bay.

Note: The water is cold enough that you’ll want to wear a wet suit if you’re going to be in it at all. Life jackets are required for all ages and all watercraft including windsurfers.

    This is a MUST DO stand up paddle inland experience. Yellowstone is the largest high-elevation fresh-water mountain lake in North America: 24 miles long and covers up to 135 square miles. The deepest areas of the lake are at least 390 feet deep. The park has the highest concentration of geysers and geothermal springs in the world. On the edge of the lake you’ll see fumaroles and hot springs venting cloudy columns of sulphur steam into the air. Pine forests and meadows gently slope towards the shoreline or jut sharply from the lake waters. Bison are everywhere. You might see wolves hunting rodents in the meadows or bear and moose foraging for plants.

    Mary’s bay is on the North end of Yellowstone Lake. Steamboat Point with a steaming fumarole venting a column of white into the sky is to the east of the bay. This section of the lake is where the most geothermic activity is under the water. The bay bottom is sandy and shallow, about 3 or 4 feet deep for 100’s of yards out. We began our standup paddle when the lake was pure glass. Steam vents under the water sent small trails of bubbles to the surface of the lake.  In the shallow water we could see that some of the bubbles came from little vent holes about the size of a quarter. Other vents had craters in the lake bottom up to a foot in diameter around them. Clusters of vents made small areas of water look like it was boiling. Sometimes the water didn’t feel that much warmer than the surrounding waters, sometimes is did. When we saw a lot of Lake-weed the water usually felt warmer.

    After about 45 minutes on the water we noticed a dark wind-line on the lake in the distance to the South. It took about five minutes until we were hit with a line of wind that built to a 15-20 mph steady blow within 10 minutes. We turned back towards the shore and paddled with the wind to our backs.

    Back on shore, Randall rigged a 7.2 meter sail and fastened the footstraps on the Mistral Pacifico. The wind continued to build 20-25mph and he was rippin’.

    Isabella noticed that the wave chop was becoming waves that looked surfable. Pushed by the 24 miles of open water, the waves were 12” to 24” by the time they reached Mary’s Bay. The gradual shallow slope of the bay created waves that we could ride for quite a way. Wind generated, the waves were close together and unpredictable. We found that we could walk the boards out faster than we could paddle them. Standing on the lake bottom we’d push our boards into a wave and quickly jump to standing position. We surfed for a couple of hours. A bull bison came down to the shoreline and watched us awhile before rejoining his herd as it meandered down the road to the west.

Photos: Isabella on the beach. Cristina Acosta catching a wind wave on Yellowstone Lake. Randall Barna loading boards. Note the required permit stickers on the fins. Randall Barna Windsurfing on the Mistral Pacifico.