Pine Creek Falls Absaroka
— — the cold the mountain hands down.
Not only on a wall.
“A short walk up from the floor of Paradise Valley, the trail climbs through lodgepole and Douglas fir until the creek announces itself. The falls drop about forty feet off a granite shelf and throw spray that holds the morning light. The trailhead sits at Pine Creek Campground, a mile of switchbacks below the basin. Most people turn around at the lower viewing rock. The ones who keep going find the upper lake.
Pine Creek Falls Absaroka, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pine Creek Falls sits in the Absaroka Range on the east side of Paradise Valley, about twelve miles south of Livingston, Montana. The trail leaves Pine Creek Campground in the Custer Gallatin National Forest and climbs roughly one mile to the lower falls, gaining about five hundred feet. The Absarokas form the northern rim of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, sharing a boundary with Yellowstone National Park. Beyond the falls the path continues another four miles and twenty-six hundred feet up to Pine Creek Lake, a glacial cirque held under the ridgeline.
Pine Creek runs cold off the Absaroka snowfields and meets the Yellowstone River on the valley floor below. The lower falls drop roughly forty feet over a granite step where the canyon narrows, and the volume swings hard with the season — heavy in late May and June when the snowpack lets go, thin and clear by August. The pool at the base stays in the low forties through summer. The creek is part of the Yellowstone drainage, one of the longest undammed rivers in the lower forty-eight.
The trailhead is reached from East River Road south of Livingston, then up Luccock Park Road past Pine Creek Campground. The round-trip hike to the lower falls runs about two miles with five hundred feet of gain — manageable for most walkers in good weather. Snow closes the upper trail from November into June, and the road to the campground is plowed only to the lower turnaround in winter. There is no fee at the trailhead, but the campground charges a nightly site rate and fills early in July.