Mystic Falls Biscuit Basin
— — a waterfall the geysers walked you to.
Not only on a wall.
“A short trail leaves the Biscuit Basin boardwalk and climbs through lodgepole pine along the Little Firehole River. The falls drop about seventy feet over a rhyolite step, warm at the base, cool in the spray. Walkers come for the geysers and find the water instead. The upper switchbacks open to a view back across the basin, where the pale runoff of Sapphire Pool catches the afternoon light. Most days a few people stand at the railing and listen. from the studio
Mystic Falls Biscuit Basin, 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.
Mystic Falls sits at the head of a short canyon on the Little Firehole River, inside the Biscuit Basin thermal area in Yellowstone National Park. The drop is roughly seventy feet over a stair-step of rhyolite, the rock left behind by the same caldera-forming eruptions that shaped the surrounding plateau. The trailhead leaves the western boardwalk past Sapphire Pool and follows the river upstream for about a mile, gaining a few hundred feet through lodgepole pine regrown after the 1988 fires.
The Little Firehole gathers warm runoff from Biscuit Basin's springs before the falls, so the lower pool rarely freezes hard even in deep winter. By the time it reaches the lip the river has cooled, but a faint mineral haze still rises off the rock. Downstream it joins the Firehole, then the Madison, and eventually the Missouri. The spray supports a strip of moss and monkeyflower along the cliff that stays green into October, a small green seam in a landscape mostly the colour of bone and pine.
Biscuit Basin is roughly two miles north of Old Faithful on the Grand Loop Road. The Mystic Falls loop runs about two and a half miles round trip from the boardwalk, with an optional overlook spur that adds elevation and a long view back across the basin. The basin parking and boardwalk have closed without warning after hydrothermal activity, including the July 2024 explosion at Black Diamond Pool, so check current conditions with the park before driving in. Trail open roughly May through October depending on snow.