Dear Reddit:

Do not make plans to visit. It is beautiful, but over-loved. The only way to get here is to (1) win the lottery for a camping permit, which is harder than getting Taylor Swift tickets, or (2) hauling your ass 19+ miles and 5000+ feet of elevation on a day hike.

2000 feet of that elevation gain is covered in less than 3/4 of a mile up Aasgard Pass. It is a shifty, slide-y mess of rocks that requires some route-finding and scrambling. Every year I run into someone who followed the pretty pictures on the internet and is sobbing while clinging to a rock because while they are out of water and too tired to keep going, they are too terrified to go back the way they came (tbh going down Aasgard is not at all fun, you have to play a game called 'which boulder might arrest my fall as I careen down the mountainside').

OK, it's not that bad and you will almost certainly survive, but it's going to be a real sufferfest unless you are in great shape. It will be hot, too, and the mountain goats will creepily follow you around the Core waiting for you to pee so they can lick it up. They may or may not try to yeet you off the trail.

Or you'll easily get a May permit, smugly congratulate yourself on cracking the permit lottery code, and then promptly fall through the snow on Aasgard through to the hidden waterfall and die. They will collect your body when the ice thaws in the spring. (This one is actually true and happens not infrequently.)

You forgot to mention our imminent deaths by volcano and/or random murder due to our persistent state of lawlessness! Also, the cougars that will eat you on the trails.

Lol. K. If you want to spend your Sunday morning gatekeeping sausage gravy colors, I guess that's up to you.

This is a very standard sausage gravy color, particularly if you are making the gravy yourself rather than spooning it from a vat in the restaurant.