charismatic megafauna since 1985

Yellowstone National Park

At Glacier, Gaea was the only one who hadn’t seen a glacier. At Yellowstone, she was the only one who had seen a geyser before.

Per usual, we rolled into Yellowstone around 30 minutes before sunset. We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs on our way to the campsite. There weren’t any geysers here though, as the name would indicate. Some of the hot springs smelled like they’re coming straight from the bowels of Hell, with a strong sulfur component. Most of them, however, are just bubbling cauldrons ranging from tepid to boiling.

We camped at the Madison campground, one of the three sites that’s still open this late in the year. It was cold as we got in, and had been winter-y mix for a hour or so and had started to turn to sleet as the sun set. Gaea and I tossed up the tents while Arlen and Tess started dinner. We thought about starting a fire, but with the wintry-y mix it wasn’t going to happen.

The next day we hit the bit Yellowstone tourist attraction: Old Faithful. The rangers predict it based on the previous eruption’s time and duration. They’ve gotten it good enough that the +- on the time is 10 minutes. We had some time to kill so we walked around to some other geysers in the area before heading back to Old Faithful. It went off about 8 minutes after the predicted time. I’m not sure how high it went, but it’s an impressive sight. (On average, I think it’s about 130-160 feet.)

Right after that, the Honeycomb Geyser (EDIT: it’s actually the Beehive Geyser) went off. We’d walked past it on our loop before Old Faithful, and the sign said it’s not as predictable, but it can go as high as 200 feet because the honeycomb-shaped cone above it focuses the spray. Even from hundreds of feet away, we could tell it was a huge spray, dwarfing the people next to it. I’d have to look at the pictures to tell, but I’d believe it was 200 feet.

We went hiking later on to an overlook of Mystic Falls. MF is an 80-foot waterfall, with the overlook about a mile from the trailhead. Right at the start of the trailhead is a fountain geyser that bubbles up over the top like a boiling pot every 5 minutes. After walking to the falls overlook, we kept going up to the top of the hill, up a 1.5-mile set of switchbacks which give way to an overlook of the whole Old Faithful area.

Once we worked our way back down, we wandered into an area where a huge hot spring pumps 500 gallons of 160 degree water per minute into the nearby river. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of steam coming from the river/spring boundary; the large amount of steam was coming from the hot spring itself.

The last thing that Gaea really wanted to see was hot pots, place where heated gas bubbles up through the mud giving the impression of boiling mud. It’s the winter, so the mud isn’t particularly boil-y right now, but it’s still impressive. It’s an area the size of a living room filled with boiling mud. During the summer, it’s a lot muddier and the mud itself is different colors depending on the minerals that are dissolved into it.