Day 7a: Island park ID to Mammoth Hot Springs Wyoming

 Under Construction

We have hit a portion of the trip where things happen more rapidly than I can document them.  I have placed some photos here to give you a sense of what we were up to and hope my words can catchupo

Crossing the great divide

We cross the great divine about 20 minutes into our journey .  . . fittingly a misty mountain pass with valleys of varying color on either side enhanced by the low angle of the morning sun.  I pour a little of some ocean water collected before the start of our trip so that it flows down either side.   This is the separation point for waters bound for the Pacific via the Columbia and waters bound for the gulf via the Mississippi.  This divide runs the spine of the North American Cordierra and is home to some our continents most breathtaking scenery.

West Yellowstone

For every national park there is at least one town outside the national park that sells you everything the park cannot sell you - espresso, bars, hotels that have not won some bidding contest, classic car races, amusement parks, art galleries, Miniature golf, concert halls, discotheques . . . and several things I won't describe in a "family-friendly"  . . .They're all here.  Some might even say the real park is in these towns surrounding the parks.   I imagine some family coming here and being blown away by all the "fun" happenings in the town outside Yellowstone, that they never actually make it into the park.  Then I get really depressed.  We stopped only for some really wonderful fancy coffee drink.

Our entrance to the park looks like the line at an amusement park, 4 poorly marked lanes, one for each of the pass types.  Friendly rangers collecting admission fees and examining the tickets people downloaded onto their phones, and verifying passes.  I am sure when most people go to school to become a park ranger, they never imagine that they will likely spend a lot of time collecting admission fees in a tiny booth at the edge of the park.

We make it maybe 5 minutes before hitting the first traffic jam of what will be many today.  I get it, we've all been cooped up for 18 months and now the sight of your first antelope is just a little too much to handle. . . 

and once you stop for the idiot in front of you, you too must stop to see what they were stopping for.  At this rate we will get through the park sometime next month.  Much to our relief, the wildlife paparazzi parade is headed to Old Faithful and for a moment we have the road heading elsewhere to ourselves.

Norris Basin

I visited Old faithful ~ 32 years ago.  I will not deny its grandeur or wonder, but we did choose a different path, in part to get away from the crowds that are flocking to every major national park this summer.  So we chose Norris Basin, just outside the caldera rim.  Indeed we never quite make it into the caldera this trip.  We just skirt its edges.  so be it.  TheNorris basin is one of the oldest geothermal fields in the park to have established trails.  We spent nearly 2 hours doing a loop less than 1 mile, stopping at every, pool, fumorole, Mud pot.  After years away the smell of sulfur is somewhat refreshing 

I will admit I was disappointed that during our short hike not a single geyser erupted.  apparently this is how it is and this is why old faithful and its regular spouting geysers are more popular.  Still otherworldly and utterly amazing.

Whistle stops

As crowds built up at all the major attractions, Anita and I began a campaign of "whistle stops" at the more minor attractions with the intention of leaving Mammoth ~ 1 ish.  Any one of these could have been a park unto itself, but by proximity to the big attractions, these places enjoy sparse crowds even on a busy summer weekend.

We Began with roaring Mountain, a series of steaming Fumaroles, that periodically roar so loud they can be heard miles away.  Today was a quiet day, but we sopent 5 - 10 minutes watching the steam rise and dance with the winds.  Indeed one of the hardest-to-capture elements of today's joureny was that steam.  It is everywhere and hypnotic, yet no photo or short video does it justice.  

We spent 15 minutes at a series of steaming pools along a creek that would eventually join the Yellowstone river.  Unfortunately, with the reduced crowds comes more folks who think they can get away with dangerous destructive activities.  In this case a family was encouraging their teenage son to trample the meadows for a photo opp.  A more confrontational version of myself may have photographed them or called them out.  In this case, however I had the experience of knowing people who had fallen through the surface in other geothermal areas, and so reminded them that it is very easy to fall into a pool of boiling fluid should one stray from the trail.  

Our Final whistle stop was Obsidian Cliffs.  These gas rich eruptions tend to eject silica rich lava in all directions.  THe obsidian is therefore unusual as it is typically gas poor and erupts slowly, but cools quickly.  This cliff is across the road, mostly, but still very spectacular and represents an older eruption, perhaps a later stage of said eruption when the gas had all been spent and the remaining lava oozed out.

Approaching Mammoth hot springs we entered a narrow gorge and spotted a nearly empty lot.  As it turned out the lot was for observing a waterfall at the head of the gorge and telling the story of attempts to bring a road into the region.  Where there is a waterfall there is a disequilibria, and landscape in rapid change.  Waterfalls tend to erode upstream quite rapidly and often follow a recent uplift event.  All the volcanism we have witnessed these last ffew days has led to a landscape very different from that which was there before and I would imagine there is also rapid ongoing faulting as well.  Indeed the near perfect alignment of this valley, and the pattern of hydrothermal systems would suggest much active faulting now, but so covered up by other things.

Mammoth Hot Springs

This, and the summit of Beartooth pass were the 2 highlights of our day here.  It was noon, crowds were peaking and we had already sustained a good deal of UV exposure, so we took the upper mammoth terrace auto road.  What blows you away about this locale is the sheer scale of the place, horizontally as well as vertically.  AS I was driving my attentions shifted from the stunning views to the road.  The buildup of travertine here is over several hundred feet thick and has likely taken place since the last ice age or at least since the last major eruption.

We found a spring that could very well have inspired the name Mammoth for its resemblance to said megafauna.  

What these phots fail to capture is the rippling wave-like nature of the water flow, the way the scales of space seemed to self replicate time and time again.  I am told each of these terraces is colonized by some different microbe exploiting a different exothermic reaction in the dissolved sulfides of this water.  I see terraces on all scales from fractions of an inch to feet, to 10's even 100's of feet vertically.  To gaze here is to see a piece of the infinite.

I end part 1 here, because there is so much and what follows is generally representative of a very different geology.