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By CLAUDIA NEWCORN
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Stop and listen to the delighted trill of a mountain bluebird. Feel the grumble of an impending geyser eruption vibrate beneath your feet. Be engulfed by tumbling steam that comes from the earth’s heart. Experience Yellowstone.
cracks has led to a hyperactive “plumbing system” replete with geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. Geyser Country is parsed out into Upper, Middle and Lower Basins, with places like Black Sands, Fountain Paint Pot and Grand Prismatic Spring. You can literally spend days prowling just geo-thermal sites. Upper Basin is home to the broadest diversity, including Old Faithful. It’s neither the biggest nor the best, but its frequent and reliable eruptions (every 1.5 hours or so) make it popular. The Basin actually has numerous other geysers that erupt regularly, but the spread between eruptions (8-14 hours, give or take 2+ hours) requires visitors to settle on a convenient bench and enjoy the scenery. The Visitors Center posts estimated eruption times for all geysers, enabling you to plan your walk around the basin’s many trails accordingly. My favorite was Castle Geyser. Its ancient cone erupts for up to an hour in blasts of steam and water reaching over 75 feet. Old Faithful, just a few hundred years old, is a short amble away, and froths 130 feet, lasting 5-8 minutes. Both are an easy walk from the 1904 historic landmark Old Faithful Inn – itself well-worth a visit – and Old Faithful Lodge Cabins. The biggest surprises? No smell. I had expected a pervading
t’s 30 degrees outside. Scalding geysers are invisible in their steaming mantles. Snow drizzles among the pines, cloaking bison, elk and mountains in white. Welcome to Yellowstone National Park in the last week of May. Established in 1872, Yellowstone is our first national park. Home to one of the world’s super volcanoes, one third of the park lies within the last eruption’s massive caldera, including Yellowstone Lake. Over 600,000 years ago, the volcano vaporized an entire mountain range, exploding ash and debris in a footprint that reached all the way to Central Valley. Anchored by lodging and a Visitor’s Center complex, at 2.2 million acres, it’s so vast, it’s divided into five “countries”: Mammoth, Geyser, Lake, Canyon and Tower-Roosevelt. Each has its own highlights and characteristics.
GEO-THERMAL OVERLOAD With over 10,000 geo-thermal features, Yellowstone boasts the world’s largest concentration of active geysers. Magma is close to the surface – some three to eight miles beneath – and this, combined with water seepage through underground
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F E B R UA RY/MA R C H 2022
1/25/2022 11:37:05 AM
