Yellowstone National Park - NORRIS BASIN

Day 1:

From Madison Junction to Mammoth Hotsprings: traveling Norris Basin

There are several geyser basins in the park and the hottest one  is called Norris Basin. It is a part of part of the Norris - Mammoth corridor

Norris to Mammoth Hot Springs might be the hottest part of the entire Yellowstone Park.

I am not pretending to have known that before. But after we returned home, I wanted to know more about everything that popped out from my SD card. It may be a bit scrambled but somehow I believe that I am close.

There are 3 good reasons for Norris Basin to be the hottest in the park:

1) The stretch between Norris and Mammoth Hotsprings is actually underlined by a fault running all the way up to from Norris to Gardiner, Montana. (Aren't you glad that I made such a beautiful map?)

2) There is a second fault running from Hebgen Lake by the city of West Yellowstone to Norris where it intersects with the first one.

And THAT is not all:

3) The edges of the Yellowstone caldera are marked by a ring-like crack in the earth's crust . 
At Norris the faults 1 and 2 cross and together they also intersect with the ring!

What a story!  No wonder that Norris Basin is the hottest one in Yellowstone.

Norris basin has a number of areas that would have been worthwhile some exploration. As I learned much later it is divided into 3 smaller basins: Porcelain Basin,  Black Basin, and One Hundred Springs Plain.
It is also a home to the tallest geyser in the world - the Steamboat Geyser, 

Traveling to Mammoth Hotsprings on our pre-defined loop, we only got a tiny taste of Norris Basin. definitely an area that deserves closer look, more time and good hiking boots. And a good, healthy back would also help.

Yesterday I took a virtual tour on the following website:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/photosmultimedia/norris-geyser-basin-tour.htm. 

This is only the first area in the basin - it gave us a taste of what's underneath.

Water here is more than boiling HOT when it reaches the surface! Someone measured its temperature and it was 95!
A 95? Water boils at 100, no? And this is supposed to be above the boiling point? Yup.

Being in Yellowstone, on a high plateau of  2300 m instead of 0, the water water boils at 93 degrees C.
(And all I can think of right now is: And that is how the cookie crumbles!)

Ahhhh, why did I not pay attention in my Physics classes?)



Water here is not only HOT it is also ACIDIC. The water mist be mixing with gases that escaped from magma below - being a bit more interested in chemistry, something tells me that water + gas = acid.
Not every basin in Yellowstone is like that.

Acidic conditions are not much suitable to higher life.
Only some plants enjoy the warm edges of these pools. Yellow monkey flowers are some of them.

Hot and acidic water suits does not suit you or I but a host of microorganisms can live in such conditions: 

The thermophiles. 

"Thermo" meaning heat and "phile" meaning "liking". Okay I did not want to say "loving" but that what it is.

There are different kinds of thermophiles out there - some are wimps living at only 45 degrees Celsius, some are more macho, going for 70 or 80 degrees and so on. The greatest machistas are called extremophiles - the extreme-conditions-loving creatures. They can thrive where the rest of the living world could not..

Norris basin is full of those macho microorganisms - and when they set to work they totally change the chemistry and visual appearance of their niches.

They are the little guys that drive crazy two groups of people:
a) the scientists
b the photographers and artsy people in general

All those colourful designs around and within the thermal features can drive any visually inclined person nuts.

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The overflow channels of geysers and hot springs are often brightly colored with minerals and microscopic life forms.  Lime-green cyanidium algae, Cyanidium caldarium  and orange cyanobacteria  found in the runoff streams look like rusty, iron-rich mineral deposits.