Yellowstone National Park - The GRAND CANYON of YELLOWSTONE RIVER

End DAY 1:

By the time we made it to Grand Canyon of Yellowstone River the day was nearing its retirement age. It was past 5 p.m. then and you can imagine how much one can do with such a small window of remaining light. All we were able to do was to play "real tourists" - walk to a viewing platform and click-click some photos there. Again - better than nothing and absolutely worth every second of the late afternoon light.

This was the initial view of the canyon - not far from here would be the platform offering the views of the Lower Falls. However, "not far" in photospeak can mean either 5 minutes or several hours - depending what's in front of the lens.

And so it happened that while my companions were already aiming their lenses at the wild waters of Lower Falls, I was still hobbling along the trail between the parking lot and the viewing platform. The scenery was surreal and overwhelming. 
What human eyes and human brain combine into a 3D image is certainly much different from the 2D photo in one's camera. It was challenging to capture the features of this rugged canyon in something better than a visual pancake. I took my time trying out different F-stops, avoiding branches, figuring out some sort of composition. Success still lies somewhere in future, but I had fun. 
And! Thank you the park rangers for installing all those safety barriers along the trail. Without you, the world might have been deprived of one promising photographer.
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Yellow colour in these rocks of the Canyon 

is not caused by sulphur but by 

iron compounds. The iron oxides can be 

found in Nature or they can be man-made.

Their colours range from red-yellow-black.

There is no way that faced with the beauty of this canyon one could avoid asking questions. What makes this place so colourful?
Like so many other features here in Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon owes its existence to the volcanic activity. After the last eruption some 600 000 years ago, one of the lava flows covered the area of today's Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. 
The melted insides of the Earth spewed onto the surface crystallizing into hard rocks - in this case rhyolite (in other places obsidian). Rhyolite is a rock chemically equal to granite that crystallizes deep underneath the surface but because it is deep, it cools off slowly and its physical properties are therefore different.
Both, rhyolite and granite can be found in many other places on Earth but  here, in Yellowstone, the rocks of the former lava flow had been subjected to additional force. Hot magma in this park is close to surface and this lava flow had been undermined by areas of hot steam and gases. 
The forming rocks had been hydrothermally altered, slowly releasing and revealing the colourful minerals from within.

The altered rocks were eventually subjected to other never ceasing forces of Nature: earthquakes, glacier movements with all their heavy grinding and excavations, seasonal changes and floods and always present wind.
Yellowstone River found its way through and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was born. 

Once again, one thousand years is just a moment in Earth's time, so it might be safe to say that this canyon is pretty young - someone figured out that it has been there, in its present shape (+/-) for 10, 000 years, since the departure of the last Ice Age.

Lower Falls of Yellowstone River.

The Day 1 of our Yellowstone travels came to its end - it was time to return to our base in West Yellowstone. 

If you wish to take a complete tour of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone  click here, 

Yellowstone National Park - BLACKTAIL DEER PLATEAU

DAY 1:

There are many high plateaus in Yellowstone country -  9 have been named so far.  One of them can be found only a short distance from Mammoth Hot Springs - it is  the Blacktail Deer Plateau. Right behind it is Lamar Valley - both areas are now famous for their wolf packs that have been introduced back to Yellowstone in 1995. The wolf pack of Blacktail Deer Plateau is known as Leopold Pack.

 Our Grand Loop Road road cuts through a small portion of this interesting plateau.  One can clearly see how the forces of Nature  work here - the sea layering sediments and creating rocks, the glaciers digging out the valleys and smoothing the tops of the hills. We are driving the sea-bottom now overgrown with silvery sagebrush.
Once again I am a passenger taking photos through the windshield:

Blacktail Deer Plateau spreads over many square kilometers at an altitude of over 2000 meters above the sea level. It is overgrown by sagebrush dotted with thousand and thousand of yellow flowers.

Arrow-leaf Balsamroot, Balsamorhiza sagittata. Both, the common and Latin names indicate that there is some kind of substance, the aromatic resin, stored in the root.

The seeds are edible and rich in oils.
They used to be eaten raw or mixed with fat and stored for winter

The plants are quite hairy, the air-filled hairs on their leaves and stems are giving them silvery appearance.
They must have something to do with protecting the cells underneath from strong sun and UV rays.
They help against the loss of water in this dry, sandy and exposed environment. Though all the parts of the plant are edible it might be the best to leave it alone since it could easily be confused with arnica - the plant that is not as user-friendly as balsamroot..

 Further down the road we enter yet another valley. Meadows there are early-summer-green, feeding off a stream that runs through them. Two Wapiti Elk, Cervus canadensis, still bone-thin after the recent winter must be in elk paradise. Their antlers have started to grow and the animals will need a lot of energy to reach their prime pre-winter condition.
Early grasses could mean next winter's survival and possibly a right to mate.


For now the ruminating elk gracefully ignore the crowds of onlooking people crowding on a ledge of the highway - way above their venue.

Beautiful but very poisonous:
Monkshood flowers,  Aconitum columbianum
are also dotting the landscape.
It is also known as
Columbian Monkhood or Western Monkhood.

There is nothing better than a good scratch! And while humans have only 2 limbs for such use, the elk have four plus two antlers. Who said that they could not reach every single part of their bodies?




This elk is in much better condition than the two we saw just a short while ago.

Unfortunately, many cars are already lined up by the road and people, wielding their cameras are starting to close on the animal.
A warning plea results only in an impolite reply from a man who has already passed the invisible barrier of  elk's personal space. The man is possessed by hunting spirit; be it only a photo-hunt the passion seems to be the same - and, who cares about respect.



This elk is patient. So far. The time might come when his patience will run thin - most animal-related injuries do not come from bears. They come from bison and elk. And after watching the people here, I would never point a blaming finger at the elk.

Blacktail Deer Plateau is one of the smaller ones in the park - it soon starts to climb up to one of the mountain passes - we are now nearing Dunraven Pass. Somewhere to the east from here is the famous Lamar Valley that we will have to explore another time. That's where the wolves had been re-introduced to Yellowstone. Their presence proves to be beneficial to maintaining the natural balances in Yellowstone.

We are at a rest stop - someone threw a bunch of peanuts and carrots onto the last snowpatch - did they know that this is actually an illegal thing to do?

Grey Jay, Perisoreus canadensis,
also known as Whiskey Jack does not care - it shows up to stuff its beak with several peanuts at a time to carry them away into some safe storage.
It keeps on returning until the loot is safely hidden away.

Dunraven Pass is one of several passes located on Continental Divide.

Dunraven Pass sits at the altitude of  2,706 m ( 8,878 feet). The views from here are amazing; there are several mountain ranges to the east and a tall mountain to the south-west. it is Mt. washburn - its top is still thickly covered by snow. No wonder - it reaches 3,122 m (10,243 feet). It was named after general Henry Washburn who was is known as the first person to climb this mountain. There may have been some before him but his is the first recorded ascent.

We are nearly at the top; it is cold and wet here but we make a short stop to survey the view - it offers a glimpse into the recent past: the 1998 forest fires in Yellowstone.










This is only a short stop: beginning of June is still closer to winter than to the short summer of the pass.
We are quite happy to hop into the car and continue towards the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone River - our last stop of the day.

Yellowstone National Park - MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS

Oh yes! 
Still DAY 1:


 Roaring Mountain behind us, we are heading North towards Mammoth Hot Springs - the town and the terraces.

Country keeps on changing from open to forested and in one section we have to yield a large bison bull. 
He looks like coming home from an all night party, dishevelled in his still winter coat, tired and .... well the branch!

Bison bulls are mostly solitary and when the mating season nears they start their preparations for the right to mate. This guy looks like he was thrashing some vegetation and that he would take no part in some silly games.

Bison are the most dangerous animals in the park.
They can run at 60 km per hour when they decide to. 
It would NOT be a good idea to upset any of him.
That's why we all stop and let His Majesty lead the way. 
Being a passenger I am taking photos through the front windshield - another good reason for keeping the vehicle clean.









Mammoth Hot Springs:

Some 30 km North from Norris is a place much different from other features in the park. Famous the world over Mammoth Hot Springs does not straddle the ring fracture made by the explosion of the Yellowstone volcano or the fault that heats the Norris Basin. 
But all the quaking and rumbling of Norris created open-enough plumbing to allow the heat waters of Norris to reach Mammoth helping in creation of its famous terraces.


The Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces and how they came to existence.

To start with we need to realize that some 400 million years ago (long after the last volcanic explosion) the area was covered by sea.  Where there is a sea there are deposits and sedimentary rocks. 

The following are not my photos - they are from Wikipedia, intended to bring the point a bit closer.
 These shells are (more often than not) made of  Calcium carbonate. Aren't they amazing?

One of the sedimentary rocks is limestone; a nice soft rock with, made by compression of tiny shells of tiny shell-protected animals that lived and perished in the sea all those millions of years ago. Their dead bodies, only millimeters in size, "rain" down to the sea or ocean floor, get squished by pressure of water and, crystallize into minerals such a calcite or aragonite (both chemically still Calcium carbonate) which eventually becomes limestone (chemically Calcium carbonate).

Limestone is a soft rock that is "easily" dissolved in water.
Ok, ok, this is a middle school stuff but it never hurts to dust it off.....I am not even sure if I got it totally right.


In any case, we are at Mammoth and, here, thanks to the ocean life of the past, are the limestone deposits.

I am actually springing forward a bit, the original limestone is underneath, stuff on the surface is already travertine
 (still limestone but in a different form)

There is also water here - from rain and from the thick layers of winter snow. 
It, seeps into the ground and percolates into the depths of the rock deposits, slowly, patiently, working its way through the porous rocks -  down and down ..for hundreds and thousands of years.
It seeps towards the heated plumbing of  the Norris system. 
And there, the pure rain or snow water enters the cracks heated by the magma below. 
Gases from magma have already filled the cracks and our rain water reacts with them. 

Water and gases are a good recipe for creating acids - and that's exactly what happens there.


So we have the system full of hot acidic water and there is no other way for it but to rise up through all that beautiful limestone. 
It dissolves large quantities of it, dragging the solution along until everything reaches the surface.





Once exposed to air, the limestone solution restructures itself and hardens into a slightly different rock - the travertine.

Travertine is white or gray but at Mammoth the terraces dazzle visitors with oranges and yellows, pinks and reds, greens also - all courtesy of microorganisms and dissolved minerals.

So having all this out of my mind I can look back at few of our photos seeing them now in a slightly different light.

Photographers at Mammoth will have so much to do! Any lens will work - all one needs is time.

Liberty Cap; a dormant spring.

Give me a penny for every photo taken here! 
And all that because of the little guys of the sea, water, heat and a bit of gas combined in this one place on Earth.

BUT!

No text needed.

Mammoth Terraces keep changing all the time - the aqua-blue over white travertine could be the images of the past. 

No matter what - there is always beauty in Nature.

Note:
There are many travertine deposits around the globe - most famous are in Tivoli, Italy. Travertine had been used as a building material for many famous buildings around the globe: Colosseum in Rome, St, Peter's Basilica in Vatican, Fontana Di Trevi .... that just for starts. 
But that would be another story.


When we finally visited the town - Mammoth Hot Springs - someone told us that there was a brand new baby elk - just born - by the info building. A large area had been closed off to give elk mom some space and to protect people from an injury. That's where our zoom lenses came handy. We watched for half an hour before our departure to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

A thorough wash and gentle nudging were the first two things she did.

Then she guided the baby towards her rear and when it finally began to feed she turned her head back to the place where the baby was born. There in the grass was her placenta and she proceeded to eat it.  

The ranger told us that it was a protection from predators, so they could not find them by smell. We thought that perhaps there might be a bit more to it such as recycling some precious substances - but that was only our guess.

Yellowstone National Park - ROARING MOUNTAIN

Day 1:

About 7 km from  North of  Norris is a large, hot, acidic and desolate area that smells of sulfur. Some distance from the parking lot rises a mountain. It is not very tall, perhaps some 130 m above where we park. This is Roaring Mountain known for its fumaroles - volcanic gases mixed with steam escaping through tiny cracks in the rock. This might be an audible affair and that's why the name "Roaring".

To take a closer look one will need binoculars or some kind of zooming equipment - be it a camera or a digiscope. 
Digiscoping has become quite popular in recent years, especially for the bird photographers but it could work well right here as well.

Those interested in graphic views might want to spend some time as the vapors constantly change their appearance and direction.

Hot gases streaming out of the mountain are loaded with sulfur and that is good news for sulfur-loving thermophiles. They surround the vents to ambush the stinky steam and use some of the gases to obtain energy. Having done so, they discard their waste and it, eventually, forms yellow crystals.




The sulfur compounds in the environment react with water forming sulfuric acid. And the acid in turn reacts with the rock - it seems to me that, the mountain is slowly eating itself out of existence.

It is time to continue on - our next stop: Mammoth Hot Springs.