Yellowstone, Part II: Nature Preserved

In setting apart this chunk of the land as the world's first national park, Congress preserved a part of the west.  Things commonplace in the frontier became unique to Yellowstone as homesteaders settled and developed the land.  The southeast part of Yellowstone holds a spot in the backcountry thirty miles from any road - the most isolated place in the contiguous forty-eight states.

The park's preservation also set aside a major wildlife habitat. Yellowstone and the surrounding national forests (and Grand Teton NP) make up the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem - the largest in-tact ecosystem in the forty-eight states - full of grizzly and black bears, wolves, and plenty of bison and elk, amongst other animals.

Additionally, though not known for its mountains, Yellowstone does lie in the Rockies and sits on the Continental Divide; I have enjoyed the peaks I've reached over the summer.  Morever, the park is home to numerous beautiful waterfalls and wildflowers.  (Shown is Undine Falls.)

And of course, we have a splendid canyon - the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Together, all of these features (thermal and other) come together to form the variety of attractions the make Yellowstone National Park great.

Last night Hilary and I safely returned to Houston (after a delay caused by President Obama arriving at the Bozeman, MT airport as we were supposed to leave).  Yellowstone was great fun, but it feels wonderful to be back in Texas.  Thank you all for reading this weblog and keeping up with our summer adventures.

Foon!

Hilary and I hiked a few miles 

south of the canyon to Wrangler Lake for our final camping trip in Yellowstone. Halfway there it started to rain, which made Hilary upset. When we got to the halfway-up-the-shin ford across Sour Creek, I decided to be a sweetheart and carry both packs across, then come back and carry Hilary across (a performance that I repeated the next day).

During the trip, I finally field-tested the "foon" Zack Van Brunt so kindly gave me in response to my Sporks? post.  It worked well for both my soupy entrée and for the chocolate 

cake for dessert.  It has also worked well for eating solid chicken in the EDR.  These pictures demonstrate how unhappy I was eating breakfast with my hands, then how my mood improved once I implemented the foon.

Yellowstone, Part I: Thermal Features

All I knew about Yellowstone before I got here was that it is home to the famed Old Faithful Geyser.  Upon arriving, I kept hearing the term "thermal feature," which struck me as amusingly formal. Whatever people meant by the phrase, it seemed that we have more stuff than just Old Faithful.

"Thermal Feature" is essentially a blanket term describing any sort of geothermal activity that brings hot water to the earth's surface.  Such phenomena include hot springs, mud pots, fumaroles (steam vents), and geysers.  They are fueled by the Yellowstone supervolcano - one of the largest active volcanos in the world.  The most recent eruption, 640,000 years ago, was 1000 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.  The volcano forms a hotspot under the park, where the earth's crust is only several miles thick rather than the usual twenty to thirty miles.  

The heat, along with the right underground "plumbing," has created about 10,000 thermal features here - a greater concentration than anywhere else in the world (runners up include Iceland, New Zealand, and Kamchatka).  Yellowstone also has the majority of the earth's geysers, including Steamboat, whose 400 ft. eruptions make it the world's tallest active geyser.

People disregarded reports of the area from early trappers and mountain men as tall tales, but after a couple of formal expeditions surveying the region, in 1872 Congress made Yellowstone the world's first national park to preserve this outstanding collection of thermal features.

Above is a picture from Hilary's and my trip to Artist Paint Pots two weekends ago.  Below is Grand Prismatic, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone and the third largest in the world (the first two are in New Zealand).

The Tetons

Yesterday Hilary and I borrowed a car and drove down to the spectacular Grand Teton National Park - our neighbor to the immediate south.

GTNP features the Teton Range, more impressive than any mountains in Yellowstone.  The Rockies are taller and rougher than the Appalachian Mountains because they are younger and have experienced less erosion; as the youngest subrange of the Rocky Mountains, the Tetons are especially tall and pointy.  Moreover, they lack foothills, abruptly rising more than 5000 feet out of the flat Jackson Hole valley.  The park is named for the highest peak - the Grand Teton - rising over 7000 feet out of Jackson Hole to elevation 13,770 feet.

We walked around and ate dinner in Jackson, WY - just south of the park - and enjoyed the town.

Also, we have spent all summer in Yellowstone without seeing a moose, an animal that allegedly lives here.  According to hearsay, most of the moose left during the big fires of 1988 and many now reside near the Tetons.  Sure enough, Hilary and I saw a cow and her calf during our trip.

Ponds, Peaks, and Pickles

I went on two day hikes this past weekend. On Thursday, Hilary and I did the Beaver Ponds trail in the Mammoth area.  The scenery and wildflowers were pretty, and halfway through the loop we encountered a series of ponds (shown) formed by beaver dams.

On Saturday before work, I climbed Avalanche Peak with two Michiganders.  The trail was a mere two miles each way, but felt like more with its 2000 ft. elevation gain.  The peak, sitting in the middle of the Absaroka Range, offered a great view of surrounding mountains, the Tetons, and Yellowstone Lake.

About a week ago, Hilary was serving the "Lodge Favorites" station when a boy walked up and asked for a hamburger in a distinctly French accent.  Worried he would not understand her, she asked very slowly, "Would you like lettuce, tomatoes, onions, or pickles with that?"  Not following her, after a pause and a slight furrow of the brows, he simply replied, "I am French."

The Confluence

This past weekend, the 16^th and 17^th of July, James and I decided to brave the outdoors once more and take a hike through the beautiful Roosevelt area to Hellroaring Creek.  While I was in the backcountry office to obtain a permit for the confluence of the Yellowstone River and Hellroaring Creek the ranger repeatedly advised me to take the bridge to cross the river instead of fording it because of “high waters” or something like that.  Traveling to the bridge would tack on an extra 3 (plus or minus .2) miles, but such is the price for safety.

We left the dorms at around 10:45 in the AM, and had immediate good fortune when a family from California picked us up after only about 5 minutes of waiting.  They dropped us off near our destination, at which point we caught a ride from a Roosevelt employee to our trailhead.  Our next adventure then began.

It began very well with some immediate downhill traveling.  It was hotter than we were used to here in Yellowstone, likely much cooler than Texas, but that was compensated by the beauty all around us.  We began by making good time even though we had to stop for more water breaks than in the past.  The time started moving more slowly as our destination became farther and farther away (remember that out-of-the-way bridge?)  We made it to our “secluded” campsite out in the middle of the backcountry, only to find out that right across the river were two fishermen who really liked staring at us as we ate our meals.  Thankfully, our tent was pitched up an incline out of sight of our neighbors.

We slept soundly and then ate a breakfast of tasty pancakes (which got tastier as James became a better chef.)  We packed up camp and began our long trek back to the trailhead.  After only a little bit of walking, we decided to find a nice shallow spot in the creek and ford.  James picked a nice looking spot, we prepared ourselves by taking off shoes and whatnot, grabbed our walking sticks (a third leg), and began crossing.

The water was so freaking cold.  It started out shallow and got much deeper in the middle.  It was swift moving to the point that I fell in and barely managed to catch myself on a rock.  My underwear got wet (a testament to how deep the water was), and I was altogether miserable.  I got mad at James for “making me cross that river,” and felt horrible for a few minutes.  I got over it.  Our detour cut hours off of the return journey, which kind of made up for my moment of terror.  That downhill part at the beginning of the hike turned into an uphill part at the end, but at the final end of everything I felt like I accomplished a whole lot during that weekend.

I was rewarded when we got back to Canyon with a tasty chicken sandwich, took a nice long shower, ate more dinner, and had a caldera (chocolate tasty goodness cake) from the dining room.  In retrospect I had a really great time.

Hikes

Within a period of just over thirteen hours, I recently received emails from Aunt Nancy and both my parents asking when the next blog entry would be, so I suppose it's time for another update.

I have been on four hikes since our last chat.  The first was the day after Hilary's and my rowing adventure, when we and three friends decided to take an evening hike up Mount Washburn.  To our disappointment, the few clouds in the sky were in the west blocking the sunset. Nevertheless, the view from the Canyon area's highest peak was impressive and well-worth the relatively easy (for a mountain) climb.

The next morning, I left for a long daiye hike with Buddy while Hilary got some R&R.  We walked along Sky Rim, part of the northwest park boundary, traveling 21 miles and gaining over 3000 feet.  We had a beautiful panoramic view from the trail and encountered a herd of mountain goats near the high point of the rim: Bighorn Peak.

The following Monday (my "Wednesday"), I went for a little midweek hike up and down Bunsen Peak, where I had a good aerial view of Mammoth Hot Springs and pretty Mammoth area scenery.

Then, Hilary and I had yet another backpacking adventure on Thursday and Friday, which she will discuss in the coming days.

Also, I apologize for the lack of new photos - the internet here is like molasses, and flickr has not been cooperating.