Wandering West Day 5 - Geysers and Bison

Bison and Bison and Geysers

One of the problems with driving around the park and stopping spontaneously for wildlife pics is that as soon as you start up again it turns out there is almost always a better photo op around the corner. So what do you do? You don't stop at the first sign of wildlife and there is not second better stop so you miss it. Thankfully on my first encounter the former pattern was true to form and I stopped twice. I was told to drive through Hayden Valley if I wanted to see wildlife. Right away I spotted some bison in a big meadow that included some thermal activity. There was one large bull rolling in the dust (sorry no pic) . I then thought wouldn't it be a great shot to see bison and geysers (or some thermal activity) together in one shot. Classic Yellowstone! But no bison near the thermals here. Back on the road the next stop is a Bison Jam along with a large group playing in the hot springs. One guy even seemed to roll in it though I'm not sure how he did and lived to tell the tale... So I got my bison and geyser shots.

Steam bath

Some Other Geysers

As I wondered around the park's figure eight I ended up at the Norris Geyser Basin. In the park there are a number of basin's of which the Old Faithful area is only one of them. While it did not have a geyser as big as Old Faithful in the end I think it was a more interesting area.

Hot string at Norris Geyser Basin

Old Faithful

There are a handful of geysers that the rangers regularly predict but old faithful is the most frequent. It blows its top every 91 minutes of so. Strangely they have correlated the lengthening of this interval with earthquakes in the area.

Yellowstone has the world's largest concentration geysers. The only other places with concentrations of geysers are Iceland, New Zealand, Siberia and some other place I can't remember. Plenty of places have thermal features but geysers require a special mix of 4 ingredients: underground heat supplied by magma near the surface, a supply of water, special “plumbing” in the rock and silica in the water. The silica solidifies along the walls of the geyser hardening the pipes and enabling it to hold the tremendous pressure that builds up and makes the geyser spout off.

Old Faithful on time