Once
a year there is a time that I personally get very excited for, the opening of
the roads into Yellowstone National Park. They close yearly in October or
November and re-open towards the middle end of April. During this time the only
road that is accessible to regular wheeled vehicles is from Gardiner, Montana
to Cooke City, Montana. Not saying this is a bad thing but I have a love that
has been built up over the years for one unique feature, geysers.
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| Beehive Geyser, 4 21 18 10:25 am |
Yellowstone
National Park is home to over 14,000 thermal features, the highest
concentration on our big blue planet. There are four varieties of thermal
features. Hot springs are beautiful to look at but stay constantly the same
(although some may become geysers because of the underground working of the Earth).
Fumaroles, or steam vents as they are also called have water underground and
produce heavy amounts of steam that never reaches the surface; these are the
hottest of the features. Mudpots consist of bubbling acidic mud that you would
not want to use as a facemask, as the summer moves on they become less active
and produce a dried mud shell around their vicinity. Then come geysers.
Geysers
are hot springs that eject water into the air. They come in two varieties, cone
geysers and fountain geysers. Cone geysers are the stereotypical geysers you
think of like the world famous performer Old Faithful. They water builds up
underground and have a cone formation on the surface, this cone is build of
siliceous sinter, or geyserite as it is also known. Basically it is a water
deposited form of opal that is not gem quality. The cone geysers have beautiful
built up cone formations. They will eject water in a single stream with a steam
phase to follow. Other examples of cone geysers are Beehive, Giant, Grotto and Riverside.
Fountain
geysers are the other type. They look like your average hot spring pool but
there is something different about them. After an eruption the pool will start
to fill up until it starts to overflow. Once this happens depending on the
geyser an eruption will eventually be attained. The eruptions from a fountain
geyser happen in a series of bursts from the pool. Some go for a short time
while others go for hours on end. The most famous of these is definitely Grand
Geyser, the most predictable of the large fountain geysers. My personal favorite is Great Fountain Geyser;
this was the first geyser that was ever seen by an expedition into Yellowstone
in 1869 by the Folsom, Cooke and Peterson party.
We
did have a good geyser day but no fountains in our experience on the second day
that the park roads were opened. We did catch a rare performance of the
unpredictable Beehive geyser just as we drove up. The beehive has a small
geyser that is attached to its plumbing system ironically called Beehive’s Indicator
(although its not always associated with an eruption of the big guy), which was
going off. It went two minutes after arrival as I scooted as close as possible
to get a look, some photos and a bit of video footage.
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| Old Faithful Geyser, 4 21 18, 10:35 am |
After
we watched Beehive do it’s thing we headed towards the visitors center to check
on the predictions of other geysers Old Faithful gave us a show, less than ten
minutes after Beehive. We then headed into the visitors center where they have
a screen that has predictions for the major geysers on it. I always like to
take a photo of that so I can look back at it and try to make my way around the
Upper Geyser Basin in an orderly fashion to see as many of these wonders of the
world as possible.
We
started heading out towards Daisy Geyser and ended up waiting there for about
an hour but it gave a good show, we think that the prediction was an hour off,
but it was the second day the roads were open. After Daisy we headed towards
Riverside Geyser, which is always beautiful, especially when you get the
rainbow effect when the sun is at the right angle (which we did not). We waited
there for about another half hour and it gave us a show.
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| Daisy Geyser performs on 4 21 118 |
After
these beauties danced in the sunlight for us we started making our way back
along the boardwalks towards the Old Faithful Inn where or car was parked. We
stopped at Spasmodic, which is really fun to watch if it’s going, small but
furious. We headed back towards Castle Geyser and saw a second Old Faithful
from the bridge over the Firehole River. This was a great first geyser day for
the 2018 season. We are hoping that there are many more days just like this or
better.
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| Riverside Geyser 4 21 18 |
As
we made our way back towards Livingston we took it slow and enjoyed moving
along the roads of the park that we love. There is a bit of snow till up there
but that never stops those that have a love for this place. The best part of
the whole ordeal is that the National Park Service made it possible for us to
get thru after they said a couple days previous that the construction zone was
impassible. Thanks NPS for protecting these special places and making them
accessible. See you in the park!
