Yellowstone National Park-Old Faithful

September 7, 2009 Labor Day

Yellowstone

Biggest Hot Spot in the World
I am not certain that I understand what a hot spot is, but it is underground and very hot and there are only 20 in the world and Yellowstone is the biggest. Geologists don’t know what causes them. In Yellowstone they provide over 10,000 thermal springs the steam from which one sees rising all over the park. The magma under the earth heats and moves around.

In some cases one sees “bubbling cauldrons” looking like mud or yeasty substance bubbling away. Often you can smell the sulfur that is rising as the hydrogen sulfide in the land converts to sulfuric acid because of thermoacidophiles (organisms that thrive(love) on acid.

Right hand with palm facing you- map of Yellowstone Lake
When you hold your right hand this way, you get your map of Yellowstone Lake. Water enters from the river at the Pinky and eventually goes out through the West thumb. It takes eleven days to go through the Yellowstone Lake to exit at the West Thumb. From there it flows into the Missouri River and then the Mississippi.

Old Faithful
Perhaps the most famous piece of Yellowstone is the thermal spring that is the biggest geyser in the world and erupts faithfully every 60-90 minutes. Hundreds, if not thousands of people, sit each hour watching the steam as it changes and waiting for a big eruption. At times before the eruption we saw bubbles like a fountain of water rising a few times and then returning to steam. It came beautifully into much higher fountain waters that erupt a few times before they settle back down. Old Faithful is not the only geyser at Yellowstone, but it is the biggest.

What causes a geyser?
From what I understand, the hot magma moves around and can create fissures. In order to have a geyser, there have to be three things. First is plenty of water and Yellowstone has lots of snow and rain. The water finds its way in to the fissure and is under the tremendous pressure of the earth above it. The hot magma heats the water and because of the very high pressure, it can heat to a boiling point of 400 F. There has to be way out for this steam but in order for it to come out as a geyser, there must be a serious constriction in its route out. At old Faithful the constriction is 4.5 inches and the rest of chamber is more than 20 inches. So when the steam gets that restriction it builds pressure until it explodes up through the top. If there is not a very special rock coating the steam’s path, the whole geyser would explode the first time it blows. So you need a rock to withstand the geyser. Someone called it Carbonite and someone called it Geyserite.

Is this a volcano?
Yellowstone is super volcano but it has not erupted in 430 million years. When it did erupt it made a crater that created Yellowstone Lake, the biggest lake in North America at this altitude. Yellowstone is basically in Wyoming and when this volcano erupted, dinosaurs in Nebraska had their lungs burnt out.

Wildlife
Yellowstone may be best known for its bears but we did not see any. You see bears out mainly in the early summer –they are still in the park but have moved north to eat White Birch -and what you see in the late summer are lots of Bison. Bison have their rutting season mostly in August and when they are looking for mates, they join the heard to find females that they can court. Gestation is 8 months so the newbies conceived in July have the best chance for their first winter survival. We are in to September now and there are still a few Bison still trying to copulate and you can see them try to separate a female from the herd to cut down other male interference. The male bison can weigh 2000 lbs and are quite big. We were seeing a lot of them but we only got really close in a car because they can be dangerous to walk near. You should leave 75 ft. between yourself and the bison. We went on a nature walk with a ranger in the area of a herd. First thing, it is easy to identify the scat of these animals as they are quite circular and loose and have rivulets around the feces. The bison is upset if his tail is raised and that is a sign to be careful. We saw many relaxed bison (even an orange bison which shows that it is less than 4 months old) but we did not too close. On our way back along our loop, a bison wondered on to our path so the ranger took us off trail through the meadows to avoid him. We also saw an elk.

The soil quality of Yellowstone is quite poor. It can support the Lodgepole Pine and that tree makes it possible for some other tree types to grow. There are fir trees which are identifiable by there soft luxuriant needles like fur. Our ranger told us that Congress allowed this to become the First National Park because they believed it had little value—the soil was poor, it contained no gold or silver, and you couldn’t get lumber out of here without big problems.