Yellowstone is home to more than two million acres of lakes,
waterfalls, geysers and panoramic vistas, since 1872. Most areas people visit
in the park are over 7,500 feet. However, its highest elevation is at Eagle’s
Peak summit, 11,358 feet and the lowest is Reese Creek at 5,282 feet.
Yellowstone is the largest active geyser field in the world.
Home to 60 percent of the world's geysers, Yellowstone delivers big when it
comes to views of these strange, mysterious, odd-smelling steaming vents and
spouting features.
The Upper Geyser Basin is Yellowstone's largest geyser basin
and is home to the world's largest single concentration of hot springs. The
whole geyser basin occupies only one square mile. Located between the Old
Faithful area and the Biscuit Basin Road, the Upper Geyser Basin contains
several groups of hot springs, including over 150 geysers. The basin is less
than a half-mile wide and most of its geothermal features are situated within a
few hundred feet of the Firehole River.
Old Faithful is more than a namesake world-famous geyser, it
shares the stage with hundreds of other geysers and hot springs in this
historic district. Discovered in 1870 by the Washburn Expedition, Old Faithful
geyser was named for its frequent and somewhat predictable eruptions, which
number more than a million since Yellowstone became the world’s first national
park in 1872.
Old Faithful is located in Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin
in the southwest section of the park. The geyser-viewing area is the most
accessible and visitor-friendly in the park with bench seating, a large parking
lot, and a ranger station that tracks the time, height and length of an
eruption to predict the next eruption.
Basic prediction of Old Faithful is dependent upon the
duration of the previous eruption. During visitor center hours, geyser
statistics and predictions are maintained by the staff. People speak of the
average time between eruptions. This is misleading. The mathematical average
between eruptions of Old Faithful is currently 74 minutes, but it doesn't like
to act average! Intervals can range from 60-110 minutes. We arrived around
10:15 and the next eruption was scheduled for 10:38, plus or minus 10 minutes.
Old Faithful can vary in height from 100-180 feet with an
average near 130-140 feet. This has been the historical range of its recorded
height. Eruptions normally last between 2 to 5 minutes. The famous geyser
currently erupts around 20 times a day and can be predicted with a 90 percent
confidence rate within a 10 minute variation. Prior to the 1959 earthquake, Old
Faithful erupted 21 times per day. That's a significant decrease in activity
for geologists tracking each eruption.
Scientists estimate that the amount of water expelled from
Old Faithful ranges from 3,700 gallons (for a short duration of 1.5 minutes) to
8,400 gallons (for a longer duration of 4.5 minutes). During an eruption, the
water temperature at the vent has been measured at 204°F. The steam temperature
has been measured above 350°F!
We are meeting our friends, Mary & Frank, for lunch. But
they were delayed by a traffic jam caused by an Eagle sitting on a tree branch.
This gave us time to view the film at the Old Faithful Visitor Center. It was
an interesting film on all the thermal activity in Yellowstone. Frank and Mary
showed up, just as the film ended.
It has been about 18 months to 2 years, since we had seen
them. We started to walk over to the Old Faithful Inn for the buffet lunch. On
our walk over, we got to see Daisy geyser erupt. She was named prior to 1890 by
the Hague Party. She used to erupt every 110 to 240 minutes for a period of 3
to 5 minutes and is one of the most predictable geysers in the park. Its
fountain erupts at an angle to the ground and reaches a height of 75 feet. The
interval between eruptions can be temporarily altered by an eruption of nearby
Splendid Geyser. Daisy Geyser was one of the Yellowstone geysers that had its
eruption interval disrupted by the 2002 Denali earthquake, in Alaska.
Immediately after the quake, the interval rapidly decreased but returned to
previous intervals over the course of a few weeks.
The Old Faithful Inn is overlooking its namesake, Old
Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin. The Inn has been the most celebrated
structure in Yellowstone since it first opened in June of 1904. The lobby
features a four-sided fireplace and handcrafted clock. The Inn is also a standing tribute to a great and unsung
American architect, Robert Chambers Reamer. He was born in 1873, just a year
after Yellowstone was established as the nation’s first national park. Reamer
was a relatively unknown architect when Harry Child, head of the Yellowstone
Park Company, hired him in 1902 to design and build a hotel for the Upper
Geyser Basin.
There had been a series of tent camps and cheaply constructed,
shoddy hotels at this site during the previous two decades, and Child wanted to
construct a first-class hotel for the wealthy customers who constituted the
bulk of Yellowstone’s visitors at the turn of the century.
Fine hotels already stood at Mammoth Hot Springs, Lower
Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Lake, and Canyon. These facilities stood out sharply
from their surroundings and reflected the way visitors to Yellowstone toured
the park in those days. Guests would spend a leisurely day marveling at the
wonders of the park and then return to a hotel that looked and felt like one
they might find in Chicago, New York, or Newport. These hotels represented a
place of refuge for the night against the frightening wilderness outside.
Reamer brought a different vision with him to Yellowstone.
He believed it was possible to create a structure that would appear to have
grown out of its surroundings, a structure that inside and out would seem to be
an extension of the wilderness. At the same time, he believed that a hotel such
as this could provide all the modern conveniences that any first-class hotel
around the world offered. He believed that hotel guests would feel completely
secure while at the same time feel a part of the wilderness outside.
The Inn was constructed from materials found in the area.
Its rhyolite lava foundation stones were quarried just a few miles from the
site, and the lodgepole pine forests that cover Yellowstone became its walls,
ceilings, and framework. The lobby is cavernous and opened to the roof, with
all the supporting beams and braces of lodgepole pine exposed to view. The
massive fireplace in one corner of the lobby has an 85-foot high chimney made
from the same rhyolite stone as the foundation. To stand in this great,
balconied lobby as the sun filters through the asymmetrical windows gives one
the feeling of standing in the forest. But with hot and cold running water,
flush toilets, baths, steam heat, and electric lights, the Inn was–and is–a
first-class hotel.
Robert Reamer caused a revolution in architecture in
national parks that has continued to this day. His style of architecture, where
the building is designed to fit into the landscape, is called “rustic
architecture.” Reamer designed many other Yellowstone structures for the
Yellowstone Park Company, and he went on to become a well-respected architect
in Seattle, where the Fifth Avenue Theater, Edmond Meany Hotel, and other
structures that he designed are still standing and cherished. Mr. Reamer died
in 1938.
The Old Faithful Inn Dining Room is open from May thru October.
It is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It has a breakfast buffet, Western
lunch buffet and classic signature dinner buffet with prime rib. However,
reservations for dinner are required. We got in line for the lunch buffet at
11am, even though they don’t open until 11:30! Our meal was awesome and it was great to see our friends, from Florida, Mary
& Frank.
At the Midway Geyser Basin you have to walk on an elevated
boardwalk to see the spectacular sights. I should describe the differences
between geysers and hot springs. A geyser is a hot spring with the intriguing
habit of tossing underground water into the air. It’s the equivalent of pressure
cooker. Even though the temperature of the water deep down may be well above
boiling, the weight and pressure of the water above prevents that boiling from
happening. Eventually, the pressure builds enough to push the water in the upper
area out, causing an overflow. That overflow, in turn, relieves the pressure on
the super-heated water below, causing it to flash into steam. That flash, that
explosion through a narrow, constricted place in the rocks, is what sends water
shooting into the air.
A hot spring is similar to geysers but they have no
constrictions in their plumbing. Convection prevents water from reaching the
temperature needed to set off a chain reaction leading to an eruption. The many
beautiful colors you see in hot springs are caused by light refraction,
suspended mineral particales and heat-loving microorganisms.
This basin area is home to the world’s largest geyser,
Excelsior. The Excelsior Geyser pool discharges 4,000 to 4,500 gallons of 200°F
water per minute directly into the Firehole River. In the late 19th century, it
was an active geyser that erupted frequently. Most eruptions were about 100
feet high, although some exceeded 300 feet in both height and width. It is
believed that the powerful eruptions damaged its internal plumbing system, and
it now boils as a productive hot spring most of the time.
In 1985, Excelsior returned to activity for a 46-hour period
from September 14 to 16. These eruptions were relatively small at 30 feet but a
few were as much as 80 feet tall and 100 feet wide. All of these eruptions
lasted about 2 minutes at intervals of 5 to 65 minutes. Between 2004 and 2006,
Excelsior did have violent boiling strong enough to be considered as eruptions.
This boiling reached between 5 to 10 feet and had a duration of seconds.
It is also home to the world’s largest hot spring, the Grand
Prismatic. Old Faithful may be more famous, but the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring
is the most photographed thermal feature in Yellowstone. That's because of its
crazy-bright colors and enormous size.
The Grand Prismatic is deeper than a 10-story building and extremely
hot water travels 121 feet from a crack in the Earth to reach the surface of
the spring. The Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the United
States, and the third largest in the world, after Frying Pan Lake in New
Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica.
The vivid colors in the spring are the result of microbial
mats around the edges of the mineral-rich water. The mats produce colors
ranging from green to red; the amount of color in the microbial mats depends on
the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids and on the temperature gradient in the
runoff. In the summer, the mats tend to be orange and red, whereas in the
winter the mats are usually dark green. The center of the pool is sterile due
to extreme heat. The deep blue color of the water in the center of the pool
results from the intrinsic blue color of water. The effect is strongest in the
center of the spring, because of its sterility and depth.
I forgot to talk about the mudpots and sulpher caldrons that
we saw the other day, when we were in the bison traffic jam. A mudpot is a
natural double boiler! Surface water collects in a shallow, impermeable
depression that has no direct connection to an underground water flow. Thermal
water beneath the depression causes steam to rise through the ground, heating
the collected surface water. Hydrogen sulfide gas is usually present, giving
mudpots their characteristic odor of rotten eggs. Some microorganisms use the
hydrogen sulfide for energy. The microbes help convert the gas to sulfuric
acid, which breaks down rock into clay. The result is a gooey mix through which
gases gurgle and bubble.
After coming upon Mud Volcano during his 1871 expedition to
Yellowstone, Ferdinand Hayden described the mudpot as "the greatest marvel
we have met with." Minerals tint the mudpots with such a large palette of
colors that the mudpots are sometimes called "paint pots." Iron
oxides cause the pinks, beiges, and grays of the Fountain Paint Pots.
Two of the most popular features in the Mud Volcano front
country are the Dragon's Mouth and the Black Dragon's Caldron. The rhythmic
belching of steam and the flashing tongue of water give the Dragon's Mouth
Spring its name, though its activity has decreased notably since December 1994.
The Black Dragon's Caldron exploded onto the landscape in 1948, blowing trees
out by their roots and covering the surrounding forest with mud. The large roil
in one end of the Caldron gives one the sense that the Black Dragon itself
might rear its head at any time.
In January 1995, a new feature on the south bank of Mud
Geyser became extremely active. It covers an area of 20 by 8 feet and is
comprised of fumaroles, small pools, and frying-pan type features. Much of the
hillside to the south and southwest of Mud Geyser is steaming and hissing with
a few mudpots intermixed. This increase in activity precipitated a great deal
of visitor interest and subsequent illegal entry into the area. The Sulphur Caldron is among the most acidic springs
in the park. Its yellow, turbulent splashing waters bring to mind images of
Shakespeare's soothsayers. Other features which can be viewed from this
overlook are Turbulent Pool (which is no longer turbulent) and the crater of a
large, active mudpot.
Another great day in Yellowstone! The night ended with friends around a campfire, life is good!
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