Wanderung 3

Rocky Mountain Ramble

May - July 2003

June 11th - Yellowstone - Norris Geyse Basin, Wyoming

Can you come home again? Would Yellowstone look the same or different from the way it was when we last visited it in 1972? At that time I was transitioning between being in the Army and going to graduate school to begin my career as a research psychologist. This time I was transitioning between retiring from my career and whatever comes next. One thing we had already noticed was the tremendous number of dead trees compared to our last visit—the huge fires of 1988 had left many dead snags standing but had also rejuvenated the forest with a fresh green carpet of new trees.

Our first visit was the Norris geyser basin. We walked with a Ranger for a little over an hour and he explained the unique nature of this basin, one of the most active in Yellowstone. This basin has geysers, steam vents, and hot springs that all are driven by the seepage of water into very hot layers of rock underlying the basin. The water in this basin leeches out sulfur and turns into mild sulfuric acid, which is quite different from the water in other areas in Yellowstone.


 

After the Ranger walk we doubled back thru the basin and took another loop to see the Dragon’s Den fountain/cave. Along the way the Pearl and Whirligig Geysers obligingly spouted for us, but the Steamboat Geyser only gave us some small-scale, half-hearted spurts. Steamboat erupts very erratically, on the order of years, but has one of the most powerful eruptions in the world when it finally gets going.


 

We were surprisingly tired after walking several hours, so we took a nap before driving up to Mammoth Hot Springs for another Ranger-led walk in the evening. The drive north took us past an obsidian cliff, a water fall, and a spectacular section of the road that was built like a shelf on the side of the canyon wall.


 

The Mammoth Hot Springs area does not have geysers but instead has really huge hot springs area. The water here leeches out calcium carbonate and makes much more extensive deposits than the hot springs in Norris. The Ranger said the deposits could grow in size up to two feet in a single year!

The deposits from these springs form really big terraces that are quite unique and beautiful. The areas that were actively building had multi-hued runoff due to various bacteria that lived in the hot water. The areas that had dried up formed terraces of pure white calcium carbonate that were often crumbling around the edges. From what I could recall from a very hazy memory, the springs really were in a different area than I remembered and the one feature that I thought seemed familiar was in a dried-up area of the terraces.

But when we returned to camp, we found that the restrooms in the campground looked exactly like they did 30 years ago. If anything, they were in somewhat poorer condition than they were then. Basically the restrooms were unheated, had only cold water, didn’t provide any soap, and at least on the Men’s side the heating elements in the air dryer weren’t working so the air dryer was just pumping out cold air. This may seem unimportant to you, but you should carefully consider the effect these conditions would have on the hygiene of males, which tends to be spotty under the best of circumstances. Let me illustrate.

First I got nice and cold in the unheated room while going to the bathroom. Then I had to remember to bring my own soap so I could go thru the hand-washing ordeal. To wash my hands, I had to run ice cold water over each hand separately with one of those tricky faucets that turn off the second you let go of the handle, so I would have to awkwardly and slowly wash one hand at a time in the freezing stream. This does, of course, remind me of that old Zen question, “What is the sound of one hand washing?”

But this was no time for humor because now I had to face the “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” air dryer that just blew cold air over my freezing wet hands. This device made a great deal of noise but to no apparent effect except making my hands even colder. I ended up leaving the bathroom each time with incompletely washed and thoroughly numb hands, which was pretty frustrating. I could easily understand why some of the guys just avoided any of the washing activities at all—they surely didn’t make it easy on you at Norris campground!

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

May 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
June 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
July 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.