Day 33 (Old Faithful)

Day 33
July 24, 2006
Yellowstone

The overnight low was 48 degrees; perfect sleeping weather. We took our time in the morning, allowing Emily to sleep as late as she wanted (10 AM) and eating a leisurely breakfast.

After procuring our daily requirement of ice from the Grant General Store, we set out for the West Thumb Geyser Basin of Yellowstone Lake. West Thumb is a basin within a basin, or caldera, a 40-mile-wide impression in the earth left by an ancient volcano.

From West Thumb, we took a hike on the Lake Overlook Trail (two miles round trip) through a section of the forest that had burned in 1988. After climbing 400 feet we came to a meadow where we could see for many miles in all directions, including the near and distant shores of Yellowstone Lake and the Grand Teton Mountains.

Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres in size and about 1/3 of that area, 800,000 acres, burned in 1988. At the time the Forest Service’s policy was to let fires burn unless they threatened developed areas on public land. Conditions that summer were so dry that soon after the fire started officials realized that nothing would check it unless fire fighters were deployed. Many people don’t know that only 2% of the woods that eventually burned had burned when the government decided to start fighting the fire. In spite of the efforts of thousands of fire fighters and millions of dollars, the fire burned out of control until the first snowfall of the winter. One half inch of snow achieved what all the money and manpower the U.S. Forest Service could muster could not. Because of the lessons learned in Yellowstone in 1988, the United States fights most of the wildfires that occur on public lands.

Eighteen years later the effects of the fire are visible everywhere we look. Many burned, dead trees (“snags”) are standing today. There are signs of renewal, however. In the areas where the fire wiped out the forests, new conifers are growing. They range in height from about 5 feet to about 12 feet, and seem healthy in most places, growing very close together like Christmas tree nurseries that will be majestic forests again in 50 to 75 years, baring another fire like the one in ’88.

At West Thumb we saw our first hot springs, vent holes, and several bubbling mud holes known as paint pots. Some of the springs’ run-off went down the banks of Yellowstone Lake and into it, warming the water above its standard 45 degrees. Access to the lake, however, was restricted because the earth’s crust in the area is too thin to reliably support people (boardwalks had been constructed for people to walk on and view the springs safely). The kids were impressed!

In the afternoon we drove the 19-mile distance to Old Faithful Geyser, where we waited for about 45 minutes with THOUSANDS of other people for the predicted 4:01 PM eruption. The eruption came at 4:03 and delighted the crowd. Old Faithful erupts once every 92 minutes on average and last about 4 minutes each time. The parking lot and access road to Old Faithful were of Yellowstone proportions, reminding us of a baseball stadium’s infrastructure. The crowd viewed the eruption from a semi-circular boardwalk with benches that skirts the famous fount on three sides.

After the eruption, we visited Old Faithful Inn, which was a magnificent wooden lodge straight out of a Harry Potter movie with a central room six stories tall and crisscrossed with a tangle of staircases leading ever higher to a roof hatch to a widow’s walk. Visitors are no longer permitted above the third floor, however.

We bought bison patties in the Grant General Store that we cooked and made bison burgers with. Tasty. The evening hours were spent next to a campfire (Frank) and watching a DVD on our laptop (Sessy, Elliot and Emily). We have noticed that the days are long here, with sunrise at about 5:45 AM and sunset at about 10 PM—evidence of how far north we are. We went to bed with the last light still showing in the western sky and slept past dawn this morning.