Here’s a continuing celebration of Yellowstone’s 150th anniversary this month of it’s establishment as the world’s first national park. Of all the incredible wonders of the park, I find the thermal features the most compelling. First, two images from a summer visit in 2003. This is Castle Geyser which has a huge geyser cone which may be thousands of years old. One speculation is that there were trees growing here when the geyser first formed and the cone began to build over the trees.

Castle and Old Faithful are in the Upper Geyser Basin which has over 150 geysers in a square mile—the highest concentration of geysers in the world. Here is sunset on the basin.

Let’s go to the opposite time of day in the opposite season—dawn in winter. This is a 20 second exposure well before sunrise, so you’re seeing a lot of flow of the steam in the wind.

Thermophilia means heat loving. The thermophylic communities in Yellowstone are the bacteria, viruses, plants and other life that grow in the hot water pouring off the thermal features. Firehole River flows through several geyser basins on its way to the Madison River. Due to the hot water constantly filling the river, it flows unfrozen through the deepest winter cold. Here, the color of a thermophylic mat shows off as a hot spring runs off into the river.

These colors are most intense in the hot springs. The bands of color form because of the different temperatures in the water and the different life that grows in the varying temperatures.

The West Thumb geyser basin is on the shore of Lake Yellowstone, the largest high elevation lake on the continent. The north part of the lake was formed by the huge volcanic caldera. This southern portion was carved by Ice Age glaciers. Here you can see a hot spring rising at the edge of the lake, and some small animal’s footprints crossing over.

We’ll end with the third thermal feature which are fumaroles or steam vents which constantly emit steam especially visible in the winter.

Thermophilia

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