Earth’s Hottest Spot: Yellowstone National Park
September 1st, 2007 | by antoine |
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Every travel publication has its annual list of ‘hot spots,’ as voted by their readers. But Mother Nature has its own best kept secret.
Sitting in a spot named the Boiling River forced me to reflect on the past couple of days. Actually, I was sitting in the Gardiner River, where the Boiling River — and yes, it is almost boiling hot — flows into the Gardiner’s ice cold rapids, making for toasty bathwater conditions along the shore.
Two days earlier I was sitting on a hard plastic bench waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. I could almost feel my butt heat up as a ranger explained that I was sitting above one of the hottest spots on Earth.
A quick glance around, and I knew the man wasn’t lying. In almost every direction plumes of steam belched from unseen holes in the earth.
One-hundred metres ahead, the most famous belcher of them all — a hole atop a small mound of earth — teased several hundred international tourists with a puff of steam. The crowd stretched half a kilometre on a semicircle of benches around the geyser hole.
“Why isn’t Old Faithful erupting now?” a woman asked. “The sign in the visitor’s centre said it should be.”
From under his classic hat, the ranger gave the crowd a big smile and reminded us that Old Faithful erupts when it wants to. (According to the park’s website, it averages every 74 minutes. But the cycle can be as short as 35 minutes, or as long as two hours).
Ten minutes later the faithful old hole blew a few spits before sending a brilliant jet of scalding (95.6 degrees Celsius) water 50 metres into the air, complete with its well-known bulbous cloud of steam, all lasting about three minutes.
Hundreds of feet below, the super-hot guts of the Earth were already in refill mode, faithfully getting ready for another performance in about 74 minutes’ time.
Scientists have confirmed the obvious: Yellowstone National Park sits above an incredibly hot pool of magma at a relatively shallow depth. Visitors to the world’s first national park (est. 1872) can see — but never touch — the planet’s largest concentration of geothermal “features.” Sky-high geysers are the most famous.
There are also lavishly coloured hot pools, bubbling mud pots, hissing steam vents, and more. Many of the features are within easy walking distance of parking and wheelchair accessible.
You learn about the hot spot’s plumbing in the park’s excellent visitor centres. The film at the Old Faithful centre should not be missed — a scientist actually lowers a special camera deep into Old Faithful’s spout.
You’ll learn the hot spot has been responsible for the two largest volcanic eruptions in North American history, and is still responsible for many small earthquakes each year — the most recent major quake in 1959. And that the North American tectonic plate is moving slowly to the south-west while the Yellowstone Hot Spot stays put. So, in a very long time, Winnipeg might be the world’s geyser capital.
Yellowstone doesn’t need human additions and development to proclaim its glory as a traveller’s hot spot: within its 898,317-hectare boundaries it jealously guards about 10,000 of the world’s geothermal features, including 75 per cent of the world’s geysers.
To see most of the others — many are damaged by human activity — you’d have to split your time between Iceland, New Zealand, and Russia.
Beginning in the 1950s, a Yellowstone road trip became a required, once-in-a-lifetime experience for most Americans.
On TV, Yogi Bear made friends with Ranger Smith and Smokey Bear (wearing his ranger hat) subliminally reminded every kid that if “only you can prevent forest fires,” you needed to actually visit the forest to prove it.
The forest of all forests was Yellowstone — filled with bears, elk, buffalo, trout streams, a gorgeous canyon of yellow stone, scars from huge natural forest fires, and most exciting of all: geysers.
I was a lucky kid. Long before moving to Canada, I grew up an hour’s drive from West Yellowstone, the park’s western gate. I could watch Yogi and Boo Boo on a Saturday morning, drive into the forest, catch a show at West Yellowstone’s summer stock Playmill
Theatre, and be skinny-dipping in the park’s rich geothermal waters by dark. Sadly, those swim-legal hot springs at Madison Junction campground have naturally silted in, and only a few old rangers even remember the spot — always with a wry wink.
Today the only place you can soak — safely and legally — in the park’s hot waters is the convergence of the Boiling and Gardiner Rivers.
As kids, we’d be blown away by the variety of licence plates we’d spot in Yellowstone — proof that the park’s appeal was huge.
Today, the variety of plates hasn’t changed. I spotted everything from B.C. to Florida, Quebec to California — proof that despite easy and cheap access to hipper travel destinations, Yellowstone is still hugely popular.
Other than Old Faithful, most tourists will only see a handful of smaller geysers and perhaps a few colourful pools.
The smart and patient take long strolls on the boardwalks through places like Norris Geyser Basin–the park’s hottest, Fountain Paint Pots, and especially Upper Geyser Basin near Old Faithful–with its huge assortment of springs, pools, vents, and geysers.
I’ve walked the latter many times, passing geysers with imaginative names like Castle, Daisy, Riverside, Sawmill, and Grand.
With the exception of Sawmill, each of those geysers erupts on a less-frequent schedule. Signs post the most-likely time for the next eruption–sometimes days away.
On my recent trip I paid attention to a ranger at Old Faithful.
“Find a spot at Grand Geyser this afternoon,” he told a small group of keeners, “be there by 3:15, and be prepared to wait until 6:30, or even longer. When Grand erupts, you won’t be sorry!”
So, after a stroll past the long-sputtering Grotto geyser and gazing into the colourful depths of Morning Glory Pool, I arrived at Grand a bit late — 3:45. No worries, about 100 people were hanging out on benches near the geyser hole.
Across the way a pair of yellow-bellied marmots raced around on the hillside, entertaining the crowd. Grand’s spout hole remained boringly calm.
I met my bench-mate — a Montr?al dad travelling with his wife and kids. Yellowstone has been amazing, he told me. The wildlife had been their real highlight, and of course the geysers.
But Grand was testing their patience! He leaned over and reminded his young son to adjust his chapeau so the soleil wouldn’t burn his neck.
An hour passed. Then almost another. I started to dream of a cold beer and a burger back at the historic, exquisitely restored, Old Faithful Inn. Or of swimming in the cool waters at Firehole River (not to be missed!).
Suddenly a nearby radio crackled to life. “We have Castle erupting at 5:35!” The crowd jumped and craned our necks right to see Castle in the distance — some bemoaning missing Castle while waiting for a lazy Grand.
The radio crackled with another voice, “we have Daisy at 5:37!” The crowd craned left to see Daisy’s far-off steam. Within seconds the pool in front of us gurgled once, and Grand abruptly blew jets of scalding water 50 metres into the sky–continuing for the next 10 minutes. Small nearby geysers next door began blowing, too. A child’s voice blurted out, “Gee, it’s geyser o’clock.”
The geysers had barely finished when Old Faithful itself — about a kilometre away — blew its top. Hundreds of patient travellers’ eyes nearly popped.
Each now understood that Yellowstone is as rich an experience for today’s globetrotting travellers as it was for yesteryear’s infrequent road-trippers.
Soaking in the playful mix of hot and cold currents where the Boiling River joins the Gardiner reminded me one more time that I was still sitting atop one of the earth’s hottest spots.
Perhaps 20 metres away a young elk suddenly appeared and crossed the river. And I realized Mother Nature had provided a hot spot that no luxury resort on a magazine’s list could touch.
