Posts tagged #National Park

Through Active Ancient Land

Adventure Tuesday

Yellowstone National Park - Winter Edition

Mammoth Hot springs

Since we always enter from the northern entrance, by the small town of Gardiner, we get access to the most northern part of the park in the wintertime. Though you can’t get to Old Faithful with the car, you can get to Mammoth Hot Springs. If you can’t go to Yellowstone at all, you can always tune in to one of the many webcams that the national park service provide. There are several covering the northern part, and one of them can be found by the Mammoth Hot Springs. Precipitation (both rain and snow) that falls on the surrounding mountains slowly makes its way down through the soil and continues deep belowground. Eventually the water is heated up before it finally sees daylight again when it leaves the deeper soil and is forced upward and creates the Mammoth Hot Springs.

Colors, Art and Science

It’s pretty cool to see the art that constantly forms with the combination of hot steam and cold air. Snow and ice surrounding the hot springs makes for the perfect art formation. The hot springs at Mammoth are one of the most accessible hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. They are just a few miles from the entrance in Gardiner which makes for an easy excursion. The bedrock underlying Mammoth Hot Springs mainly consist of limestone. When the deep water slowly makes its way upwards it has formed carbonic acid (due to the carbon dioxide that the water has collected belowground) which dissolves the limestone and forms calcium carbonate. When the calcium carbonate finally reach the surface it is deposited and forms travertine which is the rock that forms all the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs.

Freezing Temperatures and Changing Colors

The hot springs constantly change and that is one of the greatest things about them. Either the flow of the water changes dues to freezing temperatures, or tectonic changes belowground triggers the water to change its route and sometimes even its temperature and other characteristics. Some of the hot springs even dry out for several decades, before they start to flow again. There have also been times when the hot springs flow has increased so much that the boardwalk gets under water. If you can time your excursion through the hot springs with some sunset or sunrise you should. The colors of the sky will reflect in the hot springs, and that is always amazing to see. It will be a completely different experience compared to the daytime excursion. The color of the hot springs themselves, blue, orange and green are caused by differences in temperatures and pH which allow for different bacteria to thrive and live there. Another good thing about freezing temperatures, other than all the art that is created, is that a lot fewer people will venture out at all. If its 10 or 20 below no one will be here.

The Terraces

Mammoth hot springs consist of two levels, the lower and upper terrace. Small parts of the area is wheelchair accessible, but to get to the upper terrace you either have to walk up some stairs, or access it from a different road, which I think is closed in the wintertime. Either way, if you are able to walk around you definitely should check out all the different springs at both the lower and upper terrace. You might see less of the different hot springs after a big dump of snow, so that might not be super fun. The photos below are all from the upper terrace level. All the photos above is sort of a mixture of all the different springs on both the upper and lower level.

Have you ever seen Mammoth Hot Springs in the wintertime?

Posted on February 5, 2019 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Yellowstone, Adventure Tuesday, The great wide open and tagged Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park Winter Wonderland winter sun 2019 Mammoth Hot Springs Hot Springs Winter Adventures Wintertime Winter Edition National Parks National Park.

Christmas Skiing on Open Plains and through Herds of Bison

Adventure Tuesday

Yellowstone National Park - Winter Edition

Skiing Blacktail Plateau

When we ski, we usually go to Blacktail Plateau. It’s only a one way, so out and back or if you carpool you can go just one way, but it is really beautiful. You have large views of the landscape from here and you can also spot herds of bison or elk along this route. In the summertime this road (Blacktail Plateau Drive) is also really pretty to drive, it’s one of many side roads you can drive in the park to get out of the tourist jam. The first time we skied there, W and I were deep in conversation and came around a corner to a herd of bison. We got so scared, and so did them. They ran off down the slope. A baby bison started to bluff charge us, luckily the older bison had no interest in us. Bison sometimes move fast across the landscape, browsing on what they can find underneath the snow, so it’s always a good idea to keep an eye out in what direction they are moving.

 
 

Through Valleys and over Hills

If you are lucky enough fresh snow and newly groomed trails will meet you when you arrive. But either way I love skiing here. You will get such a different view of the park if you go by skis. Not only of the wild animals, but also all the mountains and the deep forests in the distance. We almost never run into any people. Finding a parking spot can be hard depending on what end of the Blacktail Plateau Drive you start at. We have been pretty lucky so far and always managed to squeeze in somewhere. I love being able to ski in Yellowstone, you’ll get such an amazing feeling of freedom. And to top that off you will always see a bison or two munching away in the distance.

Northeast Yellowstone - A Place to Ski?

The exit at the northeast part of Yellowstone National Park is called the Silver Gate. It is right on the border between Montana and Wyoming. When you leave Yellowstone through this exit you’ll first drive through the mountains, and once you leave the park you can embark on the trip up in elevation, towards the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness and the Beartooth Highway. The little town right outside the Silver Gate, Cook City, reminds me about the small towns you’ll see in the narrow valley along the Seward Highway towards Homer and all other places down in southeast Alaska. Obviously the Beartooth Highway is closed during the wintertime, because it sits high in elevation (10,947 ft). I have not explored the ski trails in northeast Yellowstone, and I would love to do that in the future. Northeast Yellowstone has these beautiful and large coniferous trees and draped by the mountains right next to the road, and just imagine skiing in there! That would be a dreamlike winter wonderland.

Have you been skiing in any of the National Parks in the world?

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Yellowstone, Adventure Tuesday, The great wide open and tagged Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park Winter Wonderland winter sun 2019 Wintertime Winter Winter Adventures winter landscape Skiing Winter Edition Skiing in Yellowstone National Park X-Country Skiing X-Country Skiing Yellowstone National Parks National Park.

Build That Wall

Canyonlands National Park, January 2013

Canyonlands National Park, January 2013

“No, wilderness is not a luxury but necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself”
— Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire 1968

Wednesday Thoughts

Destruction of Humanity and the Ecosystem

I get scared when I hear the chanting from Trump and his supporters of “build that wall” that echoes the building of walls in other places, such as Germany during the Hitler era. It upsets and scares me when some people fail to see the resemblance between Trumps building of the wall, and Hitlers wall. In the past, different presidents have modified and created bills that are then being put into laws, for instance the Wilderness Act or the Clean Water Act. Most presidents have worked for, and not against the environment. Currently with this government we are moving backwards and not forward. We are bypassing laws that longterm is supposed to benefit us, laws like the Clean Air Act that was put into place to reduce the amount of air pollution, to make the world a better place for us. After all we (the US) now have a president who doesn’t believe in global warming or at least fails to understand what the difference between climate and weather really is. He fails to acknowledge the importance and the value of nature, as many environmentalists were trying to describe as “the New Eden” to others back in the day. The very reason that made many areas protected during the 1800’s.

Saving an Ecosystem

But it is not only areas like the Rio Grande (as you can see in the video above) that are facing a milestone change under this current government. Areas like the Big Bend would face an equally devastating effect of a physical border wall between the US and Mexico. How do you build a wall but still allow animals to travel through? How do we save something so precious from being further developed? At the same time we have to start thinking about our protected areas, our National Parks. Right now people are allowed to roam free through these protected areas because of the government shutdown, that is specifically caused by the wall. People currently destroy these areas, litter here and there, toilets are not available, and many many people are just blown away by the fact parks remain open. No one runs the parks. During previous longer (although this is the longest in history) shutdowns, National Parks and Monuments have been closed for this very reason, but that was also under other presidents. We are facing an even bigger problem though. With nature and the wilderness experience becoming such a popular thing, many National Parks are breaking visitation records every single year, and with that comes the problem of overcrowding. Yellowstone National Park has seen an increase by almost 40% since 2008 (well, the real number is 34%). They have already started to struggle with the number of toilets available for so many visitors. We have also seen issues where people lack understanding about wildlife, and how you should behave in the park and around wildlife. At the same time as the visitor numbers are increasing, Trump wants to cut the funding to National Parks. Even though some of Trumps proposals get shutdown before he can say “National Park”, it does show his true intentions regarding wilderness. The coming years will be crucial for determining how our parks, monuments, and forests will be taken care of and preserved.

Yellowstone National Park, May 2014

Yellowstone National Park, May 2014

Do you have a favorite park you are starting to feel concerned about?

Posted on January 23, 2019 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Wednesday Thoughts, The great wide open, Science and tagged Yellowstone National Park National Parks Science park visitors Drumpf Environment The Wall Big Bend Rio Grande Climate Change science National Park.