Thursday, August 29, 2019

Ain’t It Grand? Of Canyons & Prismatic Springs



The subject dearest to most photographers in Yellowstone National Park is not its sprawling Grand Canyon, its imposing waterfalls nor its gallivanting bison herds.  Not even its internationally-renowned Old Faithful, a geyser of impeccable dependability and spectacular photo ops.  Enticing as these all may be, your everyday lensman will invariably head for the the park’s Midway Geyser Basin and its multicolored pool of many layers, the Grand Prismatic Spring.  The GPS is the third largest spring in the world at 370 feet in diameter and deeper than a ten-story building.  But the real attraction is the Grand Prismatic’s brilliant array of colors, bright bands of orange, yellow and green ringing the deep blue waters in the center.  The multicolored layers get their hues from different species of heat-loving bacteria living in the progressively cooler water around the spring.  The deep blue center is created because water scatters the blue wavelengths of light more than other colors, reflecting blues back to our eyes.  The colors change with the seasons, deepening in the summer months, fading in the winter, but the high temperatures at the center make the water sterile and it retains its brilliance all year long.

The Grand Prismatic Spring was first officially described and named by the Hayden Expedition, a federally-funded exploration of the Yellowstone area in 1871.  The expedition’s leader, Ferdinand Hayden, was enchanted by the place and wrote the following: “Nothing ever conceived by human art could equal the peculiar vividness and delicacy of colors of these remarkable prismatic springs.  Life becomes a privilege and a blessing after one has seen and thoroughly felt these incomparable types of nature’s cunning skill.” 

Most of us are prepared for the natural wonders we visit in our travels.  We have seen them in books and in videos.  But imagine taking a twist in the trail and suddenly coming across a phenomenon like the Grand Prismatic Spring.  It’s mind-bending.  It’s awe-inspiring.  Why, it makes a man want to open up a booth and start selling hot dogs.








Up Close And Personal

The Midway Geyser Basin is about halfway between the Madison and Old Faithful regions of the park.  There is a parking lot adjacent and a trail south toward the Firehole River which eventually brings you to several of the area’s colorful springs.  In peak seasons and at prime visiting hours, getting a parking space is but a dream so you will probably find yourself using the auxiliary lot (it’s called the side of the road).  Be prepared to walk a bunch.

Although you can get terrific photographs from the boardwalk surrounding the springs, a little elevation is necessary to secure the classic Grand Prismatic Spring wonder shot.  This can be accomplished by hiking up to Midway Bluff, which offers a sweeping view of the entire basin and the hot springs below.

You can get entirely different photos from the boardwalk, which offers amazing perspectives of a constantly changing pool, vapors emanating from the waters, colors slightly different from how they appear at a distance.  Its temperature is a sweaty 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  It has a compelling, unearthly presence, a slowly swirling inevitability….it will draw you in with its hypnotic ethers.  Tourists crowd the narrow boardwalk clutching small children to prevent a quick trip into the boiling cauldron.  Amazingly, accidents here are very rare, though a lot of caps and sunglasses dot the landscape, captives of windy days like this one.

There are times, however, when visitors have trouble separating the hot springs you relax in and the ones you definitely don’t.  An Oregon man died in June, 2018 at Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin while looking for a comfortable “hot pot.”  Colin Scott, 23, slipped and tumbled into acidic boiling waters while reaching in to check the temperature of a 10-foot deep thermal pool.  Colin and his sister, Sable, who was making cellphone videos, had illegally ventured off the boardwalk near the Pork Chop Geyser when the hysterics began.  Do they have a TV program for America’s Unfunniest Home Videos?  Asking for a friend.





Grand Canyon Of The Yellowstone

About 640,000 years ago, give or take a century, a huge volcanic eruption occurred in the Yellowstone area, emptying a large underground chamber of magma and spreading volcanic ash for thousands of miles.  The roof of this chamber slowly collapsed, forming a giant caldera 30 miles across and 45 miles long.  The caldera began to fill with lava and sediments, and infilling of lava continued for hundreds of thousands of years.  Scientists believe the oldest Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone formed in rock and sediments about 160,000 to 140,000 years ago but this paleocanyon was not as deep, wide or long as the one we have now.

Past and current hydrothermal activity altered the rhyolite, making the rocks softer.  The Yellowstone River eroded these weakened rocks to deepen and widen the canyon, a process that continues today.  The current canyon begins at Lower Falls and ends downstream from Tower Fall.  The 308-foot Lower Falls may have formed because the river flows over volcanic rock more resistant to erosion than the downstream rocks, which are hydrothermally altered.  The 109-foot Upper Falls flows over similar rocks.  The large rocks upstream from Upper Falls are remnants of a lava flow resistant to erosion.

The multi-hued rocks of the canyon result from the hydrothermally altered rhyolite and sediments.  The dark orange, brown and green areas near the river are indicative of still-active hydrothermal features.  Their activity and that of water, wind and earthquakes continue to sculpt the canyon.










Hiking The Abyss

There are several hikes which allow spectacular views of GCOTY.  We decided to follow the Rim Trail.  Sounds easy, right?  The rim, after all, suggests a comfy walk along the lip of the canyon.  On the other hand, there’s the matter of getting to the other side of the thing.  Which means that unless there’s a bridge (there isn’t), a hiker must meander down to the bottom, then come back up the other side.  We asked if anyone had explored the idea of an elevator.  Not yet, apparently.  We went anyway.

The trail begins with a pleasant stroll through piney woods to the Upper Falls viewpoint, where you will mingle with the masses looking for a good iPhone shot.  The falls are impressive, spilling 109 feet over a dense rhyolite lava flow to the depths below.  At this point, the amateur photogs peel off and return to the parking lot while the hikers proceed to the turnoff for Uncle Tom’s Trail to the bottom of the canyon.  This walkway uses a series of steel stairways to descend more than 300 feet in 0.3 miles.  Then, it’s up again, way up, to spectacular views of Lower Falls (a lot of imagination goes into the Yellowstone waterfall-naming process).  Picturesque views of the canyon and falls await each time you break through the trees, allowing varied angles from which to capture the 308-foot tumble of Lower Falls.

In the course of all this traveling, Siobhan will be on the lookout for the ideal walking-stick.  She greatly misses her priceless Leki stick, the bottom section of which fell off undetected somewhere in the bowels of nearby Sepulcher Mountain many years ago.  In punishment for her inattention and gross negligence, she has refused to allow herself to purchase another sleek manufactured product and now stoops to locating an acceptable alternative somewhere along the trail, usually a tree branch of some substance if little beauty.  This occasionally prompts unwary hikers to ask if she might be one of those mountain men they’ve heard so much about.  The smile quickly disappears from their merry countenances as the mountain girl deftly raises an elbow and pokes them into the great abyss.  Siobhan owns a vast library of tomes describing the incredible variety of accidental deaths in our national parks and she’s not afraid to use it.  If you ever encounter one of those unaccountable long, lingering screams in the distance while hiking America’s pathways, now you know what’s happened.






Here It Comes Again

The Beast has clawed its way across the luckless islands of the Caribbean, excusing Puerto Rico with a sneering head-slap, and now is heading directly for….well….us.  The storm is following the dictates of its Monopoly card: Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.  Go directly to Florida and do the twist again like we did last summer, head-butt a few trailer camps, uproot a couple thousand water oaks, inundate the low-hanging fruit and—oh yeah—dehouse a mess of those honkers in the Panhandle.  Be afraid, Sunshine State, be very afraid.

Surely you jest.  We who have withstood the wrath of Andrew, Irma, Michael, Ivan and Charley are not going to be spooked by a storm with the sissy-name Dorian.  Send us a Brutus, a Rocky, a Bubba, a Matilda and we might be worried, but please, don’t make us laugh with a Dorian.  The last Dorian we remember was less than brilliant, having made a deal with the devil to remain young and vivacious.  Everybody knows what happened to Dorian Gray.

Some people warn Don’t throw stones at the Bogeyman, even one in drag.  We are unfazed.  We will stand our ground.  We shall camp on the shore and glare at the darkening clouds and the roiling sea.  We will guzzle ceremonial nectars at our hurricane parties.  Evacuate, schmoovacuate!  We are tough!  We are mean!  We are Floridians, and we know no fear!

“KAAA-BOOOOM!!”

“Holy Moley, Agnes, grab the dog and head for the root cellar!  It’s comin’ the tornaduh!” 


The Ongoing Saga Of Captain Noonan

Every Day of the Dead (November 2) weekend in Austin, Texas, local hero Jim Moriarty celebrates with a large party for his seventy-ish friends, at least those of them who can climb the long stairway to his staging area.  He calls it the Not Dead Yet fete.  Costumes and common sense are optional.  This year, our pal Captain Noonan, recently diagnosed with ALS, could be going.

In answer to the many questions we’ve received since our column on the Captain several weeks ago, he rambles on.  There have been good days and bad, including one four-day spate of severe allergic reaction to medication which landed him in UF’s Shands Hospital for a spell.

We have consulted virtually every expert on the subject worth talking to with little encouragement.  ALS doctors and scientists are overwhelmed by the dire certainties of the disease, the lack of an occasional spark of success, the need for long studies and incremental progress.  There is no sense of urgency about Captain Noonan’s particular case because all hope has been relegated to the distant future. 

This will not do for Siobhan Ellison (secret identity: Stubborn Girl), who has probed the Earth for answers and discovered a hopeful drug off in the far reaches of the Orient.  This secret weapon is on its way as we speak and Captain Noonan sits primed for recovery.  What will happen as our heroes battle the Forces of Evil to save the famous aviator?  Will he fly on to salvation or crash to the earth in flames?  Tune in next month for further updates on this battle for tomorrow.  If the Captain is not ready for Moriarty’s bash this year, we may have to schedule a future party of our own.  We can see it now---Not Dead Yet: Fairfield, 2020.  Everyone 65 and up (and vertical) will be welcome.  Don’t forget to bring a pastry.


That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com