Yellowstone NP–The Bear Count Increases!

Hoo-boy, we had a busy day today.  But the most important thing is that we no longer have to put a big goose-egg on the board as far as bear count.  Today we finally saw bears – and grizzlies, no less.  But first, the second bison stampede:

As we were (unintentionally, I navigated us a wrong turn) driving to the west park exit, we came across our first “wildlife traffic jam”.  Note how the bison politely stick to the correct side of the road.

Once we (I) got our bearings, we drove ourselves to the Norris geyser basin.  Yellowstone is a hotbed of hydrothermic activity – it sits on top of a supervolcano, created eons ago – the caldera is more than 40 miles wide and encompasses a large portion of the park.  The Norris geyser basin is home to the world’s tallest geyser – the Steamboat geyser, which shoots water and steam up to 400 feet in the air.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t erupting today (it’s unpredictable).  The rest of the basin was pretty cool, but not as spectacular as the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins we saw yesterday.

We continued our drive all the way up to Mammoth Springs, at the north end of the park.  The terraces here are created by moisture seeping into the ground and becoming superheated by a chamber of magma.  A weak acidic solution is created and as it comes into contact with air at the surface, it precipitates calcium carbonate so that the rest of the solution solidifies into the travertine terraces.  Mammoth Springs is divided into the Upper, Lower, and Minerva Terrace as well as the Palette Spring area.  These photos were taken at the Palette Springs area.

We actually drove a few hundred yards into Montana today, and were straddling the 45th Parallel – we are halfway to the North Pole!  We turned around before we got to the North Entrance to the Park (we will eventually go out of the park this way as we continue to Glacier National Park next week).  But what we were really in search of on this section of the road were the hot springs that you can swim in – it’s called the Boiling River.  The lady who worked at the wine shop in Jackson told us how to get there – it’s just 2 miles north of Mammoth on the right.  Unfortunately, the turn off was closed due to hazardous high water.  But that didn’t stop us; we parked across the street at a picnic area and hiked to Boiling River anyway to see how dangerous it was.

Okay – we could see why they had closed the area down.  The Boiling River is a stream of scalding hot water that runs into the Gardiner River.  At the intersection of the stream and the river, the Park Service has built a series of steps so that you can swim in the Gardiner where the hot water intermingles with it.  In the photo below, the Gardiner River is the larger river on the upper left; the Boiling River is the darker one on the bottom right.  Note the yellow police tape (“Do Not Cross”) barricading the entrance steps to the Gardiner river.

The water in the Gardiner was flowing rapidly downstream.  A few hundred feet downstream from the hot springs bathing area we saw this rapid – a wall of skull-crushing rocks.  One false step upstream and you are in concussion territory.

I’m sure at low water, this is a great place to swim.  But not today.  So we chickened out on the Boiling River.  At first I was disappointed because it took about an hour to find it, hike to it, and decide not to swim.  But it just may have led to perfect timing to see our first grizzly bears – an hour earlier and they wouldn’t have been there.  As we were driving back to the Madison Campground we saw a traffic jam just south of Old Bunsen Peak Road.  Sure enough, it was a mama grizzly and her two cubs.  Both Kevin and I have seen several black bears before, but this was our first grizzly sighting.  One of the main differences is that grizzlies have a large muscular shoulder hump that allows them to dig up plants for food.  They also have elongated snouts and larger claws than a black bear.  Luckily we were a safe distance away from this group.  But from a distance, the cubs looked so cuddly!