Wonders at Yellowstone

When you visit a wilderness, do you best like expanses of nature?  Maybe you like to spot wild animals. Or, do you like to watch geological marvels like waterfalls, geysers and canyons?

Well, there is one place that features all of the above and much more — Yellowstone National Park. Located in Wyoming in the United States, it spans over 2 million acres in the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

The place, now known as Yellowstone National Park, has been considered special from early times. The Native American tribes saw it as a holy site. Early fur trappers and explorers who passed through it came back with such fantastic stories of steam exploding out of the earth, enormous waterfalls and trees of stone that they were considered outrageous liars.

Discovery

One of the members from the Lewis and Clarke expedition (to map the western reaches of the American continent) named John Colter passed through the area in 1807. However, only in 1870 was the area explored and surveyed. This region impressed America so much that in 1872, a law was enacted to name it the world’s first national park. It is now also a World Heritage Site.

Yellowstone has a variety of attractions. Underneath the surface of the earth, there exists semi-molten rock called magma. In most parts of the world, this magma is 35 to 40 km under the crust. However, at Yellowstone, it is found at a shallow

3 km. This makes the Yellowstone plateau the hottest spot on earth. Six lakh thousand years ago, the magma flowed into chambers under the plateau, exploding in an extremely violent eruption, the power of which must have been a thousand times more than that at Mount St Helens’ in 1980. The roofs of these chambers collapsed, resulting in an immense caldera that spans 35 to 40 miles. Most of the parkland lies in this caldera.

The magma chambers have built up again, causing bulges in the earth’s crust. And where there is groundwater, the heat of the magma causes it to turn into steam and erupt  as geysers, steam vents, hot pools and mud pots. Minerals present in the soil dissolve in the extremely hot water and contribute to colourful pools, hot springs and beautiful terraces. There are over 10,000 hydrothermal features, including 300 geysers, in the park. Of these, the Old Faithful is the most predictable one, erupting almost every 91 minutes.

Hot pools and mineral springs are interesting for other reasons, too. Microorganisms that thrive in extreme temperatures, acidity and sulphur contents have been discovered here. For example, the bacillus Thermus aquaticus, which was first discovered near the Great Fountain Geyser, yielded an enzyme called Taq DNA polymerase, which is used in the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA.

If you are a lover of nature in its pristine form, then Yellowstone is the place for you. The millions of acres of forests comprise the largest and most intact ecosystems in the temperate zones of the world. The majesty of the Rockies with glaciers on top, the verdant meadows that stretch between the mountain ranges, the pools, and the rivers are captivating.
The sawtoothed Absaroka mountains, the Gallatin Range, Obsidian Cliffs, Mount Washburn and Mount Hancock with glaciers on top are awe-inspiring. Rivers like the Gardner, the Gibbon, the Firehole, the Madison, the Gallatin, the Yellowstone and the Snake flow swiftly through the park.

The Yellowstone river is the longest undammed river in the United States. There are many waterfalls in the park, but the two major ones are the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, both of which are spectacular. In fact, the Lower Falls are almost twice as high as Niagara Falls. The Yellowstone Lake is the largest lake at high elevation in North America. And the Hayden Valley, which stretches between Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone Falls, is a  peaceful grassland.

Another of Yellowstone’s major attractions is the unique wildlife. The park is home to critically endangered animals such as the grizzly bear, the American buffalo (bison), the grey wolf, and the bald eagle. Elk, coyotes, black bear and marmots are the other animals here. Don’t be surprised if you see large herds of elk and bison grazing in the valleys or crossing the road.
In Yellowstone, you can see mineralised or petrified trees. These have been formed when mudflows and volcanic deposits from violent volcanic eruptions filled the open pores of trees, solidifying them into standing rocks.

The national park is extremely tourist-friendly. You can find excellent food in the number of restaurants scattered throughout the park. One of the lasting memories of Yellowstone I’ll always have is of sitting on the wide porch of Old Faithful Lodge, eating ice cream and watching the geyser erupt. Accommodations range from the rustic to luxurious to historic. There are fabulous roads inside the park that allow you to do as little or as much sightseeing as you want. There are also 950 miles of backcountry trails if you want to be one with nature. Of course, you have to be wary of bears and be careful around other wildlife, because you don’t want to become totally one with nature.

Yellowstone is a wonderful place to visit both in summer and winter. In summer, everything is lush and beautiful. In winter, the entire landscape is transformed. There is a thick coat of snow over everything. Mist rises in ghostly gusts over the geothermal areas; bison and elk plough through the snow, their skin and beards encrusted with ice. It was at the end of winter we caught sight of the most elusive animals there, the grey wolves.