Hayden Valley Coyote

The Hayden Valley is a vast area that was once a lake created by a glacial dam that has since melted, leaving behind a rolling expanse of marshy grassland where Bison and Elk calf in the Spring, and where Wolves and Grizzlies predate.

At this time of year, the grass has mostly gone brown, and though we saw a large number of Bison nearby, none were in the valley itself. 

Elk? Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown. Apparently it is still too warm for them to come down from the high country above 8,000 feet.

I rolled into the Hayden Valley at about noon, whichpp is a terrible time to spot wildlife.  The area is so large it was a miracle that I spied a tiny dot moving in the yellow grass — a coyote mousing among the water hummocks.  

This coyote was very far away — these pictures were taken with an 83x lens and then cropped.

Amazing Yellowstone Geology

The entire park is an enormous volcanic caldera, hence the thousands of hot vents, geysers, bubbling pools, and clouds of steam in the lower park.

When the Yellowstone caldera has exploded, in the distant past, it has thrown so much matter into the sky that it has darkened the globe for years — think 28 to 250 times larger than Mount Pinatubo. 

The smallest Yellowstone eruption in the past was 280 times larger than Mount St. Helens. 

The biggest?  

If it happened again, it would end most life on earth.

The evidence of earthquakes and landslides are all over the park, as is massive volcanic flows ranging from basalt to mud and ash.

Over the whole thing has come glaciation under 4,000 foot sheets of ice — ice sheets that only receded about 11,000 years ago.

The bison and elk and native Americans came after the Sequoias, but before the Toyota Rad-4s.  

As far as the park is concerned, nothing here is old but the rock and water itself.

The three pictures, above, are of the same place, but with the basalt columns — which represent a single layer — emphasized.

A Land of Steam

Lots of steam activity this morning from geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, and pools.  There was so much steam coming over the road, I slowed down to walking speed with my lights on. Very much like going through a forest fire zone, but no smoke.

This Could Be Heaven or Hell

Either way, pull up a chair; Mother Nature and Father Time put on a hell of a show.

Big Bison in Big Country

Yellowstone Bison are often far from the road in groups of 5-50 animals, often with another group nearby, but out of frame.

These are big animals, but infinitely useful to the native people who used their skins for teepees, robes, blankets, and moccasins; their meat for food; their brains for tanning; their bones for awls, needles and arrow points.

One has to wonder what the first native hunter thought when he came to the boiling pools, hot springs, and geysers of Yellowstone. Here was something you could only dream of: huge basins of boiling water with which to loosen fat and fur from heavy hides. And did it hurt that the water was rich in soda and sometimes sulfur? Not a bit!

Ravens Are Easy to Like

Aspen Trees Turning Gold

Pronghorn in Repose

Pronghorns are often called antelopes, but they are more closely related to Giraffes and Okapi.  

We saw a herd of about 20 on a drive outside of the park, and four smaller groups inside the park.

These three Pronghorn were in repose, bedded down to get out of 30-mile per hour winds that had me braced against a Lodgepole Pine to get a semi-steady shot.

Pronghorns are the fastest native mammal in the New World, capable of running 45 miles per hour.

That kind of speed, of course, presupposes a predator capable of running that fast.  

But where is that predator?

Gone for thousands of years, but not forgotten:  the North American Cheetah, or Miracinonyx, which disappeared about 16,000 years ago — a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.

There are ghosts all around us if you know what questions to ask, and where to look.  

Every Pronghorn has the ghost of a Miracinonyx following it. It is invisible, but only just out of sight.

A Big Old Bull In Repose

Bison in Yellowstone

The Amazing Geology of Yellowstone

The entire park is an enormous volcanic caldera, hence the thousands of hot vents, geysers, bubbling pools, and clouds of steam in the lower park.

When the Yellowstone caldera has exploded, in the distant past, it has thrown so much matter into the sky that it has darkened the globe for years — think 28 to 250 times larger than Mount Pinatubo. 

The smallest Yellowstone eruption in the past was 280 times larger than Mount St. Helens. 

The biggest?  

If it happened again, it would end most life on earth.

The evidence of earthquakes and landslides are all over the park, as is massive volcanic flows ranging from basalt to mud and ash.

Over the whole thing has come glaciation under 4,000 foot sheets of ice — ice sheets that only receded about 11,000 years ago.

The bison and elk and native Americans came after the Sequoias, but before the Toyota Rad-4s.  

As far as the park is concerned, nothing here is old but the rock and water itself.

The three pictures, above, are of the same place, but with the basalt columns — which represent a single layer — emphasized.

Yellowstone