Terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park

October 12, 2010 by 8 Comments

Lower Terraces at Mammoth Springs @ 2010 Bo Mackison

The Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces in the northwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park are easy to drive by. They look like large terraced white rock. Nothing spurting hot water, no geyser countdowns, no bubbling pools. You only get the rewards when you walk up and down the many planked steps and boardwalks. Then the beauty of the hot springs, often a rugged beauty, can be seen.

The terraces are formed when hot water carries dissolved calcium and bicarbonate to the surface of the terraces. The carbonate and calcium combine to form a hard rock known as travertine. The abopve photo features a large terrace of travertine — bright white steps which turn a greyish color as they weather. In other areas of the terraced hot springs, water is running and it changes the colors of the white-gray rock.

Not all areas of the terrace have water flows. When we were there a week ago, there were only two areas that had pools. Most of the hot springs were the whitish-gay dry travertine.

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Emerald Pool at Yellowstone National Park

October 11, 2010 by 7 Comments

Emerald Pool © 2010 Bo Mackison

Emerald Pool is sometimes a lovely shade of green. That makes sense when you consider the water is a deep blue and the lining of the pool is a bacteria-laden yellow. However the pool has been decreasing in temperature because of a combination of natural debris and materials thrown into the pool by visitors. This is causing the rim of the pool to darken to a brown color.

I photographed this pool with and without a polarizing filter. Usually I preferred the photographs of the hot springs and geysers with the polarizer to cut the reflections from the surrounding features and sky. Not so this time. When I used the filter, the reflection of the sky and trees disappeared and the pool was partly a dark brown and partly a lighter muddy color. I preferred the photographs of Emerald Spring with the added colors from the reflections.
This hot spring is part of the Black Sand Basin located near the Old Faithful Complex in Yellowstone National Park.
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Iron Spring Creek – Sunrise at Yellowstone National Park

October 7, 2010 by 12 Comments
Geyserite Mound with Runoff into Iron Spring Creek at Yellowstone
Iron Spring Creek © 2010 Bo Mackison

This mound of geyserite to the left of the creek indicates that there have been geysers in this part of Yellowstone National Park for eons.

The run off from pools and geysers in the Black Sand Geyser Basin flows into Iron Spring Creek. The reddish-brown color of the creek, however, is not from iron, but from a reddish brown algae that is present in the creek because of thermal warming.

This is another sunrise photograph.

The temperature had dropped to 28˚F on this early October morning, and so there was a magnificent display of steaming hot pools in the basin. The early light bathed the whole area in luminous beauty.

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Twin Trees at Black Sand Basin – Autumn in Yellowstone National Park

October 6, 2010 by 4 Comments
Trees at Sunrise in Black Sand Basin at Yellowstone National Park

Twin Trees at Black Sand Basin © 2010 Bo Mackison

Some mornings it is harder to capture a sunrise photograph than other times.

When I’m camping and I’ve sat by the late evening campfire admiring the red embers of the dying fire and gazed at the Milky Way until the early hours of the morning, it takes extra effort for me to be ready and in the car before sunrise the next morning. But it is often worth it. It surely was a few mornings ago, when I took this magical photograph.

I was photographing the geysers along the boardwalk in the Black Sand Basin.

This basin is a smaller part of the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park. It was just past sunrise. We had finished exploring this basin and were headed to the Old Faithful complex. Sherpa had already headed back to the parking lot. I was lingering in the eerie, early light.

I turned for one more look at this mystical place.

This place with such an ancient feel, with steam curling out of the earth and hovering thickly in the cool morning. (It was 28˚F, so the hot springs were steaming almost everywhere you looked in the thermal part of the park.)

Just one more look, just as the sunlight spotlighted these lodge pole pines.

I am so grateful that in my photo practice, I always make it a point to turn around to check on what is behind me before I stop shooting.

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Oh, the Colors You Can See – Mineralization at Yellowstone National Park

October 5, 2010 by 12 Comments
Great Prismatic Pool

Oh, the Colors You Can See! © 2010 Bo Mackison

We arrived at Yellowstone National Park on Saturday afternoon, set up camp quickly, and went exploring.

We stopped at several geyser basins. These geyser basins just seem to call me – I just can’t resist walking on the boardwalks, gazing at the many brightly colored pools, timing the predictable (and unpredictable) gush of the geysers, watching the muddy paint pots that burp out a pop of mud in rhythmic fashion.

When we arrived at Midway Geyser Basin an hour or so before sunset, we ended up lingering there until traces of the sun had all but disappeared. The thermal features are lovely at any time of day, but at sunset, everything is bathed in warm light and the oranges and yellows deepen. I couldn’t stop looking and I took way too many photographs.

This shot is one of my favorite from that evening. The Grand Prismatic Spring, seen steaming in the background, is the largest hot spring in Yellowstone, measuring over 250 by 300 feet. It is a brilliant icy blue in the center, and then turns bluish-green on the edges. But the parts that so attracted me were the rays of oranges, yellows, and browns that radiated from the spring as runoff.

As a bonus, the reflections in the pool and runoff waters are spectacular, as seen by these reflections of white clouds and blue sky.

Ah, glorious nature. What a show she puts on!

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