Exploring a National Park - III. The First Day

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A car drive in Utah, like the mountain states of US, is very different from what we were accustomed to from the East Coast. The roads weren’t suffocated by adjacent steel and concrete structures but rather the paved tar was flanked by loose gravel that marked the beginning of expanses in wilderness which would terminate in the horizon or amidst distant mountain ranges.

“Do you want me to take over?” I asked Soura, who was driving.

“Nah, that’s fine,” he said, “You drive on the way back.”

That was a wise choice as he drives a lot faster than I do. On many occasions, he effortlessly went to the opposite lane to overtake slow moving traffic. For lunch, we picked up a couple of burgers from a drive-in, instead of stopping at a restaurant. We were making quick progress towards our destination.

We reached the West Entrance of the Park at about 4:20 PM, all thrilled and raring to go. Just outside the park, there is another small town called West Yellowstone, where we had booked a room at an inn for two nights. We went straight to the park though. At the entrance we picked up a detailed map of the Park. It nicely complemented the other small maps and travel details that I had brought.

“I have this top-ten-things-to-see list,” I said, “Look at this. The Park is roughly in the shape of a distorted 8. There seems to be more stuff to see in the bottom part of the Park. Let’s go to the top half today since we are running short in time.”

“Sounds fine,” Soura replied. Peering at the map he said, “So are we going to Norris Geyser Basin?”

“Right.”

“How far is it?”

“Let me see - from here we drive 14 miles to Madison and then turn north. Norris is, well - another 14 miles from there.”

The road from West Entrance to Madison, was single lane in both directions, which is same for most of the park. Lush valleys flanked either side of the road and ended in distant mountain ranges. For some stretches, the valley disappeared as the road meandered close to those mountain slopes. Tall pine trees stood upright all around, many of them, charred by forest fires. The rays of the afternoon sun that basked the landscape were pleasant as was the light breeze that flowed. There were many other cars, in both directions but the traffic flow was smooth. Both of us, especially Soura, were taking as many pictures as possible.

“Not much of the day is left”, I told him, “Let’s get straight to Norris and not stop in the way.”

“Right,” he said and we resumed back clicking photos from the car. Soon however, we spotted a beautiful river and instinctively pulled over to the side, to get a better view. Both of us realized that with the wealth of natural beauty all around, we did not want to speed past them. When Soura spoke, his words reflected this,

“Boss, I would be happy to see only a few places but see them well.”

I agreed. “Quality over quantity,” I thought.

The river, we had seen was called the Gibbon River, a calm and sparkling mass of water. For a while it continued to go side by side with the road on its left. We were enjoying the scenery in an leisurely mood. The sun didn’t look as if it would set anytime soon and that buoyed our spirits, especially mine. Ever since my flight had been cancelled, apart from my frustration, I had a secret guilt feeling for having wasted Soura’s time as well (not that he would ever think likewise), but now, the various sites of Nature gave me a huge positive boost.

Yellowstone is famed for its wildlife. Bisons, elks, moose, black bears, grizzlies, wolves, coyotes, big-horn sheep all constitute its vast ecosystem. July is probably the best time of the year to observe Yellowstone’s flora and fauna and we didn’t have to wait long to spot wildlife.

The first animals, we saw were bisons. When I was been a small child, I had seen their pictures in illustrated children’s books and it was pleasing to see them in person. They were bigger than I had imagined them to be with especially massive skulls, shoulders, necks and front legs. Their horns seemed smaller by comparison. We drove along a stretch of 3-4 miles where there were probably twenty to thirty bisons, scattered all about, grazing peacefully. Lots of other cars had stopped by the road and people were taking photographs, often getting too close in their over-enthusiasm. There are park guidelines about how close you should approach various wildlife but every year zealous people break these rules. A small fraction of them have even been gored by bisons or mauled by bears leading to serious injuries, and in some cases, death. The bisons that we saw, however, seemed to be very social animals, taking no care of the bunch of curious people that had gathered to watch them. They even seemed to be enjoying the attention.

As we drove along, we spotted more varieties of animals. There were herds of dears and once through the binoculars, we spotted a solitary coyote, far away in the valley. In retrospect the idea to get a binocular was a great one, something that I would recommend to anyone visiting Yellowstone, or any other National Park.

We reached Madison crossing in twenty five minutes and headed north towards Norris. The landscape switched from valleys, to mountains to pine forests. From isolated occurrences, we now saw entire pine forests burnt by fire.

They were an uncanny sight. The trees had been blackened by soot and the leaves and fruits had long gone. They were more like dark posts that had been implanted on the ground in a regular grid pattern. Behind the trees that stood on the ground, were many more those had been felled, naturally or otherwise. The regular pattern of vertical and horizontal tree trunks filled up entire mountain slopes, giving the appearance of a black net, that had been cast on the mountain.

Gradually, we left the valley and the burnt trees behind us and entered the mountains that rose above our heads, on all sides. There were more rocks and boulders around us and the road twisted and turned as we ascended. Norris was another 14 miles from Madison and after driving for approximately half the distance, we became aware of a deep rumbling sound. Within a hundred yards, we saw many parked cars and we joined them. We soon discovered that the source of the noise was a waterfall. It was called the Gibbon Falls; not the most spectacular waterfall that we would go on to see in Yellowstone, but it was the first one and we were thrilled. Soura’s binoculars were excellent and provided for an awesome viewing of the falls. In front of my eyes I could see the huge mass of water, about to leap down from the mountain cliff.

As we left the Falls and drove further up into the mountains, I recalled a small incident, in my childhood, involving a relative. “There are two types of travelers,” she had said, ”those, who are drawn towards lakes, oceans and beaches and the others who prefer mountains and forests,” before going on to add that she loved water bodies.

I, on the other hand, have always preferred mountains. That included water-falls as they were essentially a mountainous feature.

3.1 Norris Geyser Basin

We arrived at Norris Geyser Basin in another fifteen minutes. Let me tell you briefly about geyser basins. Yellowstone is home to the largest active volcano of the world, Yellowstone Caldera, whose presence has lead to the formation of various volcanic structures throughout the park such as geysers and hot springs. Norris is a large conglomeration of a diverse set of such structures.

We parked our car in the lot. The rest of the Basin had to be traversed by foot. There was a small museum called Norris Museum from where the trails started and ended. Many people were to be seen at that point. A trail map at a nearby sign-post, showed several criss-crossing trails that covered the entire basin. The basin ground was made of soft, whitish mud and rocks over which wooden walkways had been constructed. An acute smell of sulpher permeated the entire place. The basin area was without vegetation, except for scattered instances of dead, petrified trees. There were signposts warning visitors not to step into the basin as the ground could be hot, acidic, and unstable or a combination of all of them. The whole area had a surreal feel about it. I was reminded of the episode from Lord of the Rings – the Two Towers, where Gollum leads Frodo and Sam over the marshes on the way to Mordor. This place came close to reminding me of the deathly pallor and isolation of those marshes.

As we went over the walkways, we could see several columns of rising smoke. These were the hot basins, crevices on the surface of the earth from which hot water vapor escaped into the atmosphere. There were several along the walkways but a lot more in the distant forests. A passing signpost informed us that in a volcanic basin, the landscape keeps changing constantly. Springs might dry up and new ones arise in the region.

“One of them might pop up under our walkway, right now,” I said. We had a good laugh. But it was a real possibility.

Besides hot springs, there were geysers, similar crevices that were relatively cooler for water to spout out instead of vapors. We saw the geysers called the Ichamus and Steamboat, which were described as one of the most spectacular and tallest ones in Yellowstone. However unlike the hot springs that emanate vapor constantly, geyser activity was not constant. For most geysers, it was difficult to pin-point the exact time when it would erupt and hurtle columns of water up in the air. There is one notable exception to this in Yellowstone, but later things later.

Walking around the basins we also saw deep blue water ponds that were so clear that the intricate patterns in the sand at the water-bed could be seen clearly. Leisurely columns of vapor rose upwards from them that the wind blew towards our direction and the smell the volcano filled our noses once again.

At one place we saw a small hole filled with a furiously, gurgling muddy liquid. Later I learnt that such mud-pots are formed when volcanic gases escape from a crack on the earth, where water is scarce due to which the acid dissolves the surrounding earth.

All these activities, coupled with the strong odor of sulpher indicate that the volcano, which had erupted about 640,000 years ago with hundred times the intensity of Krakatoa, is very much active to this day.

As we continued our journey, Soura suddenly spoke, “Look at your shoes.”

I saw that both his and my shoes were covered with a layer of white dust. “Acidic dust?” I joked, “Maybe by the time we reach the hotel, the shoes would be gone- corroded.”

“Yeah,” he said, “Maybe our feet would also disappear along with them”. We always had a morbid side to our humor.

As we had almost reached the end of the walkway, we came across a crevice with no activity and seeing a lengthy explanation at the corresponding sign-post, stopped to see what it was all about,

“This used to be a geyser,” Soura read, “Since decades- people have been throwing coins into it- went inside the crevice- joined with the sand- closed the hole- geyser dead as a result- “

It was a pity. The place was too beautiful and pristine to warrant such wanton behavior.

3.2 Mammoth Hot Springs

I had the Park map spread flat on my laps and the top-ten list in my hand and was busy making plans, with Soura, who had started the car and backing up in the parking lot.

“We could go east to the Canyon area,” I said, “That’s 12 miles. There are some good hikes there, which I have planned do on another day. For now we can drive past the Canyon and go to Tower Falls, which is another 19 miles. It’s in this top ten things to see list.”

Soura looked at the map and the list, “Or we could continue driving north from here, 21 miles, to Mammoth Hot Springs. That is also in your list.”

“Yeah, but somehow the description of Mammoth in this list isn’t too exciting. It only talks about some military station being there. We could drive to Tower Falls and while returning visit Mammoth from there and complete the upper loop.”

“Dude, that’s a long drive from here to Canyon and to Tower Fall - am not sure about the sun. Let’s go to Mammoth now and from there we could go to Tower Falls and return by completing the loop the other way. Even if it gets dark, we would be driving from Tower to Canyon and back – and we are not planning to see anything there.”

That made sense and we decided to abandon Tower Falls for the present and go to Mammoth Hot Springs instead.

A large part of the Park, especially the lower half is within the boundary of the Caldera. By driving north, we were gradually leaving it behind. The air was purer, free of the odor of hydrogen sulphide. We saw more valleys and pine forests along the way. The sun had subsided but darkness was still at least an hour away. We were confident of seeing Mammoth in daylight. The traffic situation was also pretty good. A couple of my friends had warned that the July 4^th weekend was the peak time for people to visit the Park and consequently we could face long delays in commuting within the Park. But that fear hadn’t materialized till now.

On the way saw more valleys and wildlife such as herds of elks, big deers with majestic horns. We also saw many snow capped mountains in the distance, and we even saw snow in the valleys, not too far from the road, which surprised us, as it was July. However we reckoned that Yellowstone was going to be full of surprises.

Mammoth hot springs has upper and lower terraces. The stop and parking lot for the upper terrace comes first, but we missed it and halted at the parking lot for the lower level. There seemed to be fewer tourists than Norris. Stepping down, we saw a hill, with a thick limestone deposit that had rendered it a grayish-white color. Several steps or terraces had formed naturally on the slopes of the hill. There were flights of steps that lead to the upper terrace.

“It’s nice, but not really grand,” I said. Soura nodded. I thought of the insipid description in my top-ten list. “Maybe it is correct,” I said.

I could not have been further away from the truth.

The signs were soon to come. As we ascended the steps, we could see that the extent of the calcite hills was much more than what appeared from their base. We then came across a hill, whose façade looked like a face. It was complete with contorted eyes, a flat nose and the mouth wide open in a snarl. Reminded me of the initial scenes of King Kong, when the sailors see the photo of the gorilla’s face in the map.

At around this point, we unexpectedly bumped into Saswata and Ankita, old batchmates from our KGP days. Turned out that they had been in Yellowstone for almost a week. It was the first time I was meeting them after leaving college. Turned out that they too lived in Jersey but we had never met over there. After exchanging pleasantries and Yellowstone experiences, Saswata shared his knowledge about spotting wildlife,

“Early morning and dusk are the best times to spot animals – I am yet to see a grizzly though – seen couple of brown bears and a black one - but no grizzlies till now.”

They were returning and we bade farewell with a tentative plan to meet up later for dinner.

The best was reserved for the upper terrace. As soon as we got there, we could see a multitude of colors around us whose beauty threw us completely off guard. There were small streams which flowed over rocks with intricate patterns of red, orange, green, pink and what not – you had to name it. The intensity also varied from a delicate blush to a vivid glare. There would be a hill with reddish-green slopes with an adjacent pool of pink and violet. It was anything unlike what I had ever seen before.

The sign-posts revealed the reason and wasn’t it surprising? It seemed that there were bacteria which thrived in conditions of high temperature and acidity that were responsible for the colors.

“Thermoacidophiles,” Soura read out their names, “Now, who would have thought of that?”

“Sounds like a trick quiz question,” I said, “Like - in which of these following conditions do organisms live? Option A, B, C, D given - one of which is ‘extremely hot and acidic’. Would you have picked that one up?”

Most certainly we wouldn’t have - before visit Mammoth i.e.

I sat at the upper terraces for a couple of minutes in silence, oblivious of my daily world and its worries. The sun had almost set but its pleasant afterglow still lit up the clouds and tempered the riot of colors all around. The air was calm with the gentlest of breezes blowing. It was soothing to simply gaze at the terraces with a mind blanked out of thoughts.

After a while, I realized something, which I had been observing for quite some time; that Soura was an avid photographer. All along he had been continuously clicking the camera, but here he was even more active. He took multiple photos of the same site, from different angles, zooms and flash properties. He adjusted his camera in unusual places in weird positions to get the photo correct. He even came up with ingenious tricks to capture the beauty of the surroundings,

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to his binoculars, “My camera doesn’t have a great zoom. But I can focus on an object using the binoculars, put the camera at the eyepiece of the binoculars and after a little more focusing, we can get fantastic pictures. ”

He tried and it was a resounding success. A lot of our subsequent photos of Yellowstone, especially of distant animals and natural features were taken using this contraption.

As we left Mammoth, I felt very relaxed and calm. That morning I had woken up at 4:30 AM, to the harsh sounds of an alarm clock, alone in a hotel in a dingy part of Newark, but that seemed like a distant memory now. Did it really happen? Maybe it had been a nightmare.

3.3 The Way Back

It was almost 8:30 PM when we got back to our car. The sun had set by now but there was still light. The temperature had fallen significantly. We were looking at the map to make a decision about going to Tower Falls,

“It’s an 18 mile drive from here,” I said.

“But from there - to get back to West Entrance and our hotel it’s a - well we have to drive back 19 plus 12 plus 14 plus 14 – that’s 59 miles. Let’s do it on another day.”

“Yeah. Even now we have to drive back a lot – its 21 plus 14 plus 14 – 49 miles.”

Both of us were very happy at what we had seen and covered in the first day. As our car zoomed past the roads, we were busy recounting the events of the day and making plans for the next two days.

“This is what I have in mind,” I said, “I looked at several blogs and sites about hiking trails and the best ones seem to be around the Canyon area. I have identified 2 of them – we could do them on one day and maybe the Tower Falls too as it is close to the Canyon.”

“Sounds cool,” Soura said.

“On the other day we could do the lower loop of the Park – that’s basically the Geyser Basins and Old Faithful, the Lake, West Thumb/Grant Village and Hayden Valley – or some of them that we could see properly.”

“Let’s do the hikes tomorrow.”

“Yup, that way we’ll be less tired in the third day when we also have to drive back to SLC at night.”

So it was decided. Our preferences and stamina were very similar and so it was very convenient.

While driving back in dusk, we discovered a nugget. If ever you see a bunch of cars parked on the roadside, there was a strong chance that there could an animal nearby. We saw elks and bisons, which were starting to get repetitive already (and this was out first day) but there were more exotic animals also. Saswata certainly knew what he was talking about.

Once we stopped near a valley with apparently nothing in site apart from a large group of people and two little children, arguing vehemently,

“I saw it first,” shouted the boy.

“No, I DID,” the little girl was absolutely certain.

Puzzled, we looked all around with the binoculars. Very soon we found the source of the people’s attention – and it was a large black wolf. It was quite some distance away in the valley almost hidden in the long grasses.

“How did they ever spot that animal in the first place?” Soura mused. I was similarly amazed.

We left that area, with the children still fighting over who had seen the wolf first. As we drove we saw more animals, including the brown bear that I had written about in the beginning of this story.

By the time we had reached our inn, it was past 10 PM. It looked cozy with copious amounts of references to the Park and its features. The receptionist informed us that dinner time was over and most of the restaurants would also have closed by now.

“Only place open is MacDonalds, two blocks to the right from here,” he said.

We checked in our rooms, put our luggage, freshened up and went to MacDonalds. Not the most healthy place to go but after a long day but I was sufficiently hungry to think about that.

By the time we returned, the streets were empty and most of the inns and restaurants had closed down. We saw a group of bikers heading towards the Park. I wondered what they would possibly do there at this hour.

Once inside our rooms, we threw ourselves on our beds. I transferred the hundreds of photos that Soura had taken from his camera to my laptop. Then we went off to sleep.
Continued