Day 3 - Up and close with the geysers

The Grand Teton National Park is named after the Grand Teton, the highest mountain of the Teton Mountains. The name was given by a French trapper whose fantasy was starting to work after long-term lack of female company J. He saw ‘tetons’ or ‘tits’ in the highest mountain peaks.

In addition to Grand Teton with 4.197 m, there are also the Middle Teton and the South Teton, which together form three granite tops, the most famous image of Grand Teton. The bald, hard granite suggests an unbelievable power from the peaks. The flanks are decorated with snow fields and glaciers. At the foot of the mountain there are a number of glacier lakes in which trout swim. Although the material from  Grand Teton  is very old, the mountain range itself is very young, one of the youngest in the Rockies actually. About 9 to 10 million years ago, two plates began to slide along a fault line. One plate was pushed upwards, the other down. The western part became the mountain range, the eastern part of the valley. The height difference had risen to about 9,000 m over the years. However, due to erosion where material is deposited in the valley, this is no longer noticeable.

Despite the beautiful  sunny open weather, we do not see the mountain peaks. The valley is covered in a kind of smoke screen. It originates from the northern state of Montana, where fierce forest fires occur. You even smell the fire at times. Unfortunately, the majestic mountain peaks are lost to us. You still see contours but not much depth in the mountains. 

Some people are cannoying and  brave the smoke and paddle on the ice-cold water.

The park was founded in 1929 and is more than 1.250 km2 in size. We drive through the park northwards on our way to his more famous neighbor, Yellowstone.

Yellowstone, as stated earlier, is the first US National Park. This is due to the huge wealth of geysers and hot springs in the park. It probably makes the park also the most famous park in the world. All those geysers, hot springs and earthquakes nearby are not more than heat and pressure coming out ... the magma chamber of a volcano. Yellowstone is actually a volcano. It does not look like a typical volcano, but it is. The volcano is not located in a traditional place either. You find normally volcanoes on the edge of tectonic plates that slide against each other, driving a volcano upwards. Less commonly are the so-called hot spots volcanoes located in the middle of such a plate. This is usually the case with oceanic plates. Yellowstone is hence a real stranger with a volcano in the middle of a continental plate. This hotspot volcano is a place under the earth's crust where melted magma rises and doesn’t shift. It is the continent that moves like a steel plate over a burner. The first volcanic activity took place about 50 million years ago, which caused Yellowstone's landscape. The first major eruption occurred 2,1 million years ago and destroyed the whole southwest of Yellowstone. Since then, two other catastrophic eruptions have taken place. One 1.3 million years ago but the worst was 640,000 years ago: the destructive eruption of the great Yellowstone volcano. After the explosion, there was a smoking crater left of 45 km by 76 km (about 25% of the park) with a depth of many hundreds of meters. Due to the later outflow of lava, a part of the crater was filled and the crater edge faded. During the Ice Age a large ice cap came over the Rocky Mountains creating glaciers. Yellowstone Lake now forms a large part of the crater. Since the last major eruptions, about 30 smaller eruptions occurred. The most recent was about 70,000 years ago. But Yellowstone can still erupt because it's a very active volcano when you take the number of geysers and hot springs into account, all of which are volcanic activity. It seems like the volcano breathes. There are more geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone than all other the volcanic phenomena in the world. 75% of all geysers are found here. The best known of all is Old Faithfull which erupts faithfully every 1.5u on average. He is not the one with the biggest or longest eruptions, but the most faithful. Based on the previous eruption, the rangers can calculate approximately the time when he will erupt again. A short eruption usually means that the following will follow shortly. When arriving at the park, we still have the time to eat our picnic and then be at the Old Faithfull site on time. The calculation of the rangers is of course not exact science. There can be a difference of up to 10 minutes. The smoke of Montana also fills the Yellowstone Valley. When Old Faithfull starts erupting at the calculated time, it is a pitty that the background is not very clear because of the smoke. 

It is also not a long or high eruption. There are other geysers for that. We take a walk around some of these geysers in the Upper Geyser Basin and then leave for the Biscuit Basin. 

This basin is particularly active, volatile and unpredictable. In 1959 a heavy earthquake with 7.5 on Richter’s scale took place. 4 days after the earthquake, one of the hot springs, Sapphire Pool, erupted so violenty that pieces of minerals flew through the air.

We continue our way along the Midway Geyser Basin. Here are two of the best known geysers located. We first walk along the staggering Excelsior Geyser. 

He erupted last in 1983. The power of his 90 m high eruptions became too much for the ‘underground pipelines’. He is now just an ordinary but giant hot spring with impressive steam clouds. Big bubbles are on the water. It says enough about the temperature of the water. A tea bag and you can make a cup of tea. A little further the Grand Prismatic Spring is located, probably the most famous and most photographed hot spring, which is also the largest of Yellowstone with 90m cross-section. It is not only the size of the spring, but also the surrounding rock in different colors is beautiful. It is a rainbow of colors from red, to orange, green, white, yellow, ... A beautiful painter’s palette.

How was it  for the pioneers who unsuspectingly crossed the landscape on horseback or by carriage when suddenly the geysers began to erupt? I would scare myself to death. 

Finally, we visit the Lower Geyser Basin where the famous Fountain Paint Pot is located. As the name suggests, the water pool does not appear to contain water but more a thick white paint or thickening milk as you like. Absolutely gorgeous.

Not only the colors, but also the sometimes literally breathtaking steam or the sudden eruption of the geysers, make this an extraordinary experience. The special color shades around the edge of the pools and the bubbling noise that the geysers make, have something of an unusual beauty, of an inexhaustible power. This is nature at its best.