Home > Drives > Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 03

Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 03

article by Ben Lincoln

After packing up my tent, I made my way to the Fountain Paint Pot trail. The colouring of this first multispectral set is absolutely unreal - it looks more like a nightclub than a geologic feature - although this is partly due to the sun changing positions in-between the exposures. Like the other mud-related pictures from later in this trip, I would discover that what seems to be a nearly-featureless grey liquid has a sort of "witches' cauldron" appearance when photographed in the near-infrared and/or ultraviolet-A.

While I was working on this first shot, I met a woman who had last been to Yellowstone some fifty years previously - long enough ago that a new feature ("Red Spouter") had literally erupted from what had been a small hill between her two visits.

Reflecting on this later, I realized that Yellowstone is one of the few places on Earth where an opportunity exists to capture (with relative ease) motion picture footage of actual geology in motion. If the Park Service were to set up unattended high-definition time-lapse cameras in strategic locations, it would be possible to capture stunning footage of Yellowstone's changing face. The effect would be similar to the sequences in the BBC's Planet Earth series which depict the changing of the seasons, but on a longer scale.

Capturing geyser eruptions multispectrally is difficult using my equipment (the water changes position too much between exposures), but I felt that I should try at least once.

Next I took a detour along Firehole Lake Drive. This area is the location of Great Fountain Geyser. This geyser has a most impressive mouth, but only erupts once or twice a day, so I was not able to photograph it in action.

A little further along the drive, I stopped at White Dome. I didn't realize this at the time, but it is an active geyser as well.

I'm sure some people will consider this heretical, but I didn't stop at Old Faithful on this trip. I would have liked to see it again, but I was already running behind by spending the morning in the same part of the Park that I'd been in the previous day. Old Faithful is probably the Yellowstone attraction with the biggest name recognition^[1], and I knew that the crowds and traffic there would slow me down too much.

North of the Fishing Bridge area, I happened across a herd of Bison.

Shortly after, I entered the first area of Yellowstone which was completely new to me. During my visit in 2006, I'd traveled in a sort of L-shape from Mammoth through Madison to West Thumb, and then out the East Entrance.

The first place I visited here was the Mud Volcano area. The "volcano" itself is only a relatively-small subset of the unusual features here, and I ended up not taking a picture of it. The lighting was extremely unfavourable, and its nature (sort of a continuous churning fountain of mud coming out of a hole at the base of a small cliff) makes it unlikely to work well using the multiple exposure technique that I have to use at present.

This pool of mud is only a few steps away from the parking lot. Its appearance in human-visible light is muted earth-tones, and I felt almost as though it were "too muted", and must therefore exhibit great variation in other spectral bands. This hunch turned out to be 100% correct.

The hike up to the top of the hill in this area reveals a small lake in addition to another burbling pool of hot mud.

On my way back down, I was almost boxed in by the surprise appearance of another bison out on his own. I'm still not sure how he got up the hill, unless he enjoyed walking through boiling mud.

Just north of Mud Volcano is Sulphur Caldron. Apparently my photo is not of the Caldron proper (I haven't been able to locate a definitive guide to the area), but in the variations that incorporate the ultraviolet-A exposure it is certainly possible to see where the sulfur is due to the mustard-yellow appearance that results in the false colour images.

Further north is Hayden Valley. One of countless examples of Yellowstone as a microcosm, this is the archetypical fertile valley. Surprisingly, it turned out to be one of my favourite photographs from this trip; I'm especially fond of the NIR-R-UVA false colour variation.

Continuing north from Hayden Valley, I arrived at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. I'd seen its name on maps before and assumed that it wasn't that interesting (being apparently named after the more famous Grand Canyon in Arizona), and in fact I'd skipped visiting it entirely in 2006 partly because of this. I could not have been more wrong. It is one of the few things I've seen that I'd describe as "awe-inspiring" with a straight face. It was clearly named in an era of much lower title-inflation^[2].

Regretably, I didn't find it immediately obvious which viewpoint I should visit first, and by the time I got to the best one ("Grand View"), there was barely any light left. I suggest everyone start there first, and then explore the other options.

I'm sure it would be stupendously difficult to take a truly good picture of the Canyon. Grand View in particular is a nearly 360-degree vista that should leave even the most jaded visitors speechless with wonder. For me it was at least as powerful an experience as the "other" Grand Canyon, because while Yellowstone's is smaller, the features are that much closer.

The photos I took are a pale imitation of the real thing. I include them only to illustrate some of the differences in colour, not as any evidence of what being there is like. I almost didn't take any at all because it seemed futile to even try.

My last stop of the day was at Norris Geyser Basin. This and Firehole Lake are my two greatest omissions in terms of not collecting enough photo sets on the assumption that they're look the same as similar areas elsewhere in the Park.

In this first, wide-angle shot, the multispectral variations clearly show a great number of different substances and/or types of microbial life. In particular, note the area in the center which seems to be a significant source of sulfur.

The second set is a close-up of the green bacteria mats which I only saw growing in this area during my visit.

On my way back from Norris to Bridge Bay (where I was camping for the night), I encountered the first of several bison-induced traffic jams which I'd experience during this visit. When a herd decides to cross (or follow) the road in Yellowstone, there's nothing to do but sit back and wait for them to pass.

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Related Articles:
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Introduction
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 02
Drive 2009 Part 2 - Day 04 and 05
Yellowstone National Park

Last updated: 21 February 2011

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