Being in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in winter is always amazing. It’s a good time to watch animal behavior – minus the confusion of the many human interactions that one normally runs into during the summer season! It’s also a prime time to observe animal tracks in the snow and get insight into the movement…
Category: yellowstone
Yellowstone Flood Damage Update – Lamar Valley to Cooke City Road Reopens
The historic Yellowstone flood of early June 2022 dramatically changed the fluvial geomorphology in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). According to the National Weather Service Billings, Montana, the Beartooth and Absaroka mountain ranges in this part of YNP had from 0.8 inches to over 5 inches of rainfall from June 10th through…
Welcome To My 2021 Field Office
My geological field work lately has taken me to several areas of western Montana, so I thought I’d do a visual collage of a few of the landscapes where I’ve been working. To start with, I’ve been spending time flying drones over Tertiary exposures in southwestern Montana, Great fun and good insight into Tertiary…
Devil’s Slide and A Jumping Fox
Whenever I drive to Yellowstone National Park’s northern gate, I pass by the Devil’s Slide. It seems that the slide is my gate keeper to the park, and it is always fun to see it in all our different seasons. And once again, during a chance conversation in the park, I was asked about the…
Yellowstone To Southwest Montana Autumn Field Photo Snaps
Montana’s autumn is my favorite time of the year to do field work. Daytime temperatures are usually cool enough to encourage one to keep moving and the lighting is simply gorgeous. It is also one of the best times to visit areas in and around Yellowstone National Park (YNP) because most of the tourists have…
Greater Yellowstone Area Eocene to Recent Hydrothermal Springs
Geologic field work is always fun, but especially so when it turns up something unexpected. Working on Eocene to Recent geology and vertebrate paleontology in the Gravelly Range, southwestern Montana promised to be enthralling because the volcanics, sedimentary units, and vertebrate fossils are at elevations of about 9,000 feet. But to come across extensive, unmapped…
Winter Trekking Through Yellowstone’s Thermal and Glacial Features
Some winter days in Yellowstone National Park are so amazing with clear blue skies and sparkling snow that they just take your breathe away. Luckily enough, I just experienced several of these kinds of days which I packed full of cross country skiing, snowshoeing, and animal watching. One of the groomed trails that held a…
The Yellowstone Volcanics
Volcanic stratigraphy is hard to ignore when touring through the Teton to Yellowstone National Parks (YNP) area. Three major volcanic eruption cycles occurred during the last 2.1 million years and resulted in hundreds of feet of volcanic rock. The eruption cycles make a good basis for separating the volcanic rock units and consequently there are…
Yellowstone’s Firehole Lake Drive Reopens
Last Thursday (July 10),Yellowstone National Park (YNP) temporarily closed the 3.3 mile-long Firehole Lake Drive, a paved road that traverses some of Lower Geyser Basin. Melting asphalt on a part of the road near the start of the loop drive became a “soupy mess”, according to Dan Hottle, YNP spokesman. Hottle told Live Science that…
Glacial Geology Field Tripping in the Northern Yellowstone Area
Living near Yellowstone National Park has its advantages – and the best of these is being easily able to go on field trips to the Park area. A field trip opportunity came up last week when the Rocky Mountain section of the Geological Society of America came to Bozeman, Montana, for its annual meeting. One…
Yellowstone and Super-Eruptions
I give much thought to supervolcanoes – mainly because I live next to Yellowstone National Park and consequently spend much time in the Park. So when I saw today’s Nature publications about the cause of super-eruptions, naturally I wanted to read them. I’ll first start with a definition for a supervolcano, and for that I’ll use…