Riding & Outdoors
Revisiting Yellowstone National Park
By EMILY SACHAR
It's been some 20 years since devastating fires consumed Yellowstone National Park in 1988, burning 36 percent of the land — 794,000 acres — in nine human-initiated and 42 lightning-induced conflagrations, as the experts call them.
I have come to see what has happened since I was here a few years after those fires in what was then my first visit to this fragile ecosystem.
• Learn about the Yellowstone fires of 1988
I came to the park an awestruck young mom eager to show off this treasure to my kids, but I left heartbroken by the devastation we encountered. I can't remember a tree that wasn't black with the memory of fire. I wondered if Yellowstone would ever, could ever, recover.
It has. And how.
I've chosen to see Yellowstone this time not with a quick-hit romp around Old Faithful — the toddlers of the 1980s are now grown — but by heading into the backcountry on a customized day trip. Julianne Baker, a former Michigan schoolteacher-turned-ace-tour-leader for the Yellowstone Association Institute, is our guide.
Baker wore the park ranger's green uniform for a few years as an interpretive and educational ranger for the National Park Service. But she wanted more than her assigned turf of Norris Geyser Basin and the Northern Range — she wanted the whole park as her corner office (see sidebar). Now she has it. And this day in early September, as winter is getting ready to descend on Yellowstone with nights in the 30s and crowds thinning to a whisper, we are Baker's only students for our eight hours together.
• Jump to Q&A with Julianne Baker
She has mapped out what she calls an "off-road highlights adventure" that will, she says, really pack it in. In the course of 6.5 miles of walking, mostly on fairly flat terrain, we'll see Fairy Falls cascading 197 feet to the ground; eat lunch by the side of the Imperial Geyser, one of the park's almost-constantly erupting geysers, spewing water 24-7, 365 days a year; then take one short, steep climb overlooking Grand Prismatic Spring, one of the most magnificent thermal features in the park but one most people see only by walking on a wooden plank at ground level. Grand Prismatic, at 330 feet across, is the country's largest hot spring, and the third-largest hot spring in the world (New Zealand claims the two largest).
This is not an entirely new way to see the park — the Yellowstone Association Institute has been offering specialized tours since 1976 — but it is one that is surging in popularity as people like us seek exposure to parts of the park that the Visitor Center guides, despite their wide range of experience, don't always suggest for hikes and that rangers simply may not have the time to visit.
All of the institute's classes are related to the Yellowstone ecosystem. These range from programs focused on the park's abundant wildlife and geothermal features to its rich history and expansive wilderness.
The institute has developed a reputation as one of the nation's outstanding wilderness schools, with high standards for instructors and academic credit available for many courses. Tours can be customized, and some even include backcountry skiing or snowshoeing in winter and backpacking or backcountry hikes in summer. The nonprofit institute is the only official partner of Yellowstone National Park to offer such adventures.
.................................
We start off our day marveling at the many necessities in Baker's field kit — bear spray, an assortment of thermometers she'll use to get estimates of the temperature in and around the many thermal features dotting our walk, a park radio and first aid kit in case of emergency, and rain gear (she insists we carry rain gear, too, though I've never seen a bluer sky in my life).
Baker also carries plastic-coated maps of just about everything in Yellowstone, from a macro view of the park with its figure-eight road loop, to dozens of micro views for specific educational use that show, inch by inch, how a geyser works, or that compare the size of the Yellowstone volcano eruptions to those of Mount St. Helens.
Our guide has ready metaphors for the myriad complex geologic twists that have made this park — one of the most geologically dynamic areas on Earth — what it is.
Example: A pool like Grand Prismatic can be compared to the liquid sitting in a wine glass; imagine a cracked glass base, so that the bottom of the glass lets water seep up through the hollow glass stem and relax into a swirling liquid mass. Result: a thermal pool. Put a kink into that stem so that the water is constrained or has nowhere to go as it bubbles some 450 degrees below the earth, and eventually so much pressure builds up that it erupts from its "glass stem." Result: geyser!
Baker has plenty to say about Yellowstone's other thermal features — fumaroles, also known as steam vents, that allow steam, but not water, to escape (they're the hottest thermal features, as the water flashes right to vapor/steam, creating hissing sounds as steam escapes to the surface); and mud pots from which water-saturated sediment like clay absorbs super-heated steam below.
Enlarge
Emily Sachar
We learn that while the crust of the earth is normally 30-50 miles thick, and generally molton rock does not exist as the base of the continental crust, here at Yellowstone the crust ranges from a paltry 3 to 8 miles in depth; hence, the heat that is tamped down by the crust elsewhere is close to the surface and exposed via hot springs here.
Baker tells us her number recall is poor. But she has no trouble noting that Yellowstone is home to more than 300 active geysers, about half of all the active geysers in the world. All told, thousands of thermal features line the park, most located in the central caldera region that last erupted some 640,000 years ago.
Why doesn't Yellowstone look like a volcano? It's all part of that thinness problem in the Yellowstone earth, Baker explains. Most volcanoes are on the edge of a tectonic plate; Yellowstone isn't. It's what geologists call a "hot spot volcano" — a plume of super-hot magma rises through the mantle of the Earth, coming to the surface here, creating the Yellowstone Plateau.
Baker tells us that Yellowstone was able to recover from the 1988 fires in large measure because of the serotinous cones of the lodgepole pine, a sun-loving, self-pruning species that covers 80 percent of the forested part of Yellowstone. Such cones open to yield their seeds only when temperatures reach at least 113 degrees Fahrenheit. In 1988, they did.
The trees themselves were destroyed by fire, dotting the landscape like black chimney stacks, but Mother Nature ensured their return. The area's Douglas fir, meanwhile, also has a natural defense: a thick bark that helps protect the cambium of the trees from the intense heat of fire.
More fun facts: A herd of bison is an "obstinacy," and Imperial Geyser, our lunch spot, deposits one fingernail thickness each year of siliceous sinter. Also known as silica, this material is dissolved by super-heated water below the surface; when the water rises to the surface, cools, and evaporates, it leaves the silica behind.
And: Yellowstone Lake, at 141 miles around, is the largest lake above 7,000 feet in the Lower 48; and one lake trout can eat approximately 41 cutthroat trout per year, an issue because lake trout, introduced illegally into Yellowstone Lake, are decimating the cutthroats.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of our day is when we learn that the gooey-looking stuff on the bottom of the stream near several geysers, some bright green and some the color of beer-bottle glass, is teeming with life, even as it measures 140 to 199 degrees Fahrenheit. The invisible organisms that merge to create a visual delight are, in fact, bacteria and algae, one of which (thermus aquaticus) was used to develop the technique that gives us the ability to test DNA quickly.
As the day comes to a close, we spot bear tracks, though no bears, then bid Baker a fond farewell. She sends us on our way south to the Grand Tetons with one admonition: Don't be sad for the legacy of the fires or the disappointing change in the color of rocks at Mammoth Hot Springs (which has gone nearly dormant since I was last here).
The only constant inside Yellowstone, she says, is change.
And, I would add, momentous beauty.
THE YELLOWSTONE ASSOCIATION INSTITUTE
A lifetime of education inside the nation's first national park
The Yellowstone Association Institute offers year-round programming, including a series of award-winning Lodging & Learning programs and field seminars. The Lodging & Learning programs, detailed below, take from nine to 12 visitors at a time into the park by day and back to hotel accommodations inside the park at night. They typically run three to five days.
• ESSENTIAL YELLOWSTONE In either spring or autumn, participants enjoy wildlife watching in the Hayden Valley, walking along the rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, and touring the heart of the Yellowstone volcano.
• OLD TIMES ON THE GRAND TOUR Visitors tour Yellowstone in the high style of a bygone era, traveling with an institute naturalist guide in one of the park's historic yellow buses, which feature large windows and a retractable canvas top perfect for wildlife viewing.
• TRAILS THROUGH YELLOWSTONE This trip includes four days of hiking and wildlife viewing on trails that explore Yellowstone's diverse landscapes, from the geyser basins around Old Faithful to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.
• YELLOWSTONE FOR FAMILIES Led by an institute naturalist guide, families with children (or grandchildren) 8 to 12 years old can explore canyons, waterfalls, and geyser basins.
• FIELD SEMINARS These one-to-10-day seminars are the core of the institute's offerings. Visitors learn about the park through the eyes of an animal tracker, a wolf biologist, a photographer, a geothermal scientist, and other noted experts, utilizing a combination of field excursions and classroom presentations. Seminars include Wildlife Watching in Grizzly Country, Photographing Yellowstone's Early Summer, and Exploring the Lower Geyer Basin. Visit the institute's website for a complete list of seminars and further details. The institute also offers a number of backpacking courses, as well as private tours.
For more information, go to www.yellowstoneassociation.org.
JULIANNE BAKER
A naturalist with a heart
Enlarge
Emily Sachar
Julianne Baker
A teacher in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, public schools for 26 years, Julianne Baker, 59, decided her "retirement" would be spent in the park that she first visited in 1974 and came to love with her first Yellowstone Association Institute class in 1991. With a master's in outdoor environmental education, she joined the staff of the institute in 2002 and today leads everything from one-mile romps around Old Faithful to three-day intensive day-hiking courses to six-day historical Lodging & Learning programs. Baker herself has backpacked, kayaked, and canoed much of Yellowstone's backcountry and has cross-country skied hundreds of miles of terrain in the park.
C&I talked to Baker about the park she considers her "corner office."
Cowboys & Indians: Are you a natural born hiker?
Julianne Baker: Actually no. We never traveled much when I was growing up. I played outside a lot — in fields, orchards, and such, and I always loved paleontology and archaeology. But hiking: no, not a life habit.
C&I: What was your first real hike?
Baker: In 1969 or 1970, I saw the Colorado Rockies for the first time and hiked outside Granby at Monarch Lake. That began my love affair with the mountains and it turned into a good marriage. During college, I started camping and backpacking. The Rockies and Wind River [Range in Wyoming] were special treasures.
C&I: How did Yellowstone make it into your repertoire?
Baker: I first came in 1974 because I backpacked in the [Winds] nearby. In the 1980s, I found out you could go cross-country skiing in Yellowstone, and I skied here five winters in a row. And in 1991, I discovered the Yellowstone Association Institute. I came out every summer after that and took classes, with the goal of bringing what I'd learned back to my classrooms of fourth-graders.
C&I: What does Yellowstone mean to you?
Baker: Yellowstone feeds my spirit, my soul. I just love learning about the park. It's the only intact ecosystem in the lower 48. It has the greatest diversity of large carnivores anywhere in North America. Of course, you can see connections many places — in your own backyard or in Central Park in New York City. But they've been manipulated, as they have not been here. Those connections are awe-inspiring to me and bond me to this place as nothing else.
Issue: June 2009
