Yellowstone in Winter - Part 2 - Mammoth Hot Springs

Wednesday, 24 January 2018

Mammoth Hot Springs lives up to its name. There are three sets of terraces: lower, main, and upper. Today we walked most of the main and lower terraces. Unlike much of the rest of Yellowstone, these hot springs come up through limestone and deposit travertine. The terraces can build up to 22 cm (8 1/2 inches) a year. The water flow is constantly changing. Springs go dry, new ones pop up, and old ones revive all the time. It's never the same place twice.

Relatively new terraces forming at the top of the main terraces.

Canary Spring. The next few photos are closer views of different features of this spring. The colors are mostly due to bacteria, archaea, and algae that grow in different temperature waters.

Terraces about mid-way down the spring.

The overhang at the top of the terrace.

Water drips from the left-hand side of the previous photo.

The right-most portion seems to have dried up. While the "fangs" look like icicles, they are really stalactites formed by the drips of calcite-laden water.

Moving on from Canary Spring, we walked by Jupiter and Mound Terraces that pretty much merge together.

A top-down view of the terraces.

A close look at a terrace.

As the water paths change, trees get covered with calcite and enveloped in the travertine terrace. 

Palette Spring is one of the lower terraces at Mammoth.

Palette Spring has also enveloped trees.

At the bottom of the springs, along the road, stands Liberty Cap -- a long-dormant spring that built up a cone.