Home»Sierras_DeathValley_Yellowstone_Superbloom»9/21-27/2024 Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Elko: Our Amazing Planet

We stand on solid earth, and think we know. Deep beneath this thin crust we take for granted, ancient energies are at work, moving toward an unknown future. Hang on, take it a day at a time – aware of possibilities, flexible, open to surprises.

Flying to Jackson Hole, I join Rogelia and Jameson on the last leg of their road trip from Cambridge to Portola Valley.

Yellowstone is amazing. Earth’s thin crust ruptures here. Seeping from stygian depths, steaming, caustic liquids erupt in geysers, overflow into multicolored terraces of sterile land, and bubble mudpots. Upper Geyser Basin, including Old Faithful Geyser, features this activity in real time. Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces, to the north, shows the results of years of overflows covering a once-fertile land. Skeletons of dead trees bear witness to earlier fertility. In Artists’ Paintpots, mudpots bubble near ordinary grassland and forest, separated by a fragile boundary. The Yellowstone Caldera, about 240 square miles, encompasses all this; waterfalls mark the passage of rivers down into the caldera. Wildlife thrive here: in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, we see buffalo, grizzly bears (from a distance), deer, grouse, Bald Eagles, raven, and more. No moose, though we are told they were just there that morning.

As evidenced by their rugged summits, the Grand Tetons are among the youngest mountains in the US, uplifting over the past 10 million years. (In comparison, the Rockies are 5-8 times older, and the Appalachians are over 300 million years old.) And the rocks lifted into the Tetons are some of the oldest in North America – the sharp summits contain 2.5 billion year old metamorphic rocks. Floating across Jenny Lake at the end of the boating season, Jameson and I take a short walk up into the mountains, behind Inspiration Point, bright fall foliage highlighting the bubbling creek eroding multicolored rocks. We also make a pilgrimage to the Jackson Hole Lodge, where the US Federal Reserve holds annual retreats, here in fly-fishing country.

Our geological adventures continue on the drive back to the Bay Area. Starting not far from Triple Divide Peak in Montana, which divides watersheds flowing into the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and Hudson Bay, we drive down into the Great Basin, whose waters drain to no ocean. (The Gulf of Mexico drains most of the US, much more area than drains straight to the Atlantic.) We first drive along the ancient rim of Lake Bonneville, once covering an area comparable to Lake Michigan, which emptied in less than a year about 18,000 years ago, carving landscapes along the Snake and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific, astounding the local inhabitants. (Hell’s Canyon, downstream on the Snake River, is the deepest river gorge in North America at almost 8000 feet (!), deeper than the Grand Canyon and created in a much more catastrophic fashion. We know the Nez Perce have lived in the area for almost 12,000 years – perhaps some people witnessed that amazing year when Lake Bonneville drained.) (Who names these features? Someone driven, lonely, hungry, away from home. Why not Heaven’s Gate??)

A chance encounter in Elko, NV, deep in the Great Basin, leads us to explore nearby Lamoille Canyon in the Ruby Mountains. On a brief hike at 9000 feet elevation, Jameson and I experience the broad vistas of this classic glacial valley, marveling at the psychedelic over-saturated autumn colorscape -- and receiving an offer of another dog, no thanks. Then, just out of the Great Basin across the summit of the Sierras in California, we watch a helicopter exercise above Donner Lake.

Here are six galleries: three from our eventful day in Yellowstone (near Old Faithful, the amazing Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces, and Artists’ Paintpots with their mud “geysers”); one from the Grand Tetons; and one from the trip home through the Great Basin. Oh, and a final gallery for family and friends, a summary of the trip with an emphasis on selfies.