Smoke on the Water: the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Boiling steam rising from the midst of an ice cold lake.
Yellowstone is weirder than you can imagine.

The West Thumb Geyser Basin is a geyser basin ... along the shore of a thumb ... off to the west side of Lake Yellowstone.  Some of the steaming vents are even in the water of the icy cold lake.

But first ...

I go to load up my car with my luggage and there is a buffalo grazing out behind the hotel.  This is why when I asked the front desk clerk the other night how safe it was to walk in the dark outside the hotel at 2:00 a.m., I was referring strictly to wildlife.

Anyway, last day in Yellowstone.  Off to the West Thumb Geyser Basin.  Driving along the shore of Lake Yellowstone, you start to see smoke along the shoreline.  My first thought was:  Are these small fires?  My second thought:  Wait, I'm in Yellowstone.  Probably geysers or fumaroles.

And, sure enough, it was the West Thumb Geyser Basin that I saw.  It has the pools of steaming water:

You can see the steam more clearly from this angle:

And when you see the steam and smoke rising along the shoreline, this is one geyser walk loop that should come with its own soundtrack.

I think you know what song that should be.

That is not morning fog.  That is steam.  From boiling water welling up from deep underneath ... an icy cold lake.

Just a hint of hydrogen sulfide in the air, but not nearly as much as the Mud Volcano area.

This may be the Black Pool.  It was named the "black pool" because ... and they are quite the literalists here at West Thumb Geyser Basin ... it was a pool.  That was black.  This was the case from the founding of Yellowstone for several decades.  Then there was a minor earthquake, which changed the temperature of the pool just enough that the bacteria living in the pool that gave it its black color were killed off.

And then it was just an ordinary blue pool.  But a name is a name.  So let's now say it was named for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

Some of the area have retained their color:

This is the Big Cone:

And this is the famous Fishing Cone:

It got its name, the Fishing Cone, because, once upon a time ... true story ... people would fish in Lake Yellowstone.  Well, what are you going to do with a raw fish.  You can't do sushi with a freshwater fish.  Well, with the fish still on the line, they would dunk it in the boiling hot Fishing Cone and ... voila ... cooked fresh fish.

Lakeshore Geyser:

Which, despite its close proximity to the lake, apparently was not used as a cooking pot.  I'm guessing that's because, being a working geyser, you'd be cooking your fish and, suddenly, it would be ejected from the cooking pot high into the air.  And, in the meantime, you would get seriously scalded.  Geysers are bad for cooking fish.

Bluebell Pool in the foreground, with Seismograph Spring behind it.

This made me think of pizza:

But, in actuality, the whole of the caldera area sits on a thin crust about the earth's magma.  It's just that in spots like this, the crust is incredibly, ridiculously thin.  Walk on it and you likely will fall through into the earth.  And, possibly, be boiled alive.

This is the Surging Spring:

This is the Collapsing Pool:

I'm guessing it's collapsing, but if it is, and I'm taking them at their literal word on this, it is collapsing so slowly that I did not see it happen in my hour at West Thumb Geyser Basin.

The weird juxtaposition of boiling springs and geysers against the backdrop of any icy cold alpine lake is probably why West Thumb Geyser Basin is my favorite part of Yellowstone.  And how was the West Thumb formed?  Probably from a massive volcanic eruption about 160,000 years ago (which is significantly more recent than the last eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano).  West Thumb is much deeper than the rest of Lake Yellowstone and the experts think this is the reason.

We will end the walking tour of West Thumb Geyser Basin with Percolating Spring:

So named because it percolates.  I told you they were literalists in the West Thumb Geyser Basin.