Great MisAdventures Summer 2011

Yellowstone National Park ~ Canyon Area ~ Dunraven Pass

June 10, 2011

Viewing The Lower Falls From Lookout Point

At the Brink of the Lower Falls

Trying to beat the crowds that will be sure to come in July, we head off to the canyon area for some sightseeing. Our first stop is at the trail to the brink of the Lower Falls. This trail consists of 9 switchbacks dropping 600 feet; stopping on top of a genuine wonder of nature, a waterfall falling 309 feet.

At the first switchback, we see the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River a short distance away. This waterfall has a drop of 109 feet, and is just a teaser of what is to come at the bottom of this trail. Arriving at the brink of the Lower Falls, we marvel at the great volume of water, the pounding noise, and the spray woven by the sun's rays into bows radiant with all colors of the prism. Snow and ice are abundant all around the falls as well.

Views of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from here are absolutely beautiful. In the mid 1800 s, the mountain men's descriptions of this sight and the other features of Yellowstone were dismissed as tall tales. Dr. Ferdinand Hayden was sent by Congress to survey this region in 1871. Among others on the expedition, he chose to include landscape painter Thomas Moran to capture these wonders on canvas.

Moran spent days trying to determine the best way to paint this grand scene. Observing the difficulty Moran was having, Dr. Hayden wrote in his journal, Thomas Moran, who is justly celebrated for his exqusite taste as a colorist, exclaimed with a sort of regretful enthusiasm, that these beautiful tints were beyond the reach of human art. Nonetheless, Moran persevered, his massive painting of the canyon is in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in our nation's capitol.

The great magnitude of this chasm is hard to grasp. It measures 20 miles long, 800 to 1,200 feet deep, and 1,500 to 4,000 feet wide. Naturalist John Muir noted on his visit here in 1885:
The walls of the canyon from top to bottom burn in a perfect glory of color...white, yellow, green, blue, vermilion, and various other shades of red indefinitely blending.

This stunning display of nature's handiwork began when the last volcanic eruptions laid down lava flows in the area. Later, a geyser basin formed within the lava flow, there is still thermal activity in the canyon. The hot water, steam, and gasses of these geysers and hot springs hydrothermally altered the normally hard lava, known as rhyolite, weakening the rock and making it susceptible to erosion and carving by the river. At the edges of these thermal basins the hard lavas remained to form the brinks of the two falls.

Glaciers also assisted in the sculpting of the canyon. The glaciers created ice dams upstream near Yellowstone Lake that held ice and water. As the ice began to melt, the dams gave way releasing a deluge downstream. This huge volume of water flowing through the soft rock further eroded and defined the present appearance of canyon. Fire and Ice came together to create the wonderful work of nature we call the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

View from Dunraven Pass Looking East To Yellowstone River Canyon ~ Washburn Hot Springs

Dunraven Pass, the road between Canyon and Tower, opened this week and we were anxious to travel this route. Snow depths along the roadway averaged 5 feet, some pulloff areas yet to be plowed. Upon arriving at Tower Falls, we find the trail to the bottom of the falls not yet open. We continue onto Mammoth Hot Springs, then back to West Yellowstone completing our first YNP northern loop driving MisAdventure.

Liberty Cap and Hyman Terrace ~ Mammoth Hot Springs

No bears today, but several bull Elk were seen and pictured along with two Pronghorns play fighting, and the usual Bison. Osprey Eagles were flying in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, but good pictures were beyond our skill level.

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