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| Mammoth is near the north entrance to the park. Up on the cliffs above the town/resort/whatever are some of the more spectacular geothermal features in the park. | There's this enormous plateau, and once again, it's too unstable to walk across. | See, there's a sinkhole. Note the resort in the far distance. | Sometimes I wish I'd stayed in science, or at least taken a geology class or two. I love rock formations. Dunno what the heck they are, though. | Again with the terraces and the orangey bacteria-colored water. | Here's another view of the plateau. Much like the Lower Geyser Basin, it has a very wasteland-ish look about it. | Watch as funky plants (like that pointy thing in the middle, what the heck is that?) grow right up to the edge of the waste! And then die. Like those trees. | Photos can't describe how hot this area was. At the time, I was just barely recovering from being seriously dehydrated and sunburnt a few days before, and the heat was making me wobbly. That's steam rising off the water. As pretty as it is, I'd imagine this is what the literary version hell would be like -- hot, muggy, and stinking of sulphur. | More terraced stones. I wonder how long it takes to form those? | I'm not sure how trees end up in the middle of hot pools like this. Maybe the pools spring up after the trees have grown. I know the park is in a constant state of flux, but it amazes me that it could change that abruptly. I'll have to go back in a few years and see how much things have moved around. | That white stuff that looks like ice? It's not ice, it's minerals. | Dead tree, terraced pool, steam, moving along... | Continuing with the theme... | Gotta love those stormy skies. | More ice-like mineral formations, cascading down from the plateau. I'd imagine it takes forever for those to form, but then who knows? It's Yellowstone, amazing stuff happens there. Maybe it only takes a few years. |