Location Taken: Yellowstone National Park
Time Taken: October 2012
Fabulous, isn’t it?
Truly one of nature’s most spectacular displays, right there for your viewing!
Really, it is!
Just mentally subtract the steam!
Oh, and a higher angle might help too. For one thing, that would reduce the glare on the water…
Just do all that and you’ll get something like this!
That is the Grand Prismatic Spring, one of the largest hot springs in Yellowstone, and certainly the most colorful. I was really looking forward to seeing it when I visited in late October.
Alas, the cold air, right around freezing actually, was making the steam much more thick than it is during the summer. And the low angle of the sun made the thin layer of water pouring out of the spring and covering the rock around it into a perfect mirror of the sky. Which is pretty, but not the same as the brilliant orange and red colors that were just under the water.
You can see some of the colors, if you look where the water meets the steam in this picture. A nice red tint, and some of that brilliant blue-green coming through. All much whiter than it really is, mind you. That steam really is thick.
And stinky, too. One of the things they don’t mention about Yellowstone is the constant smell of sulfur. Probably other things too, but sulfur is one of the few scents I can actually detect, so that’s the one I noticed. And it was in the air by every single hydrothermal feature, from Old Faithful to random steaming hole #253. By the time we got to Grand Prismatic, my lungs were starting to have issues with the combination of volcanic gases and high altitude, and I was certainly not willing to wait for the steam to clear enough for a decent view of the Spring.
Ah well, at least there are tons of fantastic photos of the Spring out there for me to enjoy, even if I couldn’t take one of my own.
