Yellowstone National Park WY

It’s American first national park and a pretty magical place. Especially in winter, when it becomes an otherworldly wonderland. Steaming rivers and waterfalls in a pure white landscape. The steam rises up and instantly freezes into a frosted coating over leaves and branches. The place is quite and peaceful aside from buffalo munching on the stubs of grass they find where the hot ground has melted the snow, and the hisses of steam erupting from geysers like Old Faithful. The mineral colours of the geothermal pools, the golds and rusts and bright turquoises, really stand out against the white snow. It’s easy to convince yourself that your visiting another planet.

Looking across the black skeletons of trees burnt by a decades-old fire to a bed of low clouds and snowy mountain peaks just visible in the distance.
A tree trunk with frost encrusted on pine needles as steam rises from the hot springs and quickly freezes upon contact with the surrounding trees in the cold winter air.
A lone tree leans in to a steaming river with patches of ice floating on it, as the surrounding forest of trees are crusty with frost from the frozen steam.
A snowy winter landscape, with a waterfall in the background and trees covered with frost.
Looking through younger and healthier pine trees to older ones burnt by fire, with low clouds and snowy mountains in the distance.
In lightly falling snow a buffalo nibbles on grass in the patches where the natural heat of the ground has melted the snow away.
A bison in the snowy landscape eats the accessible grass thanks to the warm soil from the surrounding geysers, as light snow falls; An oddly shaped bright turquoise steaming geothermal pool with animal footprints in the small patch of snow that remains on the warm ground.
Thick steam from the eruption of Old Faithful covers the landscape.
Old Faithful geyser shoots steam and boiling water over 100 feet in the air, turning the three people standing in the snowy landscape watching the natural wonder into tiny dots in a massive landscape.
Light snow falls and starts to cover the ground as a bison eats the grass that sticks up where the soil is warm from the Old Faithful geyser.
A small volcanic-looking boiling hot geothermal pool with bubbles, steam, and a yellow mineral colour.
A lone tree on the edge of a steaming river as steam turns the snowy winter landscape hazy; The dominant and large old female bison sits beneath a tree in light snowfall, some snow settling on her back.
As light snow falls all around one bison with grass in its beard looks up as another in the background keeps eating.
In the snow-covered landscape just at the edge of Yellowstone Lake a small geyser emits steam and melts the snow the snow on the ground around it.
A spectacular sheer drop-off in a large and deep steaming hot turquoise geothermal pool in a snowy landscape that’s partially melted from the heat; A large bison chews on some grass, with some caught in her beard, as light snow falls.
A steaming winter landscape, with sections of melted snow and mud due to the geyser heat; A hot rust-coloured geothermal pool with ripples from boiling bubbles beside trees and a thick cover of pure white snow.
A bison licks inside its nostril, sticking its tongue up its nose as it walks across the snowy landscape.
Small hot volcanic-looking craters on the edge of the flat snowy landscape that is the frozen Yellowstone Lake, with mountain peaks in the distance; A large turquoise steaming hot geothermal pool in a snowy landscape, with partially melted snow around the edges due to the heat of the water.
Looking past a pine tree to a snowy landscape with a steaming hot waterfall.
Steaming hot waterfall in a landscape covered in thick layered pillows of snow and encrusted with frost as the steam hits the leaves and twigs and instantly freezes in the icy winter air; Deep layers of snow at the edge of a warm waterfall, with rocks and leafy branches covered in frost from the frozen steam.

To see more photos of Wyoming go to Jackson WY or Middle America Road Trip: NV UT WY NE IA, or to see more of America’s magnificent National Parks go to Yosemite National Park CA or Olympic National Park WA.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 at 4:54 am. It is filed under snow and tagged with America, landscape, mountains, National Park, nature, snow, wildlife, winter, world heritage, Wyoming, Yellowstone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.