Colter's Hell

In 1803, John Colter, born in Virginia (probably) but then a resident of Kentucky, joined up with the Corps of Discovery Expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The Corps was charged by President Thomas Jefferson with finding a practical route across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and then further all the way over the continent to the Pacific Ocean. They made it there and back again, although I'm not sure they found a practical route to the Pacific.

Colter was in his early 20s (again, probably) when he signed up with Lewis and Clark. He made it all the way across North America but didn't come all the way back. He decided to leave the company on the return journey to seek his fortune in beaver pelts. His point of separation was probably somewhere in present-day Montana, although that's a pretty big territory to pinpoint his exact departure spot and I'm not sure it really matters here.

Colter's post-Corps wonderings became legendary, although not for his beaver trapping prowess which apparently was pretty unsuccessful. Between an early departure from his hunting pals and a should-have-been death experience at the hands of the Blackfeet, Colter came across a spot which he later described as a landscape with gloomy terrors, smoking pits, noxious streams and an all-pervading smell of brimstone. Nobody believed him. How could such a place exist? They mockingly started calling it Colter's Hell.

But what Colter had seen was real. Eventually, fact merged into myth and then legend and sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, Colter was given credit as the first white man to lay eyes on what is now Yellowstone National Park. Gloomy terrors? Smoking pits? Noxious streams? An all-pervading smell of brimstone? Yep, they got all that in Yellowstone.

Palette Spring Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park.

Colter wasn't the last man to come back from the American west with less than believable stories about Yellowstone. In the 1830s, mountain man Jim Bridger began telling tales of a place in the northern Rocky Mountains that had to be seen to be believed. Bridger talked about waterfalls spouting upwards and a petrified forest where petrified birds sang petrified songs. He also claimed that if you did it right, you could pull a trout from a lake fully cooked and ready to eat. Like Colter, nobody believed Bridger either.

They also didn't believe Joe Meek, another mountain man who'd been saying about the same thing as Bridger in the previous decade. Steam billowing out of the Earth. Hissing craters. Gasses whistling. Scary and creepy stuff. Bridger was a well known liar, or at least a strong exaggerator, so it was no surprise nobody believed him. But they didn't believe Meek or Colter either. Why would they? It sounded like pure fantasy. Or madness.

Eventually, as more and more Europeans pushed into the American west, more and more stories similar to Colter's, Bridger's and Meek's emerged. In 1869, David Folsom, Charles Cook and William Peterson set out from Diamond City, Montana on a self-funded expedition to gather evidence to support or refute the stories coming out of what would later be Yellowstone National Park. Turns out Bridger and Meek and Colter were right. Something strange was going on out on the surface of the Earth out west.

Can you imagine a time where people met stories of geothermal pools, geysers and hot springs with such disbelief and derision? It was less than 200 years ago. I'd like to say that I can't believe that I'd doubt what Colter, Meek and Bridger said but who's kidding whom? I probably would have. By the way, Colter's description is way better than that of Meek or Bridger. It's the brimstone, I think.

John Colter probably never visited what is now Yellowstone. When he narrated his tale it appears he identified a spot somewhere on the opposite side of present day Wyoming where he saw what he couldn't believe. It was only through a literary misappropriation in 1895 that Colter's Hell got stuck in Yellowstone. But it's a cool name so it's the title of this post for that reason.

The walk to Grand Prismatic Spring. Yellowstone National Park.

It might not be Colter's Hell, but something seriously strange is still going on out in Yellowstone National Park. And we made a point of exploring this feature of Yellowstone as thoroughly as we did the wildlife in the Park. Or maybe close to it, anyway.

There are many, many spots on this globe of ours where volcanic activity is perilously close to the surface of the Earth and where an eruption or explosion of some sort would have disastrous consequences for the planet. Yellowstone National Park is perhaps one of the more dangerous of those locations, although the chances of something big happening there is likely extremely remote. Strange that we would go out there knowing all this? Look...if Yellowstone blows, we are no safer on the other side of the country than we are in the Park itself. May as well take in the wonder out there while it's still there. Plus, you can see all this in a National Park for crying out loud.

I have fond memories of visiting Yellowstone's thermal areas during my last trip in 2011 but I also know I missed a whole ton of spots because we tried to do the whole place in one day. Look, there is only so much you can stop at in a place as big as Yellowstone in a single day. This time would be different, I pledged. Sure I wanted to go back to Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs but I also didn't want to miss the spectacular Grand Prismatic Spring (which I skipped in '11) and all the other important geothermal spots in the Park.

We still didn't cover them all. We just couldn't. There are so many big and small geysers, pots of bubbling mud, steam vents and pools, petrified trees and landscapes and multicolored microorganisms in scalding water. After a while, it gets numbing. They all look the same. Or more accurately, they don't look different enough to make you want to linger very long. Another clear and brilliant blue pool? Pass. It's just like the other five or ten that we've already seen.

Canary Spring. Mammoth Hot Springs. Yellowstone National Park.

There were some hotspots in Yellowstone that I really enjoyed and thought were super valuable to visit. There were five in particular that I would definitely recommend to the first time Yellowstone visitor. 

I also thought we went to some places that were not worth visiting ever again. I was disappointed in Norris Geyser Basin's Back Basin area (just too many similar and unspectacular sights) and Mammoth Hot Springs. I almost can't believe that I was disappointed in Mammoth Hot Springs because after my first visit in 2011, I thought it was one of the most impressive sights we saw. I understand colors in geothermal areas of the Park change with the seasons and the years. Maybe October 2020 just wasn't a good time to go to Mammoth Hot Springs. I found the whole place pretty monochrome.

I also think we struck out on one of the most anticipated stops we made: Grand Prismatic Spring. This was my number one spot that I didn't visit in 2011 that was a can't miss for me this year. I'd read about the spectacular colors and the sheer size of Grand Prismatic Spring and was pretty excited to see it with my own eyes. But the viewing angle you get from the boardwalk and the steam coming off the pool obscuring most anything you could see anyway made this a disappointment. To be fair to Grand Prismatic Spring here, I'd also read the best view of this place was an aerial view, which I couldn't get without a helicopter or a drone, neither of which I own or could use if I did. The cover photograph of this post is of Grand Prismatic Spring.

But enough about what I didn't find valuable. Here are five spots I'd go back to if I ever find myself in Yellowstone again. I'm listing them in the order which we visited them.

West Thumb Geyser Basin

We entered Yellowstone National Park through the South Entrance after completing a couple of days at Grand Teton National Park. West Thumb Geyser Basin was the first gloomy, smoking, noxious, brimstone place we came to. So we stopped. Why not?

As a prelude to what was to come in the Park, I thought West Thumb was a great introduction. If you visit here, you'll find a microcosm of what the rest of the Park has to offer in these sorts of settings (without the geysers). There's steam coming out of the land and off the tops of pools; colorful orange and brown thermophiles living in the hot water; bubbling pots of mud; and some ultra clear and still pools like the Bluebell Pool and Abyss Pool.

Maybe West Thumb benefited from being the first place we stopped and if we'd taken a walk around Norris Geyser Basin on our first day in the Park rather than stopping at West Thumb I'd have these two spots reversed in this post. Norris has a lot of what West Thumb has plus it has some geysers, some of which are apparently somewhat spectacular (albeit not very predictable).

The west edge of Yellowstone Lake, seen from West Thumb Geyser Basin.

But there's one thing West Thumb does have over Norris and that's its proximity to Yellowstone Lake, by far the most massive body of water in the Park. Nowhere else in Yellowstone can you see the interaction between hot springs and a body of freshwater quite the way you can at West Thumb. There are spots in the Park where heated water merges with streams or rivers and you can actually swim or bathe in some of these waters (although not in a pandemic, apparently) but not on the scale of Yellowstone Lake. 

Jim Bridger emerged from Yellowstone with some pretty tall tales. His story of petrified birds singing petrified songs is just a straight out lie. But there are some folks out there who think Jim's story of pulling a trout from the water fully cooked if you did it right might have some ring of truth to it. If he did manage to do this when fishing, maybe it happened at West Thumb.

Old Faithful Geyser

If there's one spot in Yellowstone that is probably on every visitor's list, it's Old Faithful. It's the most famous geyser in the place, not because it's the biggest or erupts the longest but because it's predictable and big enough to be spectacular every time. Plus it also helps that it's separated from other geysers in the Park so when it erupts, there's basically no competition for attention.

Old Faithful erupts to an average height of about 150 feet and it does so every 60 to 90 minutes. You can tell how close to eruption time it is based on the number of people gathered along the perimeter path and on the benches which line the sidewalks on the west side. We lucked out and got there probably about 10 minutes before showtime. Full, but we kept walking south and eventually found a clear view which was also sufficiently separated from the rest of the masses.

It's a good show. It's long enough to be satisfying and short enough to not be boring. And the setting on a slight mound away from anything else against the blue Wyoming sky is spectacular. It's simple and it delivers. There's a reason people keep coming. You will likely see more people here than at any other spot in Yellowstone. But it's worth it.

Morning Glory Pool

There are some spectacular colors in the waters of Yellowstone National Park. The colors are caused by thermophiles, microscopic organisms that live unchallenged in the hostile hot water and generate energy from sunlight based on their bright pigments. Different pools throughout the Park have different thermophiles in them. For us tourists, the most spectacular pools are generally those with the broadest range of colors. Say hello to Morning Glory Pool.

There were two colorful pools I was looking forward to seeing in Yellowstone: Grand Prismatic Spring and Morning Glory Pool. Where Grand Prismatic Spring was so large and steamy to be essentially un-viewable, Morning Glory was the exact opposite. It's relatively small (say 15 feet across), has a slightly raised walk around about 50% of the perimeter and is calm and unclouded by steam. Plus the colors are absolutely incredible. We never saw colors anywhere else all together like the greens, ochres, yellows and oranges in Morning Glory. If you want to see vivid, otherworldly colors created by living things, go here.

Morning Glory is at the north end of the Upper Geyser Basin, the same place as Old Faithful. It will take you a while to get there. It's a 1-1/2 mile walk each way along a paved and relatively unshaded path. It's not a difficult hike but it's not super easy on the feet and if it's an unclouded day, you will feel the sun most of the way. There are a couple of colorful pools along the way to Morning Glory. Don't feel like those are good enough. Keep going to the end. Totally worth it.

Beehive Geyser

We got lucky at our stop at the Upper Geyser Basin. We took in the Old Faithful show, walked out to Morning Glory and got back to Old Faithful when it was super packed with people, which meant it was about to go again. We'd get to watch it twice without waiting much either time. So lucky. We positioned ourselves along the west side in the shade and waited.

And then something amazing happened. Off to our left we heard a rushing and when we looked over saw a gushing tower of hot water erupting from the ground. It was not only taller than Old Faithful, it was way more powerful and consistent and lasted way longer. It was like someone turned on a hose pointing straight upwards on its most concentrated setting.

I wrote earlier in this post that one of the attractions of Old Faithful is that it's off on its own with no competition from other geysers. If the Beehive Geyser erupted every 60 to 90 minutes, that wouldn't be true. This was truly impressive. 

It was also truly lucky. Beehive erupts maybe once a day or sometimes twice in summer and less frequently in winter. We just happened to be there at the exact right time. It was way better than Old Faithful. I'd watch this show anytime, but I wouldn't wait hours to see it because there are very few things in life I would wait hours to see.

Dragon's Mouth Spring

We hit West Thumb, Old Faithful, Morning Glory and Beehive on our first day in Yellowstone but continued to probe other spots where we might see some impressive geothermal activity. We were relatively unsuccessful, although maybe that's because we kept seeing the same things that had already wowed us earlier in the week.

A couple of days into our Yellowstone time, we visited Hayden Valley on the east side of the Great Loop and stopped at Mud Volcano after our first pass through Hayden. It was a toss up between Mud Volcano and Sulphur Cauldron just to the north. We decided Mud Volcano sounded less smelly.

This stop is a typical Yellowstone hydrothermal attraction: multiple different types of volcanic activity in a single spot, including bubbling mud, hot springs and spitting hot water and gasses. Most stops like this in the Park have a wooden boardwalk leading you from place to place and most feature multiple route choices. We picked the shortest one here. Heading west into Mud Volcano and then curving around immediately to the north (right) as soon as we could towards a large plume of steam in a corner of the boardwalk. It was Dragon's Mouth Spring.

Dragon's Mouth got its name in 1912, relatively late considering the Park was established 40 years earlier. But the name couldn't be any more perfect. It's a bubbling spring tucked back in a crevice above a pool that bellows steam and makes a noise just like a dragon about to breathe fire. Or at least maybe what Hollywood makes dragons sound like just before they breathe fire. It's the perfect name for a tiny piece of Yellowstone that is very impressive. It's not as famous as Old Faithful or any of the other places in this post, but I think it was worth stopping.

Old Faithful. Alone.

On the average visit to Yellowstone, there are so many choices about what to see and seek out. I could honestly have spent all four plus days we spent in the Park just seeking out wildlife. But I think an essential part of Yellowstone is the waterfalls spouting upwards, the hissing craters and that all-pervading smell of brimstone that Jim Bridger, Joe Meek and John Colter found on their travels about a couple of centuries ago. We may not be terrified of geysers and hot springs the way these three men were but it doesn't make these scenes any less intriguing. I think a visit to Yellowstone should include a little time watching the Earth be angry.

---

How We Did It

There's nothing much complicated about how we did this: drive around Yellowstone National Park and stop anywhere you like. Yellowstone is open year round but most entrance roads close at the beginning of November as winter sets in. Check their website for more details.

If you want to see specific geysers erupting during your time in the Park, we noticed signs listing the next likely eruption close to each geyser. Some blow just once a day or even less frequently so if you have a lot on your list, you may be in Yellowstone a long time or might have to do some serious coordination. If you don't feel like personally visiting each site to find out the next showtime, the Park does have an app which lists the most likely eruption time for significant geysers. I assume it's accurate although we didn't use the app for that purpose.

---