Yellowstone National Park

Continued on to Yellowstone after Grand Teton.  Given the park is over 3,000 sq. miles and extends into three states, I only traveled through a small portion of it.  While I was surprised to find much of the park a little underwhelming (beautiful, untouched land sure, but nothing overly unique from what I saw back home), it was hard not to be impressed when I finally reached the Geyser Basin.

Snake River winding down towards Grand Teton in the distance

Yellowstone was the first national park in the world, and sits on the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest super-volcano in North America.  It is considered active and, based on previous cases, is actually past-due to erupt again.

Firehole Lake Drive

To give a sense of scale, Mount St. Helens left a crater of approximately 2 square miles when it last erupted.  Yellowstone Caldera is 1500 square miles.  When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, its ash was detectable over 20,000 square miles away.  The last eruption of Yellowstone (considered a smaller eruption), ejected 8,000 times the ash and lava of St. Helens.

Old Faithful Geyser erupting

Great Fountain Geyser

Firehole Lake Drive

So far 54 tornadoes have been reported from today's storm, with Mississippi and Alabama getting the brunt of the storm, as was expected.  Wasn't planning on chasing today (if I was, my plan was to stay at the SE-corner of Missouri last night, and then to follow the storms across the south-central U.S. in the morning).

As I figured I was too late to track any of the real activity, I decided to half-explore / half-track the one storm I thought had potential.  I ended up starting in eastern Oklahoma and tracking the storm across Rogers, Arkansas and up through Table Rock Lake to Springfield, Missouri.  While I was surrounded by some very intimidating clouds (below picture was the standard view of the day), I managed today to stay out of the hail and 70+ mph winds this storm recording through careful GPS navigation on my Doppler display.

Near Springfield, MO

While there was a clear wall cloud that I tracked for miles, I never positively saw anything touchdown (despite a lot of semi-funnels that were sticking-out).  According to the National Weather Service though, a F0 did in fact touchdown 5-miles east of me at the exact time I was driving through (18:40) and was recorded with 80 mph winds.  I swear I saw a clear funnel at this point while looking over the lake, but it was only two quick looks I got and I shrugged it off as my mind playing tricks on me.  I guess I'll never know.

 After leaving Springfield, heading east to intercept storm brewing in southeast

Another 11 hour day and 600 mile drive.

Oh, Arkansas

Downtown Kansas City

No time for pictures today; here is a shot from last Fall

Starry Night

Well, it's been about two months since my last upside-down, water-reflection shot

Mt. Whiteface

Two straight weeks, two straight failed attempts at reaching the summit of Whiteface.  Scaled the ledges just fine with the ice axe and crampons, but with several feet of fresh powder up top, we simply ran out of time.  I was probably no more than a couple hundred yards from the summit when I turned back.

This mountain is one frustrating winter climb...

 

We luckily were able to follow old tracks most of the way up

 

Sun came out just for this opening

 Just shy of summit and very steep

 Lonely

Mt. Passaconaway (via Diceys Mill Tr.)

Accidentally made the mistake of hiking in the exact opposite direction as planned; don't ask what I was thinking, but I never go off plan like this.  Was planning to go Diceys Mill to Blueberry Ledge cutoff, up Blueberry to the summit of Mt. Whiteface, and then Rollins Tr back to Diceys up to the summit of Passaconaway and Diceys back to the bottom.  I planned this way so that, in the event that the ledges were too risky, I could simply turn back safely.  Going in the opposite direction practically required me to commit to heading down them.

Despite my original planned route, I ended up going straight up Diceys to Passaconaway first and then attempted to rush to Whiteface via Rollins.  After about 3/4 mile, decided the trail was too loosely packed to be able to hit the pace I needed to be successful before sunset and turned back (assuming I deemed the ledges too risky to descend, I needed to do the 4.6 round-trip on Rollins in 2 hours, and then the 3.7 down to trailhead in 1 hour... an indescribably brisk pace).  

Only saw one other on the trail today.  Microspikes the entire way and crampons for the final icy ascent.  Snowshoes recommended for Rollins Tr.   

Round-trip (including the Whiteface failed attempt): 10.6 miles / 5 hours.

 

Start of the day, looking up towards the Blueberry Ledges

 

Near the summit of Mt. Passaconaway