Dear Reader,
First, I'd like to extend my gratitude to readers who participated in the last post's Old Faithful visitor count estimation game. Although a second montage of Old Faithful's popularity may have seemed unnecessary or repetitive, I invited readers to take a closer look for the following three reasons:
The vantage point and, therefore, the structure from which the photo was taken: Your narrator took this photo atop the Old Faithful Inn. We are grateful for the Inn's staff for their permission and guidance through the Crow's Nest onto the roof so that we could see Old Faithful erupt from this unique perspective. Bear in mind that neither the Crow's Nest nor the roof of the Old Faithful Inn are open to the public. On the right is an uncropped image with structures in the foreground as reference.
A Study on the Wisdom of the Crowd: Let me quote the anecdote of the 1906 Plymouth county fair from the Wikipedia article, "Wisdom of the crowd": "At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds.[6]". While the number of participants in our estimation game was probably a bit on the meager side, your narrator finds it interesting to see what values we could have converged to...
A Dive into Visitor Use Monitoring: As you will discover more in the next post, our crews have helped the park with Visitor Use Monitoring (VUM) projects, or, data collection on site popularity and visitor behavior to understand how to best allocate park resources and improve park infrastructure. While VUM projects sometimes involve sophisticated equipment like GPS trackers, often it means just counting 1, 2, 3, etc. for the number of passersby, motor vehicles, and so on. In other words, the participants in our estimation game may have had some interesting VUM insights to share...
This visit took place Sunday morning. In the afternoon, students then had the choice between a hike to Cygnet Lake and self time. The day then concluded with karaoke. See below for highlights from the hike:
Saturday
OK, enough of Old Faithful and its multitudes. Whereas the previous week, we had explored the park by car, this Saturday, we took the less beaten road and went on different hiking trips. Grace led a hike to Lone Star Geyser, Dean to Sour Creek, Grace to Tower Falls on a paint and walk expedition, and Zander to the 7 Mile Hole.
Lone Star Geyser
The hike itself to Lone Star Geyser was not very long and the game of "Contact" made it seem shorter. Like Old Faithful, Lone Star is a geyser but its eruptions last up to 30 minutes (<5 minutes for Old Faithful). Lone Star's eruptions typically alternate between short and long bursts and although a period of approximately 3 hours separates the eruptions, the hiking team stayed long enough to witness both (a pack of cards and a lunch did happen between, however).
Sour Creek
Geysers, mudpots, fumaroles, and hot springs, quite a number of thermal features we've explored so far. But we might be missing the elephant in the room: the Yellowstone supervolcano itself and the caldera it formed. The Sour Creek dome arose after the explosion and definitely serves some spectacular views.
Paint and Walk near Tower Falls
We've seen many a photogenic scene at Yellowstone and each one has inspired a unique emotion in us, be it awe, curiosity, or annoyance at the mosquitos. While photography provides a number of options akin to a palette, be they perspective, exposure, or focus, a painting like Dali's The Persistence of Memory or Monet's water lilies better captures a human essence that photography has difficulty with. Our budding artists therefore followed Mindy on a paint and walk around the Tower Falls area.
The Seven-Mile Hole
This hike was advertised as the most difficult one of them all and six students took up the challenge with Zander. Part of the difficulty arises from the changes in elevation throughout the Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.
The Great YCC Bake-Off
Despite a whole day's hike (or perhaps inspired by it), the Rec Rangers and students still had energy for an additional night activity: a baking competition.
Our judges: YCC's co-directors JJ and Shannon along with the Youth Leaders.
Our teams with their chefs d'oeuvre:
Good job everyone and thanks for the fun weekend. Coming up next, a week of work and a visit by wildland firefighters.
Comments