Yellowstone
Yellowstone…Even the name has power-quickening the pulse, firing the imagination. A place that defies description. For every adjective offered, Yellowstone provides an antonym: scarred, yet beautiful; ancient, but modern; settled, yet wild. A wildness that beckons the spirit…
Yellowstone Facts:
|
- World’s first national park.
- International symbol of natural preservation.
- A Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site.
- Contains approximately half of the world’s hydrothermal features-more than 10,000 including the world’s largest concentration of geysers-more than 30
- Home of the world’s tallest active geyser, Steamboat, which erupts to more than 300 ft.
- One of the few places in the world with active travertine terraces.
- Hydrothermal features support microbes that are providing links to primal life, origins of life and astrobiology; plus they are providing useful in solving some of our most perplexing medical and environmental problems.
- With the restoration of the gray wolf in 1995, the park now contains all the large mammal species known to be present when European Americans first arrived.
- Protects to federally listed endangered species, the gray wolf and the whooping crane; and three threatened species; the grizzly bear, the bald eagle and the lynx.
- Home of the largest concentration of elk in the world.
Only place in the US where bison have existed in the wild since primitive times.
- Core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem-one of the largest intact temperate zone ecosystem remaining on the planet.
- Site of the largest volcanic eruptions in the world, which left behind one of the largest calderas.
- Site of the spectacular Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.
- Location of the largest lake above 7000 feet in North America - Yellowstone Lake
- Source of many great North American rivers; two of the three forks of the Missouri; headwaters of the Snake, which flows into the Columbia and eventually the Pacific. The Yellowstone River, which begins just south of the Park, is the longest free-flowing river in the US.
- Yellowstone is also a refuge for the human soul. People have come here to recreate and rest for centuries.
Mike and Erin Thompson
Wilderness Pack Trips, Inc.
172 E. River Rd.
Emigrant, MT 59027
(406)848-9953
email: packtrips@aol.com