Jack in the Rockies: A Boy's Adventures with a Pack Train

by George Bird Grinnell

A few miles further along the trail, they came to a natural bridge, spanning a brook which now carried little water, but showed that in the spring it was much larger. The stream had burrowed its way beneath a dike of lava, at right angles to its course, and was bridged by a nearly perfect arch of rock, about six feet thick above the keystone. From the top of the bridge on its lower side to the bed of the stream is about sixty feet, and the bridge is twenty-five feet long, and the arch fifteen feet in width. The lava stands in upright layers, from one to four feet in thickness, and seems to have separated into these thin plates in cooling.

Beyond the bridge, the dim trail which they followed led for the most part through the pleasant green timber, but at midday they passed over several hog-backs, from which the timber had long ago been burned off, most of the tree trunks had rotted away, and only a few charred fragments of the roots remained on the ground. No young growth had sprung up to replace the old, and the ground was bare: not merely bare of timber, but bare even of underbrush, weeds and grass. Exposed for years to the full force of the weather, the rains and melting snows had swept away all the rotted pine needles, twigs and fallen branches which had formed the old forest floor and soil, leaving only the fine lava sand and gravel, without any soil to support vegetation. Dry, thirsty and desolate, these hog-backs resembled the desert, a barren waste in the midst of the green pine forest.

Hugh turned to Jack and said, "You see, son, what the forest fires may do in these mountains. When the timber burns off, unless there are seeds in the soil to spring up at once, the snow, melting quickly, washes away the soil, and leaves the rock, whether it is solid or broken up fine like this here, uncovered and without the power to support anything. Every year the snow melting quickly washes off a larger tract, and so these little deserts increase in size. The time is coming, I am afraid, when these mountains will all be burned over, and then what the ranchmen down on the prairie are going to do for water for their hay meadows and their crops I don't know."

"But, Hugh," said Jack, "aren't there laws forbidding people to set the timber on fire?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "there's plenty of laws, but the trouble is nobody pays any attention to them."

Toward evening they camped on the shores of the lake, at what Hugh supposed was the Thumb, and he told the boys that the next day he was going to start off northwest through the timber, and try to strike the streams leading down to the Firehole.

Making an early start, they rode up the hill, following a deep ravine through the cool green timber, over ground covered with feathery moss, where the hoofs of the animals made no sound as they struck the ground. Soon the lake was lost to view, and then, on all sides of them rose the tall straight boles of the pine trees. There seemed not very much life. A few small birds were seen in the tops of the trees. Some gray jays gathered near them when they stopped at midday to eat, and uttered soft mellow whistles, and two came down very close to Jack and Joe, and picked up little bits of dried meat that they threw to them.

Soon after they started on, they came to a stream, and following that down, about three or four o'clock rode into the Lower Geyser Basin.

Here was a large wet meadow, with green grass, and plenty of good camping spots; and before long they had the lodge up, and closing the door, started out to make a tour of the basin. The many geysers, large and small, and the wonderful hot springs of surpassing clearness and deep blue color astonished and delighted Hugh and the boys. Many of the springs were very hot, seeming to boil from beneath, bubbles of steam following one another to the surface, and then exploding. One of these large springs, about twenty-five feet long and more than half as wide, gave a vigorous display, beginning first to boil at the middle, and then to spout; at length throwing the water about in all directions, from twenty to forty feet in height. The margins of all these geysers and hot springs were beautifully ornamented with yellow gray and pinkish deposits of stone, which took the form of beads and corals and sponges, and all the tree trunks and branches seen in and near them were partly turned to stone. Close to the geysers were what are called the paint-pots. These are boiling pools of finely divided clay of various colors. The air seemed to be forced up slowly through the thick fluid, making little puffs, much like those that one would see in a kettle of boiling indian meal. Some of these paint-pots were very large, others small, and they were of a variety of colors—some red, some white, some yellow, and some softly gray. The clay was exceedingly smooth to the touch.

The Geyser Basin was long, and contained a great many wonderful springs and geysers, of which some, like the Grotto, had built up great craters for themselves, twelve or sixteen feet high.