Mammoth Hot Springs is probably the most exquisite part of Yellowstone National Park. This place is as colorful as massive. Formed during thousands of years of thermal activity, it’s still alive and changing.
Some hot springs become dry, another ones, which stood dead for years, suddenly resurrect. In other cases, thermal activity begins in places which have never been active. Such an area could emerge literally through a pathway, for decades used by visitors, and all this time safe and steady. If it happens, the newborn thermal area gets fenced in, thus being protected from visitors, — and on the other hand, protecting visitors from quite a lot of harm, as the temperature in Yellowstone hot springs not seldom reaches the boiling point.
It’s one of these places where you feel inadequacy of concepts like ‘beauty’, because it goes beyond beauty. It’s not of this world. It’s divine in its colors and shapes. That’s basically what you feel, wandering through the Mammoth Hot Springs.
Once again, the weather could be a major spoilsport. Steam kills the colors, as much as a lack of sunshine. Besides, I believe that the vividness of the algae’s colors varies depending on season, reaching its peak in summer. Thus my advice is to visit Yellowstone in summer. Apart from avoiding the steamy and sunless periods, summer pretty much is the only season when you can be sure that all the roads are open and you can get to every single corner of Yellowstone.
