[Geysers] Strange feature

[Michael Goldberg]

That's a neat picture.  For confirmation I checked the location on 
Bing's satellite maps.  The coordinates are (44.579782, -110.686837).

The alien is definitely there, though its colors didn't come out quite as 
spooky on Bing's images.  The "face" looks like a low spot that collects a 
shallow pond from nearby thermal seeps, in which case I bet it really is 
a sickly green color.  The "eyes" and "nose" are islands of higher ground.

The reddish body must be a patch of hydrothermally altered ground.

Like Scott, I won't be the one to trek out there and confirm the presence 
of alien beings hiding in the Yellowstone backcountry.  But it could be a 
good field trip for someone in between eruptions of Morning...

Michael Goldberg
Michael.Goldberg at uc.edu

On Wed, 12 Jun 2013, TSBryan at aol.com wrote:

> For some reason -- probably has to do with being "stuck" in southern
> Arizona for another three months -- I was using Google Earth to look at  places
> in Yellowstone. For some reason (no idea why, really) I zoomed in on the
> Spruce Creek-Juniper Creek area, a few miles up Nez Perce Creek well beyond the
> Morning Mist area.
>
> First, here is what Allen & Day (pp. 283-284) had to say about that  area:
>
>     The southern branch of Nez Perce Creek is formed  by the junction of
> Spruce and Juniper Creeks, cold mountain streams which  receive no warm water
> till they near the meadow where they unite. Three-quarters  of a mile up
> Spruce Creek, the explorer comes upon an old sheet of siliceous  sinter, along
> the western border of which a mild type of acid activity of  limited extent
> still persists.
>     On the banks of Juniper Creek there is nothing of  a thermal character
> except a few quiet pools embedded in ancient sinter, and  along a little
> tributary of the creek from the south, a small number of acid  springs,
> characterized by meager sulphur deposits, yield not more than 0.1 sec.  ft. of
> warm water. --end--
>
> OK, so two Google Earth photos are attached. The first serves as a map to
> the area, with the trailhead, Morning Mist/Culex, and a really odd looking
> feature marked. The second photo is a close up of that strange feature,
> which my  wife calls "The Alien."
>
> What is it? Any explorers out there game of a 15 mile (round trip) hike?
> (Won't be me!)
>
> Scott Bryan