Tuesday, August 4th, we took a drive to Quake Lake with our hiking buddies. Quake Lake was formed on August 17th, 1959, when a magnitude 7.3+ earthquake - in the hills a few miles west of Yellowstone National Park - caused a mountain side to fall into the valley where the Madison River flowed, creating a dam over 100 feet high, across the entire valley.

A dirt road a few miles east of the epicenter of the earthquake and just north of Hebgen Lake, takes you to a half mile trail that leads to a place where a fault fractured and was displaced up to 20+ feet.

 

The hike follows a nice little creek, sometimes choked with dead fall trees.

There are also a few secluded camp sites, large enough for tents or a small trailer.

The same drop in the ground level north of Hebgen Lake caused the lake itself to tip towards the northeast. That tipping caused the lake to slosh back and forth for about 39 minutes, with the water overtopping the man made Hebgen Dam. Many people believed the dam would fail completely. Fortunately, there were only a few cracks in the dam.

About seven miles farther west is an area that slumped into Hebgen Lake during the earthquake. It was the location of a cabin resort called the Hilgard Lodge. The lakeside cabins slid into the lake while people scrambled out of them. There are remnants of a couple of the cabins and an outhouse left.

In the same area, a section of the highway also collapsed into Hebgen Lake.

A few miles up the road from Hebgen Lake is the Quake Lake visitor's center, which sits on the debris that fell from the mountain across the river and flowed up the other side of the valley. The visitors center was an interesting display of stories from people that lived or were camping in the area the night the earthquake occurred.

As the water rose behind the material that dammed the river, it began to over-top the new dam. The Army Corp of Engineers quickly went to work excavating a spillway, to prevent the collapse of the new dam, which could have caused massive flooding downstream. The photo below shoes the spillway dug through the debris that slid down from the treeless area on the mountain in the background.

On Tuesday, August 11th, we took our last company sponsored tour. This one took us and our hiking buddies out to the Beartooth Pass, somewhere we had never been before but always wanted to go. We had to meet the tour van at Roosevelt Lodge in the north part of Yellowstone at 8:30 a.m., so we left the campground a little after 5. That gave us plenty of time to get there and allowed us to have breakfast at the Roosevelt Lodge before we had to get on the van. It was a beautiful morning for a drive and the traffic was great at that time of the morning.

The tour took us out the northeast entrance of the park. We got caught in a small bison jam as we passed through the Lamar Valley, but it didn't delay us too much. The bison are in the early stages of their rut so we got to see a little bit the fighting the males do.

Outside the park, you pass through Cooke City, a quaint little town that was founded during the mining days starting in the 1870's. The surrounding mountains are very interesting, even on a somewhat hazy day. The geologic history of the mountains is visible in the different layers of rock.

From just east of the town you can see Pilot and Index Peaks. Pilot Peak is over 11,700 feet tall and Index Peak is over 11,300 feet tall. They look very similar to the Matterhorn in Switzerland because they were formed in exactly the same way, with glaciers eroding the steep sides of the mountains as they slid down.

A little ways up the road is a waterfall. One of many that flow down joints in the rocks. This one is unnamed but has the advantage of having an abandoned bridge that you can walk to, to get a view of it from directly above and below. The group of people to the left of the falls is a University of Wisconsin geology class doing field work. We got the chance to listen in on the professor's talk at the next stop. 

 

A bit farther up the road you arrive at Beartooth Plateau. On it sits a lake, directly in front of Beartooth Butte. It was a calm day, so the reflection of the butte was almost completely undisturbed by ripples.

As we continued up to the 11,000 foot summit of Beartooth Pass, the road wound around many glacial lakes.

Beyond the pass is a turnout that gives you a look up and down the Beartooth Valley.

 

Also at this turnout are a bunch of friendly chipmunks that will eat out of your hand.

The peak the mountains and pass are actually named after can be seen easier on your way back towards Yellowstone. Because of the haze and the distance to the Bear's Tooth Peak, we couldn't get a great photo of it, but it is still fascinating.

 

We got home about 6:30 that evening. We had a great time.