You are browsing the archive for 5 July 2011 - Mountain Beltway.
5 July 2011
Varves from Yellowstone Lake
The other day, driving south through Yellowstone on our way to the Tetons, I stopped to give my students the obligatory look over Yellowstone Lake’s West Thumb, looking east towards the snowcapped Absaroka Range in the distance. But in addition to a lovely view and a few birds, we found something really cool… Those are varves, seasonally-laminated couplets of sediment (light = summer; dark = winter) that are made of …