Pictures from Big Sky/Yellowstone work trip

Photos from my work trip to Big Sky, MT, July 22-25, 2006, with a one day excursion to Yellowstone National Park, July 24. Photos are mine; use them as you wish. I will be returning to Yellowstone for a hiking/biking/camping trip this coming Thursday, August 17. I will write a lot more. I took over 60 pictures; I picked out 13 to share. Hitting the picture will take you to a link to a larger version (and from there, you can even see them at full size at full resolution). The pictures come from http://bigsky2006.fotopic.net/c1050276.html.















Lone Mountain, 11,166 ft. from my hotel suite. I would climb near the top of the leftmost ridge.




















A daisy on a small trail on a lake near the resort.















Hiking on Lone Mountain; this is Indian Paintbrush.




















Further up Lone Mountain, this great shot is mountain pentsemon.




















I took this from my perch about 10,000 feet high. You can see the Big Sky resort way down in the valley below and rain in the Gallatin Mountains across the valley. Because of thunder and the treacherous, rocky trail, which I had more or less lost, I went back down without attempting the summit.















Here is an elk in the Madison valley. You get a sense of the scale of the valley.















Near Old Faithful on Geyser Hill, Plume Geyser would go off periodically, reaching heights on our visit of about 20 feet.















You can get a real sense of the scale here seeing the people above. This is a very typical shot of what the run-off into the Firehole River looks like from the various geyser regions. This is in the Upper Geyser Basin; it's also striking from Excelsior Geyser in the Midway Geyser Basin.




















Here is Lion Geyser erupting. It erupted right as we walked by it. I ran to Heart Spring to take a picture of the eruption for this visual effect.
















Along the Firehole River, between the Upper and Midway Geyser basins, we saw a lot of cow elk in beautiful meadows like this.
















Here are two more barely peaking up their heads.




















Clepsydra Geyser is always erupting. The light was great on this shot of a geyser I've had a notorious time getting good pictures.














From the same spot in the Lower Geyser Basin near the Fountain Paint Pots, I was stunned by the way the light and steam gave life to the valley.