RHH's photos with the keyword: snag

There is a story that goes with this picture. We, my wife, my youngest daughter and I, were hiking on a very hot and windy day near the Biscuit Basin area in Yellowstone National Park. After hiking a ways we stopped to rest under this tree. We had taken off our shoes and put our feet in the stream, but I could hear the tree creaking in the wind and it just did not sound right. Finally I said, "I don't know about you, but I'm getting out of here. I'm afraid that tree is going to come down." After putting on our socks and shoes we continued hiking, but when we came back an hour later we saw that the tree was down right on the place where we had been sitting.

This is an extensive area of thermal activity on the west side of Yellowstone. The white in the picture is not snow but calcium carbonate deposits left by boiling water seeping and bubbling up from the ground, in this area, often through huge depressions filled with thick boiling mud. The trees have been killed by the thermal activity.