If you are driving into the park from Jackson Hole and Grand Teton national park the first major Geothermal feature you can visit is just past Grant Village. Look out for the sign posts to West Thumb Geyser Basin. It is on the edge of the Yellowstone Lake in the volcanic caldera. When you get there look around. You are standing in the bottom of a giant volcanic crater. The hills you see are the remains of the edge of volcanoes.

You will find Pacific cutthroat trout and lake trout in the Yellowstone lake. There is a boardwalk that takes you around the different volcanic thermal features at West Thumb. The Geyser basin exists because of cracks in the earth, volcanic faulting, it which water seeps and gets super hot. You will see hot springs, mud pots and fishing cones in the lake.

West Thumb does not have dramatic erupting geysers but does have a complete variety of hot springs, pools, mud pots, fumaroles and lake shore geysers. Earlier explorers used to cook fish and then whilst the fish was still on the line put it into one of the lake shore geysers and cook the fish in the boiling water. This is now banned but these geysers have been given the name of fishing geyser.

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