Yellowstone Roads Are Melting From Geothermal Heat

Yellowstone National Park is in the news once again, and it has nothing to do with a traffic jam of bison. No, it’s the roads themselves giving up the ghost. According to sfgate.com, the park has been forced to shut down road sections, such as Firehole Lake Drive, because the asphalt is melting and warping under the geothermal heat rising from below. I could imagine it’s like driving on Silly Putty.

Infrastructure vs. Mother Nature

Yellowstone’s infrastructure is not exactly fresh off the lot. Some of the bridges in the park are from the 1930s, and the roads have been patched, re-patched, and boiled again over the years. This problem has been the bane of engineers for over a century. There’s even a hot spring that actually ate through the road in the 1880s, and the repairs? Concrete, rocks, and mud just disappeared.

The Boiling Point

During the summer, hot water is a double threat: boiling up under the asphalt while triple-digit temperatures bake from above. The asphalt doesn’t have a prayer. Park scientists say it’s either pouring concrete or building expensive overpasses for alternate routes for cars, but nobody is exactly racing to write that check. Yellowstone’s pavement will continue bubbling like pizza dough, at least for now.

Now we are not talking about this being a sign of the apocalypse or a possible Yellowstone eruption. Many of these roads are still accessible on foot. Just as long as you are not dumb enough to walk them barefoot. And honestly, I can totally see it now! A news headline about another Yellowstone TOURON walking barefoot on a melting road.