Oko Yamni

Monday, Mar 9 to Sunday, Mar 16, 2020: high 69, low -8

Sunday late afternoon, March 15th. A beautiful day. The ice is quickly retreating from the surfaces of the spring-fed pools. The photo above is looking northwest. A few of the pools are in the middle ground. They flow northwesterly about half a mile and empty into Bear In The Lodge Creek. Some of the pools still have ice in them, but others are now ice-free as in the photo below.

Here we can see a pool with open water, some ice, and a snowbank that stretches onto the ground and snakes around and up a draw.

This picture is taken nearly on the Wingsprings west-east axis. The patches of ice appear to be floating in the grass, inches above the water.

This is the largest of the spring pools. Its center is still covered with ice, but along the banks the ice has melted away. Though i could not catch them in a picture, there were countless little minnows that rapidly swam away from the bank and under the ice at my approach, creating rippling wakes in their frantic escapes. Perhaps they were sunning themselves in the shallow sunlit strip of clear water. It might be warmer than the deeper ice-covered center of the pool. Or perhaps they were feeding along the grassy bank.