[Geysers] observations, comments, questions

[Kory Collier]

I recently returned from a visit to the Yellowstone area, during which I
played tour guide for a large, mostly non-gazer family group.  My visits to
geyser basins were ruefully limited, but I did have a few observations,
comments, and questions that I wanted to post (in addition to my separate
message about Crack Geyser).  Any responses would be very appreciated.

1. At Midway on the 26th, I was rather surprised to see Opal Pool full,
because the last I remembered reading/hearing about it, it was still way
down.  Is it known when it filled again?

2. My two bits on the name of the new double spouter near the river at
Biscuit: When I saw the rather remarkable difference in water color, it
struck me that Salt and Pepper was a great name for it, even if the darker
water eventually does clear up.  I'd like to keep that name to memorialize
how it looked for the first many weeks of its known existence---nothing
wrong with naming a feature after circumstances or observations of its debut
(unless a word like "new" gets used, of course!)

3. On the 26th, we walked up on an eruption of Fountain, roughly at about
1100.  From the top of the stairs, I noticed water erupting up from a sort
of little bay at the very back of Morning's pool.  Is that Morning's Thief?
(The main area of the Morning pool wasn't doing anything, but the pool was
full.)  It was erupting for a lot of the time that Fountain was, often just
boiling up a foot or two, but sometimes surging up to about six feet, maybe
more.

4. On the 23rd (when we should have been waiting on Giant), we waited on
Echinus with a fairly large crowd.  A naturalist at the museum told me that
the intervals had typically been 3 to 4.5 hours, but tending toward the
shorter end of that range.  When we were at the 3.5 hour mark since the
previous eruption and had been waiting about half an hour, some members of
our party began to get quite doubtful and impatient.  With a little help
from my son Caden, I composed this limerick to entertain them:

          A lady who sat at Echinus
          decided to call it "Your Highness."
          She said, "If I flatter,
          perhaps it will splatter."
          But her grand idea was a minus.

As if able to be goaded by bad poetry, Echinus erupted less than five
minutes later.  My rough assessment of the eruption was that it was about
two-thirds as vigorous as the best ones I remember from years long past.
The crowd seemed generally very pleased by it.  We were seated at the far
right end of the series of platforms, and from that perspective, some narrow
water spikes went visually (but not actually) higher than the treetops above
the upper platform.

Kory Collier
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </geyser-list/attachments/20060729/5ea45a01/attachment.html>