[Geysers] Another geyser

[Ron Keam]

I am interested that Karen would suggest Waimangu Geyser.  (I have 
been keeping an eye open in case anyone slipped a New Zealand geyser 
into the mix, but so far no-one has.)

Back to Karen's suggestion.  Certainly the style of eruption mirrors 
that of Waimangu but it would have been very dangerous to have 
attempted to photograph it from a position as close as the 
photographer must have been standing to the geyser basin when he/she 
took that image.  Waimangu certainly did produce small shots like 
this, but there was always the danger that a many-hundreds of feet 
shot would occur.  I have one image a bit like this of Waimangu but 
the scale was quite a bit larger.  The definng element that precludes 
it being Waimangu is the tree-stump feature in the foreground.  The 
whole region around Waimangu was completely devastated by the 
Tarawera eruption between fourteen and eighteen years before the 
geyser became active, and there could never have been any tree stump 
anywhere near it.

There was one feature in New Zealand which this image could possibly 
have been and that was Bore 204 at Wairakei in its heyday in the mid 
1960s.  The appearance of its eruptions was precisely like what is 
depicted in the image presented.  There might even have been a tree 
stump, because the crater was close to exotic pine plantations, but 
in fact I cannot recall any such stump that close to Bore 204.

Ron Keam

>I'm looking at the dark water and wondering if this could possibly be
>Waimangu (but I always seem to embarrass myself when I guess).
>     Has anyone got a photo of either Ebony or Bear Den?
>Karen
-- 


#####################
Ron Keam
The Physics Department
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92-019
Auckland
New Zealand
Phone +64 9 373-7599 extension 87931
FAX +64 9 373-7445
EMail r.keam at auckland.ac.nz
#####################