[Geysers] Yellowstone curiosity

[snorkology at sysmatrix.net]

Hi all,

I'm attaching some photos of something my father picked up back in the
1960's during field work as a geochemist for Gulf Oil.I'm not sure of the
motives, but apparently they were checking out the composition of the oil
that floats on the surface of Rainbow Spring, and collected samples of it
for study. My father kept a vial of it, and it's pretty interesting stuff.
In warm air, it's a nearly transparent liquid, but get much cooler than
room temperature and it "freezes" into a kind of slush made of crystals of
sulfur and various waxes that precipitate out, mixed with liquid oil.

In the first photo, you see the oil in the liquid state, in the second you
can see the slushy appearance, and the third is a close-up of the crystals
under 20x magnification.

By the way, do not confuse Rainbow Spring with Rainbow Pool---Rainbow
Spring is well off into the backcountry, a two day pack trip as I
recall.Anyway, I bet many of you never realized that Yellowstone had oil.
Don't spread that around :-) ...

                       Grover Schrayer
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