[Geysers] Geysers 7/12/09

[Joeerg at aol.com]

First, thank you to Michael and Pat for your posts about F&M activity.  It 
starts making a lot more sense when you have the actual geyser in front of 
you.

Today we checked out Imperial and Spray for the first time in 5 years or 
so.  Imperial was i.e. when we arrived, and for the next 40 minutes it had 
only occasional pauses that never lasted longer than 1-2 seconds.  After that, 
the pauses were somewhat longer, but still the longest was 20 seconds.  
Occasional bursts reached 40+ feet, by estimation.  I'd forgotten how really 
pretty that geyser is, with its beautiful blue pool.  Many of the bursts 
started with a blue bubble, too.  Spray seemed to be in continuous eruption.  
Watching it from the trail, the right hand or larger jet occasionally seemed to 
reach about 6 feet.  I also saw some splashing from a third vent behind the 
large boulders on the right hand side.

We were going to check out Pocket Basin, but there were very threatening 
clouds coming our way so we only got as far as the mudpot on the trail before 
we decided we'd better turn back.  As Lynn said in her report, the wind was 
fierce.  We really felt it as we went past the flats near the Fountain Hotel 
site.  After it cleared, we went down basin to F&M, of course -- and walked 
into another event cycle.  Nathan was watching it and Dean showed up a few 
minutes later.  The interesting thing, for me, was that this one looked very 
different from yesterday's -- much more steam, and in particular from east 
vent and from upper Mortar, which weren't doing anything last night, also no 
high erupting water in Mortar or from the Fan vents.  When Dean deemed this 
a garbage cycle, we stalked him for a while, but eventually, being 
flatlanders, we couldn't keep up and were hungry as well, so we came back to our 
room at the Snow Lodge thinking of the great shower -- only there wasn't any 
hot water.  Maybe this was related to the power outage, who knows.  I toughed 
it out with the cold water and was all soaped up when the pressure 
diminished to almost nothing so I was having a cold rinse with almost no water.  
After doing the best I could with my rinse cycle, so to speak, Joe got in the 
shower and a minute later was crowing happily about how he now had both 
pressure AND hot water.  Isn't it oddly ironic to have no hot water in a hotel 
room located right in the place that probably has the most abundant natural hot 
water supply in the world.  
On the nature side, on the way back from Spray I was assaulted by two 
attack birds who looked like grackles but behaved like mockers.  They were not 
happy that I was invading their meadow.  Bird #1, who had something in his 
beak, squaked for his/her reinforcements and they then took turns dive bombing 
me while making very irritated noises until I was out of range.
It was a good day.  There was a nice full rainbow in the dark clouds right 
over the Snow Lodge at the end of the storm.  Fairy Falls is like the 
super-mister.  You walk off of that hot trail, drop the pack, and walk back into 
the cave and stand there and get misted.  It's better than air conditioning.  
There's nothing like it.
Debby Stahl



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