[Geysers] Yellowstone June 15 (Stephens)

[Lynn Stephens]

THIS POST IS FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF THE SUBSCRIBERS TO THIS LISTSERV AND IS NOT TO BE

REPRODUCED FOR ANY PURPOSE, INCLUDING PUBLICATION IN THE SPUT.

 

I started the morning by delogging and then going to DNBSPL where I could cook breakfast and keep an eye on Beehive since I didn't see anyone up on Geyser Hill yet.  While I was cooking breakfast, a sandhill crane drifted across the asphalt trail and glided across the meadow until it made a gentle landing in the meadow in front of Geyser Hill.  The wings appeared to be such a silvery, light gray color as it floated past that I had to use my binoculars to make certain that it was actually a sandhill crane instead of a great blue heron (I hadn't seen the neck to know whether it was straight out or crooked as it flew past).  As I was getting ready to move the pick-up to the Lodge parking lot, I saw the crane fly off toward the east end of geyser hill and lost it in the trees.  (Allan Friedman later told me he had seen it near that end of Geyser Hill or somewhere near the cabin area later in the morning.)

 

As I was walking toward Geyser Hill from Old Faithful, I noted a large number of low larkspur in bloom.  A single star-shaped, but probably 6-petaled, pale violet flower stood out amongst the deep blue larkspurs.  

 

Jim Scheirer (from here on out Jim S. or "The Professor" as Bill Warnock calls him because apparently I have misspelled Jim's last name about five different ways so so far this summer) arrived at Beehive a few minutes before I did.  We were talking about early morning radio calls, which I have asked Jim to resume, at least for the predictable geysers and other "major" geysers.  I often leave the basin or am in different parts of the Basin than Jim is in the early morning.  It is quite helpful for me to have information about the predictable geysers and other geysers such as Oblong, Beehive, and Lion, Fan & Mortar status (marker in place or erupted overnight), etc. so that I can answer questions from visitors and/or gazers who stop by wherever they see me in the early morning.  As he was talking, I started pointing and (he says) yelling, "water, water, there's water in the Indicator."  Jim called the water and then called the indicator at 0625.  Allan Friedman joined us on Geyser Hill and Dave Monteith and Tara Cross came from the Inn to watch the eruption (0637) from the overlook.

 

While the Indicator was erupting, Jim noticed a family of three start that had been watching Anemone turn and start to walk away from Geyser Hill.  He called them back, explaining what they would get to see if they stayed.  They indicated they were planning to take the ranger walk on Geyser Hill at 8:30 and figured they would just see the same things if they walked around Geyser Hill before breakfast and then walked around it again on the walk.  Jim explained that Beehive wouldn't wait for the walk and it would probably be the biggest geyser they would get to see today.  When it was finished, they were profusely thankful saying, "We would have walked away from the biggest event of our vacation."

 

There was only a light wind, but it did blow the curtain of water across the boardwalk toward Lion.  We could have had a nice rainbow except that there were almost no breaks in the clouds this morning.

 

After spending enough time in the office that my back and shoulders were starting to hurt, I decided to go find a geyser to watch.  As I was driving the back way from the Ranger Station to the DNBSPL, I noticed two adult sandhill cranes in the Myriad Group.  I pulled over to watch them.  Then I saw a teeny, tiny orangish spot moving along between the two adults, keeping pace with them.  By the time I thought to get my binoculars out, the three moving creatures had disappeared in the steam, then they heads and necks of the adults briefly reappeared but their legs and the tiny creature were hidden by a ridge.  I think they pair has successfully hatched a chick (or colt as baby sandhill cranes are also known).  I tried checking through the internet to find out when sandhill chicks are usually hatched.  I found one site that said the "timing coincides with emergence of insects on which the young will feed."  Another site had one pair of cranes hatching an egg on May 24 and another pair hatching an egg on June 11.

 

My next stop was the Steel Bridge where I caught the last two minors in a series of Till minors.  Using 3-1/2 hours from the start of a major to the last minor, I made a rough estimate of a Till major about 3:30 - 4:00 p.m.  After Great Fountain (14:09, of=79, p=5) finished, I stopped at the Fairy Falls trailhead to wait for Till.  Tara saw my pickup, made a quick turn into the trailhead, and asked about Till.  I explained my reasons for thinking it would erupt in the next half hour so she decided to wait and get one of the things on her "To Do This Trip" lilst accomplished since, if my prediction worked out correctly, she could watch the eruption and still get back this afternoon in time for Beehive.  Thankfully, Till started its major at 15:52, about 20 minutes into the half hour window.

 

Back at Great Fountain--After getting overflow, I walked the road from Great Fountain most of the way to Pink Cone doing garbage collection.  When I returned to Great Fountain, a group of gazers was sitting on the benches.  I walked out and greeted with them, "Since you're here, I'm assuming Grand went.  Could I get the time please?"  The response was, "Why don't you ask when Castle went?"  So, being quite slow on the uptake, I asked, "What time did Castle erupt?"  The response was, "Why don't you just ask when Grand erupted?"  I had just been reading some "yarns" in "The Last, Best Place:  A Montana Anthology."  One of the yarns was about a circular story.  I was beginning to feel like I had been caught in a circular story when I realized that although I still didn't know the time, Grand and Castle must have erupted at the same time (12:40).

 

Also at Great Fountain--I overheard a little girl, probably about 5 or 6 years old, who had just seen the "big boil" tell her father, "Here it comes Daddy.  The birds are gonna be scared.  Watch it.  I can't wait until it goes really high."  As Great Fountain went into it's pause, she began saying,  "It's just starting to get ready, isn't it Daddy?  It's gonna shoot high, right Daddy?  It's starting, right Daddy?"  She apparently heard one of the gazers jokingly saying, "That's it, it's all over,"  and was worried that really was all she was going to get.  At that point her father took her away so I didn't get to see her reaction when we had a blue bubble, 140 foot burst on the first burst.  Not a super-burst, but it was slightly more than N&P, a "superb" burst.

 

I'm going to hit send, then go wait for what will hopefully be a second daylight Beehive today (although there's not much chance of a rainbow this evening either because the sky is mostly cloudy.

 

Lynn Stephens

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage.
http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </geyser-list/attachments/20090615/ab876ce7/attachment.html>