[Geysers] Trip report 15-23 may

[Gordon Bower]

[SPUT editors, and other interested parties... feel free to email for details about anything you want to include.]

A lovely trip that included a few days each of summer, spring, and winter weather, and lots of geysers, though nothing too rare or exotic. I had a quick look over the posts on the list that came while I was offline and I will try not to repeat too much of what has already been said. (Translation: beware, lots of stuff about little geysers coming.)

Old Faithful was having a short about once a day. The longs look to be averaging something like 96 or 97 minutes, with as long as 110 seen. 

Geyser Hill:

Little Squirt is on amphetamines. It was reported on the 14th before I arrived; seen again starting the afternoon of the 16th continuing until the morning of the 17th; the afternoon of the 19th continuing until the morning of the 20th; erupting again when I got up on the morning of the 21st, quitting in early afternoon; and then taking its only respectable-length rest of the week during the Dome series, which began late afternoon the 21st and featured water until dark on the 22nd and strong steam with a few water droplets on the 23rd. I had Dome intervals of 30 minutes the morning of the 22nd and 40-45 minutes the evening of the 22nd and on the 23rd. (I was fooled into thinking the series was over on the 22nd, expecting them to be more frequent.) Silver Spring was, as usual, rising quietly during Little Squirt's quiet periods and dropping out of sight boiling loudly during Little Squirt. Bronze was dead: Little Squirt's runoff floods it and fills it to overflowing, but the rest of the time, it sat silently a bit below overflow.

Plume on the other hand was on steroids. It had a lot of tall, wide eruptions, the kind that made you say "is that Cascade?" (Cascade's January 1998 eruptions lasted about as long as one burst of Plume and sent up the same kind of mushroom cloud if you saw them from a distance, but were measured at up to 45 feet high.) On the 16th and 17th something like half or two-thirds of Plume's first bursts looked 'too big'. On the 18th I started measuring them, and caught two at 40 feet (11% from the Model-Sponge bench and 20% from Chinaman, ~370 and ~195 feet away according to Map I-1371) and one over 35, along with several others of the usual 20-25-foot size. All observed eruptions were 5 bursts, though we did see one odd eruption where the second burst was connected to the third by continuous low splashing rather than a complete stop and drain. Intervals ranged from 52-70 minutes, often several almost identical intervals followed by a seemingly random jump of more than 5 minutes.

Beehive has been covered already on the list, a lot of 16s with one as short as 12 and one as long as 19. With so many Little Squirts its hard to say what is "normal" and what was "post-Little-Squirt shortness." The eruption at 1851 on the 17th (the 12h17m interval) had no Indicator until 1853 when it came on for less than a minute. Depression so regular you can almost set your watch by it was amazing. Back in the early 90s, Depression was where you went to get a sunburn, not to see a geyser; this trip it rarely went shorter than 2h46m or longer than 2h50m. "14 hours for 5 intervals" actually worked to see Depression with only ~10 minute waits, after being out of the basin most the day or trying to make overnight predictions. There was one hiccup the morning of the 22nd, where I think I saw two eruptions at 0714ns and 1133ie.

On the north side of the hill, Little Cub wandered all the way from 40 minutes to the mid-50s from one day to the next. On the days of the longest intervals it also had occasional "stalls" where it had weak splashing for several minutes, rather than the usual one minute or so, before taking off to full height. Both last year and this year, these corresponded to days when Ear Spring quit boiling - a sort of "Nmin" counterpart to "Smax"?

It was dry enough for Aurum to be in its summer temper. Yes, the 5h interval already reported on the list was a single interval, as was a 7h15m interval (1135-1849 on the 18th) the day that we spent a good 2 1/2 hours hanging around waiting for it. Most of the other intervals were between 3 and 4 hours.

The one eruption of Plate on the 16th has already been reported on the list. I saw no other eruptions all week; every time I checked, water was standing in Plate's crater about 2 inches below overflow. No decay of the formation or bacterial growth, so I expect infrequent eruptions have been going on for some time, just not being seen. Sponge is more exciting to watch this spring than I've ever seen it before. (Really. Don't laugh.) It's not just filling up and draining every minute and a half like it has most of the last 15 years; there is a lot of variety, from strong eruptions that pour water over all sides of the cone for 20 seconds to cycles that peak 4 inches below the rim of the crater. Cycle lengths varied from 1m20s to a full 2 minutes, more or less in proportion to the strength of the preceding cycle. Model is also more "interesting" (erratic) than usual.

The Sawmill group was fun to watch, with both the major and minor players doing well. Sawmill had a mix of 1-hour and deep-drain eruptions, most of the deep drains followed by Uncertains (two Uncertains in the same day twice), while anytime Tardy got 2 or 3 cycles to itself, you could expect Penta (very late in Tardy's eruption, despite looking promising in the first hour) and I saw one Churn series the evening of the 17th - didn't write down the time of the first eruption because I thought (watching from the Inn) "oh, a Sawmill start... oops, must have been wrong", but then saw it twice more at 1934 and 2001.

Everything downbasin started off the week doing very well and then got tired. Grand stuck to 7-9 hours the first few days I was there, then decided it preferred 9-11 for the rest of the trip. Lots of Oblong 4s, Daisy 2:15s, and Riverside under-sixes early in the week, then lots of Daisy 2:45s and Riverside 6:30s later in the week. Riverside crept forward from "9 and 3" to "7 and 1", then worked its way past 9-and-3 all the way to 11-and-5 by the time I left. The 6-day F&M interval has already been covered.

Two closed intervals on Artemisia were 20 and 22 hours. Nice thumps. The only other interesting thing I saw in the Cascade Group is that the Pulcher Springs have beautiful greenish boiling water only about 12 feet down, rather than being dry steaming holes. (But it's been so long since I looked at them, and I never looked at them regularly, that I can't say if this is permanent or seasonal, or even if it happened this year. Perhaps whomever was doing the ranger walks there last season will tell us if they think it looks different now, once the walks resume this summer.)

I have one closed interval of 39 minutes on Cauliflower, and evidence from the water levels the other times I walked past it that that is typical. I saw no other eruptions in the Old Road Group aside from one tiny perpetual spouter somewhere down in the Biscuit Basin Geyser area. I got three series of Jewel intervals of about an hour each (from a distance), all 7-9 minutes, including many very large pretty bursts. The trail is still closed. I did not catch a single person in the act of working on the trail or see any progress made in all 9 days I was there, though one pile of tarp-covered construction material did move midweek. One distant eruption of Silver Globe Slit. 

At Black Sand, Spouter is sticking to its trend to short frequent eruptions (durations 1h20m-2h, intervals about 2-3h.) Cliff majors 29-46m apart. Ragged Spring erratic as usual. The UNNG on the back side of Green Spring was seen twice (1-2 feet, 1-2min durations) but no intervals seen. Handkerchief is periodic on longish intervals, rather than 'always on' or 'always off' this year. 

In Midway, I saw one Till, and one Flood with a strange (for some past years) 3m46s duration. I didn't have time to hang around for the following interval. Opal and Turquoise are both full to the brim and tepid, receiving lots of Grand Prismatic runoff. In Lower, didn't see anything unusual in the Fountain Group, and never saw Great Fountain or White Dome through the trees and never saw anything big in the Kaleidoscope Group.

As MA Bellingham has already posted, it continues to be an interesting year at Norris, at least in the Porcelain Basin. I was there for a while on the 17th. I was squinting long and hard at maps trying to decide if it was Pinto, the last Lava Pool, or something in between that I was seeing (a shallow gold pool that burst from two vents), and am glad to see confirmation that it really was Pinto. Two Constant series, two eruptions each, initials were 29 minutes apart. Fireball, 3 durations of 4 minutes, 2 intervals of 18 and 19 minutes. I didn't see Arsenic but the channel remained fresh. On the Porcelain Terrace, Incline was boiling hard, the Feisty-like vertical perpetual spouter was doing well as were several smaller vents, but out by Iris and Blue, water levels were low and nothing was happening. Only one spouter seen out past Pinwheel, too. Remarkable that the activity is all concentrated close to the trail this year.

The runoff channel from Pinwheel past Splutter Pot to Whirligig, which has always been a deep intense green color, has a lot of yellow in it now, making the overall effect a sort of sickly seaweed color. This is a pretty substantial change in water chemistry; it was intense green because it was so acidic (around 2, the times I measured it in the 90s) that nothing but Cyanidium algae could live in it -- and now this yellow bacteria is out-competing the Cyanidium.

In the Back Basin, not much erupting. Steamboat had good discharge in the south runoff channel, but no concerted or vertical minors. Veteran was splashing halfheartedly out the back, with the front pool more than full enough to cover the vent. Corporal was filling and draining. Dogs Leg was very low. Rubble's crater has mostly filled in with slumped dirt. Vixen was dry as a bone. Pearl was full to the rim but not overflowing. The several vents across the boardwalk from Pearl were active, as was Orby and something else near Orby against the hillside spouting muddy water (son of yellow funnel, or something?) Huge cloud of steam from Psychedelic Steam Vent.

Elsewhere, the Mud Volcano trail has been closed for bears since May 7th; Lone Pine was overflowing both times we drove past it; Roaring Mountain is still inaudible but does at least have steam rising from it in a good many places; at Mammoth, Canary is doing well, as is Orange Mound and the new extension on the back side of it. Other than that, lots of tiny streaks of orange off in the trees. One pool of water far out on the main terrace; most everything else close to a road or trail was dry.

During the course of the week, the bison herd moved up from Madison into the geyser basins, more babies in sight every day. You've already heard about the wolf in the Upper Basin and Geyser Hill being closed the night of the 22nd (still closed when we left the afternoon of the 23rd) due to dead elk. Bluebirds and osprey both exceptionally abundant. The eagle's nest on the west entrance road was drawing a good crowd.  I think the rarest wildlife sighting of all, however, visible only one time a year, was Heinrich in the Lower Store parking lot 7 1/2 hours into a Grand interval.

GRB
 		 	   		  
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