[Geysers] Trip report 9/4-9/19

[Graham Meech]

Sorry for the delay but its been hard getting back to work from a 2 week
trip.  I was in the park September 4-19 and had a great time watching
geysers and meeting friends.

 

In Biscuit Basin, Avoca Spring was having strong eruptions 23-32 minutes
apart.  When it had a stronger eruption it sometimes had a series of big
eruptions a minute or two apart.  The thermal spot in the parking lot now
has a permanent wooden railing around it and more of the access road out of
the parking lot appears to be degrading due to the thermal activity.

 

I only saw 3 full Fountain eruptions.  On two occasions Jet started late in
Fountains eruption and the other time it started right after Fountain quit,
so Jet seemed to be much less active than last year.  Mornings Thief was
active when I could see it, erupting in the first few minutes of Fountains
eruption like last year.  Sometimes it just boiled up and failed to erupt
for real.

 

I saw one Gemini series on 9/14 with intervals of 8-10 minutes.

 

Great Fountain was having stronger eruptions than I remember being reported
last year.  I saw three superbursts, one with a blue bubble too.  Other
people were reporting good eruptions as well even if there wasn't a
superburst.  There were a couple of occasions when Gt Fountain went into
overflow for 10+ minutes only to crash a while later.

 

In the River Group, Dark Pool was active with intervals of 9 - 10 minutes.
Mound intervals 16-28 minutes.

 

On Saturday 9/11 several of us went to Shoshone.  Lion had intervals of
75-90 minutes with durations of 5 minutes.  The whirlpool drain was always
fun to watch, going one way to start and then switching to the other
direction before the crater drained.  Bead had an interval of 2h11m and
duration ~90s.  Also active were Mangled Crater, Small, Diverted, Minute
Man, Bronze, Iron Spring, Gourd, and Shield.  Double was splashing when we
arrived and erupting when we left 6 hours later, duration ~6 minutes.  Gourd
and Shield erupted most of the day but quit before we left and we got to see
Five Crater erupt on the way out too.  Frill, Knobby and Hydra did not
erupt, they just had intermittent overflows.

 

On 9/13 another expedition went to Geyser Creek.  Avalanche was active,
intervals 7-10minutes.  Big and Little Bowl, Anthill, Tiny, and Bat Pool
were active.  We also went over to Phoenix.  When we arrived the water was
visible low in the crater and we waited and gave us a time to leave assuming
nothing happened.  about 10min before we were due to leave Phoenix went into
overflow so we stayed a bit longer and it erupted after 18min of overflow.
Its eruption is pretty long and we set a deadline of leaving at the 80min
mark.  Right at that time the eruption died down and ended after a duration
of 61min.  Nice way to end the geyser gazing and start the hike back out.

 

On 9/15 we were down to just Jake Young and I to go to Heart Lake.  Deluge
water level is way down.  In the Fissure Group, two vents in the fissure
were active as well as Shell, and Splurger.  Pit was active with intervals
of 7-10minutes, the biggest eruptions were just able to wet the top of the
crater.  Glade was having "Aurum-like" belches of water that wet its cone
every few minutes and it was overflowing most of the time (except after the
bigger splashes).  It did not erupt while we were in the geyser basin.
Lower down, Ivory was still inactive but there were four vents on the edge
of Ivory's vent that were splashing weakly an inch or 2.  I hiked on down to
the lake intending to go to Rustic only to find that the area was closed due
to bear activity.  Rustic did appear to be active based on visible steam
clouds.

 

I visited Norris on 3 occasions and Fireball and Vixen were active on each
visit.  Vixen intervals were mainly 3-21 minutes with durations  of 5
seconds to 2 minutes.  Fairly easy to predict the intervals based on the
duration of the prior eruption.  I only saw one Major with duration 3m45
seconds that put pooled water in the trail.  There had been at least one
longer major on one of my visits because there were pools of water in the
trail all the way down to the creek but I had already missed that eruption.
Pearl was an active geyser erupting from a full pool.  Orby was active and
Yellow Funnel Spring had a low water level and was splashing.  I only saw
single eruptions of Constant on each trip, so the intervals were longer than
an hour.  Whirlygig had been reported to the rangers about every other day
when I checked.  On one visit Fireball erupted about every 15 minutes for  5
minutes at a time.  On another visit it splashed for over 20 minutes before
having a full eruption for 5 minutes.  I did not see Pinto or Arsenic.

 

Those are the main things I pulled from my notes that have not been reported
elsewhere.  Looking forward to next season...

 

Graham Meech.

 

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