[Geysers] Sept trip report: Morning Geyser !

[Lotus Baker]

A fun and interesting trip to Yellowstone, as always.  All other things seen, pale in comparison to seeing Morning geyser on Sept 9.  We have had a few nice walk-ups but this beat them all.  The steam was pretty bad at 1006 in the morning but we could infer heights of the bursts by how far up the water drops were falling from.  The amazing side bursts were easy to see in comparison.  And the sounds; every burst was preceeded by a loud k-fump! which Lynn later told us had a blue bubble associated with the sound.  Steve Bezore and his friend Al were also lucky enough to be there from the start. I hesitated making a call, thinking noone would hear and not knowing how long the eruption would last, but I did and fortunately Lynn Stevens heard it as she was driving past Till and managed to see most of the eruption.  I could grump about the steam limiting our viewing, but even so it was a wonderous thing to see.

After that, everything else was gravy;  I'll mention just a couple of things that may have not been noted before.  Califlower geyser was observed September 19th.  Closed intervals of 41, 36 and 39 minutes were noted.  Eruptions ranged from a nice 8 foot high, 10 foot wide to a 1 foot blurp.  Nearby Mercury was apparently dormant with some orange colors in the shallow parts of its pool.

Lotus observed Tilt's Baby quite a bit during our stay.  Combining her notes with those of some other gazers, Tilt's Baby was consistently in the 3 to 4 hour range for closed intervals over several days.

The trip also had a number of "things that almost erupted"  I had the "opportunity" to see several mighty struggles between Grotto and Rocket geysers in which Rocket would burst upward strongly several feet and appear to have control only to see Grotto fight back.  I was sure one day that I had a Penta ready to erupt.  The four main vents were full and ready to overflow, and the fifth vent had water in it.  Just a few minutes more.  Then Sawmill starts up and water levels in Penta drop.  Such is the way of geysers.

Hope to be back next year.

Keith and Lotus Baker