[Geysers] Trip Report April 26

[Lynn Stephens]

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Cassidy, Connor, and I made a day trip to Old Faithful on Saturday, April 26.  The weather was cool and the sky dripped, poured, and pelted down rain mixed with snow, so I don't have much to report.  
 
We started our geyser watching with Twig and Clepsydra ie at 1011 as we drove into the Lower Basin.  Although we didn't know when Fountain had erupted, and I'm not certain Twig is necessarily erupting only at the end of Fountain, I gambled that Fountain had erupted recently and we drove on to the Upper Geyser Basin.  Since Twig was reported at 0922, the only information our ie adds is that eruptions are lasting at least 3/4 of an hour.  (We had hoped to catch a Fountain eruption, but Fountain erupted before we got to the park, erupted during Grand's eruption, and was going to erupt after I wanted to start the return trip to Belgrade, so we missed Fountain.)
 
In the Upper Basin we did hit a lucky stretch with Daisy, Riverside, Grand, and Castle all within 97 minutes.  The kids were cold and wet so we watched a Lion initial, Depression, and a second eruption of Lion from the vehicle.  We were hoping for Beehive, but gave up at 1815 so I could get back to Belgrade before dark.  As Connor said, we shouldn't have waited for it at all since it apparently didn't erupt before dark.
 
As we were driving in, something was erupting in the Three Sisters area, but I didn't determine whether it was Little Brother, Mugwump, or one of the other features.  White Geyser is active.
 
We took a walk before lunch and our lucky geyser streak.  I noted that Chromatic is still brown and below overflow and Beauty is in strong overflow.  There is plenty of standing water surrounding Wave Spring, Economic, and East Economic.  Wave was bubbly slightly, but Economic and East Economic were orange and brown.  Topsoil Spring was clear, pulsing, and overflowing.  As someone already noted, West Triplet is in spring/high ground water mode, sometimes rising such that it overflows, but with orange growth in the vent.  Percolator hasn't been seen.  All the Bulger eruptions we saw were 7-9 minute major eruptions.  There was a feature erupting 4-6 feet high on the far west end of the Orange Spring Group that caught Cassidy's eye, but I don't know which feature it was.
 
Cassidy and Connor got to add three new geysers to their "life" lists--Nifty, Churn, and Gizmo.  Gizmo was the surprise for me.  As we walked up to Castle and were talking, I realized I was hearing a steam vent erupting, looked over, and saw that it was Gizmo.  I called it on the radio.  Will Boekel asked for a repeat of the geyser name, possibly because Gizmo hasn't been active since 2005/2006.  (It was definitely active in October 2005.  David Goldberg included it as "active" in the "Spring 2006 Geyser Activity" article published in the June 2006 Sput, but there were no eruptions recorded in the 2006 Old Faithful logbooks).  Will stayed up at Castle Saturday afternoon for awhile and reported Gizmo was having intervals of about 20 minutes.
 
There were very few visitors in the Upper Geyser Basin on Saturday.  Will Boekel, William from England, Cassidy, Connor, and I were the only gazers out and about in the Upper Geyser Basin on Saturday.  Cassidy and Connor commented on how many additional geyser sounds you could hear when there weren't any people around.  They have now had their first spring gazing experience with unpleasant weather and probably won't push to repeat a day trip under such conditions.
 
Lynn Stephens 
 		 	   		  
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