<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16525" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>August 27, Shoshone Geyser Basin</DIV> <DIV>In total, 10 people made it into Shoshone for the day. I with Tara Cross, Julie Thomson and Mike Frazier got to the basin at 9:37. Others -- Carlton, Nancy and Jeff Cross, Rebecca Roland, Jim Holstein, and Bill ------ (got to learn that name!) arrived 1 to 1 1/2 hours later. In similar fashion, we didn't all leave at the same time. I departed at 4:20.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My personal goal was #1 to get high-res digital photos of features I'd never seen before, and then #2 to get photos of other things. Therefore, I actually recorded few eruption times. A total of 122 photos, it turns out.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Geysers/spouters observed:</DIV> <DIV>Trailside -- 0939 for 26 seconds/1610 for 31 seconds. The interval leading to the "departure" eruption was in excess of 25 minutes, quite long for Trailside.</DIV> <DIV>Double -- a disappointment, as none of us saw it have a full eruption -- lots of bubbling and occasional splashes to 18 inches or so was all.</DIV> <DIV>Meander -- dormant.</DIV> <DIV>Black Sulphur -- active as usual although perhaps not as strong (not as far into the stream) as years before.</DIV> <DIV>Soap Kettle -- low level, boiling vigorously but no overflow in a long time.</DIV> <DIV>Gour and Shield -- These had at least four active phases while we were there (i.e. on arrival) and apparently another active cycle began shortly after I left. One of these cycles had a duration of about 45 minutes.</DIV> <DIV>Five Crater Hot Spring -- active when there was no runoff from Gourd. Some eruptions reached up to 2 feet high, intervals of 5-6 min, durations 2-3 min.</DIV> <DIV>Minute Man -- one active cycle, the preliminary burst followed by about half an hour before the full, frequent activity set in. Saw nothing from "Minute Man's Pool," but then, I was across the stream for the entire cycle.</DIV> <DIV>The Orion Group remains at a low level, excepting Taurus and Kitchen and the features down the slope. Water could be heard boiling down (way down) inside Union.</DIV> <DIV>Geyser Cone -- dead as can be and severely decayed.</DIV> <DIV>Fall Creek area (Western Group) -- We found spring USGS 132 to be active as a geyser, two vents involved (sometimes separately, sometimes together) with lots of bubbling and thumping and occasional splashes perhaps as high as 2 feet. We saw one clear-cut quite interval that lasted only 30 seconds or so. Pectin was not active; Not-Pectin maybe active, or perhaps the moisture around it was runoff from elsewhere. Boiling Cauldron as usual.</DIV> <DIV>Three Crater vicinity -- no activity seen</DIV> <DIV>Outbreak -- drowned and filled with orange bacteria.</DIV> <DIV>Unnamed -- not too far from Outbreak, a small geyser playing to about 1 foot was seen one time.</DIV> <DIV>Rototiller -- it is likely that you haven't heard of this one. Jeff Cross saw it develop as a spouting crack in the ground last September, and by the end of that day it was an erupting hole. Now it had formed a rather large crater and it erupted every (roughly) 5 to 7 minutes, each time for about 15 to 25 seconds and up to maybe 8-10 feet high with frequent strong jets angled toward the south. Sometime the eruption consisted of a single "burst," but we saw some that consisted of two bursts separated by around 30 seconds plus one eruption in which the second burst persisted for a couple of minutes. A really fine geyser.</DIV> <DIV>The Hydra -- having frequent, slight overflows but not active.</DIV> <DIV>Velvet -- boiling but dormant.</DIV> <DIV>Lion -- probably dormant.</DIV> <DIV>Old Lion -- clearly active with significant washed areas, but no eruption for us.</DIV> <DIV>Bronze -- active as usual with boiling around the rim, but sometime recently it has had one or more episodes of overflow strong enough to have created significant runoff channels that lead far away from the crater.</DIV> <DIV>Iron Conch -- normal activity, eruptions about every 9 to 12 minutes for a minute or two.</DIV> <DIV>Knobby -- one nice series for us, the first interval of 40 minutes but then in series about every 4 minutes, tending to get stronger as time went on. Active for about 45 minutes.</DIV> <DIV>Bead -- the first time I've seen Bead, it gave ut three intervals while we watched, 73, 71 and 73 minutes, durations about 1m45s. Julie loved the filling, bubbling, thumping episoded by adjacent Terracette during Bead's intervals.</DIV> <DIV>Small -- frequent eruptions to about 2 feet.</DIV> <DIV>Yellow Crater -- constant boiling at a low level.</DIV> <DIV>Brown Sponge -- slight bubbling only.</DIV> <DIV>Glen Spring -- all-but totally quiet with gentle overflow.</DIV> <DIV>Mangled Crater -- fairly frequent eruptions, none particularly strong.</DIV> <DIV>Frill -- frequent pulsing overflows but, sadly, no eruption for us.</DIV> <DIV>Pearl -- steady overflow.</DIV> <DIV>USGS 110 -- apparently a spouter, 1 to 3 feet high from two vents.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>That would seem to be it. A good time was had by all. But why do they keep adding steep hills and miles onto the trail. It didn't used to be that long a hike!</DIV> <DIV>---------</DIV> <DIV>Given yesterday, I made it a short day today (only about 0715 to 1030, then to the Lower Basin).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you hadn't heard, Fan and Mortar erupted Sunday evening, 8/26, at 2056.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Grotto was in marathon, having reached about 18 hours as of 0730 or so.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Daisy 0610E and 0829.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>No Oblong was called while I was in the area.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Grand was apparently at about 0315vr, then 0956 (T1Q).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Per Dave Whinery, last night Castle had a minor at 2314, for a minor duration of about 13 (yes, 13) minutes. That fits with today's observation of constant splashing until the major finally happened at 1050 (minor interval = 10h 41m ! ). Ralph says that analysis of datalogger records indicates other minors as long as about 12 minutes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Lion 1001 initial.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I caught Plume intervals of 59, 58 and 57 minutes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Last night, Lynn got Great Fountain at 0004. Today it was 1207, P ~ 11 1/2 min.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Jeff Davis got Labial at 1046.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Scott Bryan</DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Get a sneak peek of the all-new <A title="http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour/?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000982" href="http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour/?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000982" target="_blank">AOL.com</A>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>