<!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 6.00.6000.16640" 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>Not into the park yesterday due to snow continuous from 0700 until 1530 or so. There was a little more snow overnight and this morning. Now (1100 Friday) the road is mostly melted off and the park road report says open. So I hope to head in noonish.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Meanwhile, I spent a fair while poring through a book about Tibet, a book I've had for a couple of years but hadn't thoroughly read. Well, so I discovered a few things and then followed up on the Web.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Tirthapuri -- Never heard of it before. This is a holy place in far western Tibet. For the geothermal, most books and sources cite the wonderful pink and white silica terraces and the fact that there is one geyser there. It evidently erupts every few minutes and reaches up to 6 meters for 30 seconds. There apparently are a few other, smaller geysers there, too.</DIV> <DIV>     This is in the area of Mt. Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. If you're really into the sacred trekking business, then you make the clockwise trek around the mountain, then make a clockwise trek around the lake, and then visit Tirthapuri to pray before purifying yourself in the thermal baths.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Qupu -- This place I have in my book as a site of large geothermal explosion craters (one formed as recently as 1975) where boiling springs are described in Chinese geological literature. I now see this place also named after its river, the Tag Tsangpo Hot Springs. It is described as "Up this valley are extensive hot springs and spouting geysers." The location is just off the trekking route around Lake Manasarovar but also near a road.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Tagyel Chuja (Tagajia and many other spellings). This, the most extensive (apparently) geyser locality in Tibet has now been set aside as a "national park" called the "Ongren Tagejyia Geothermal Geysers Nature Reserve" that encompasses 400 hectares (= 1,000 acres, I think [?] ). A Chinese Website dated 2006 notes that 300 million yuan (roughly $25 million) had been budgeted to begin "development" of this and two other new nature reserves. Another paper was about a study of the exceptionally high content of cesium in the Tagyel Chuja sinter. The attached photo was on the Web, copyright Dr. Klaus Dierks.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Chabu -- Another Chinese Website states that one of the geysers at Chabu is the largest in China. Years ago I found Geyser Semi described as reaching up to 25 feet or so.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Gudui -- I've been unable to learn anything about the number or quality of geysers at Gudui, but I do now know that there has been geothermal drilling there.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Yangpachen -- The geothermal power plant there peaked at about 23Mw in the 1990s, and production apparently is now declining. However, it is still cited as a geyser locality, and one Website I found included a photo of a pretty fair geyser (not included here because though clear, it was of horrible quality).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Gulu -- I've long known that Gulu was somewhere northwest of Yangpachen, but my Chinese coordinates place it in a most unlikely spot. Now a revised Tibet Map Institute map shows hot springs in the right general vicinity, not far from Damchuka.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Chakzama County -- This is in far eastern Tibet -- in fact, so far east that it (and a lot of area listed as Tibet in this book) is actually in Szechwan. Lo, the book describes (without specific localities) boiling springs as attractions. It is in this rough area (I don't have the coordinates here) that a place called Chaluo, in Szechwan, hosted at least four geysers in the 1980s.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>OK, now to go see if I can locate a Yellowstone geyser...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Scott Bryan</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at <A title="http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851" href="http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851" target="_blank">AOL Autos</A>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>