<div dir="ltr"><div>Hello all,</div><div> </div><div> This is a trip report for April 30 to May 4. It covers only the upper and lower basins with a little bit on Midway. I didn’t get as much time in the park as I wanted and I damaged my knee on Saturday so I had to cut some things short. Old Faithful started throwing in relatively frequent short intervals on Wednesday. It did long, short, long, short , long, short for the day. After that it moved back to mostly longs. But talking to the staff at the VEC it appears there have been more shorts lately. Split Cone was active while during this visit. Nothing was seen from Teapot Geyser, Chinese Spring or Blue Star. There are no new wash areas around Chinese Spring On the main hill Bronze Spring appeared to be acting as an intermittent spring, sometimes in overflow and sometimes about an inch below overflow. I never saw more than light bubbling from it. Little Squirt was ie on 5-3-14 at 0659. I saw several eruptions of Big Anemone but I seemed to miss Little Anemone, once I got there just in time to see Little drain though. Improbable still just intermittently boils to a foot or two. There was no activity from Cascade. Plume, alas, is still on sabbatical. There is water visible in the vent and it does appear to rise and fall slightly over time but I did not wait to discover the interval on the rises. It bubbles lightly. Beehive appears to be its normal self with eruptions apparently in the 11-20 hour range but to be sure we will need more watchers in the park (or the electronic data Will is working on). Beehive indicator was usually seen i.e. so it is unclear the time between BHI and Beehive. The webcam data currently is your best data. No change in Scissors Springs for activity, the East vent boils intermittently and the West vent overflows intermittently. The Copper Kettle is normal. The vent between Scissors and Depression on the other side of the boardwalk was quiet. I wanted to catch a closed interval on Depression but it was beyond me. I suspect it is still in the 3.5-4.5 hour range from last year but I kept arriving late and finding the water down in the vent. The shortest intervals from the webcam are 3.5 and 4.5 hours. One Dwarf vent is continuously active. Arrowhead Spring had a low water level, out of site from the boardwalk. I did not know Pot O’Gold had changed so I did not pay attention to it. Heart Spring was very slightly cloudy. Mouth still has significant runoff from uphill running into it and has been quiet Marmot Cave Geyser (I think I have this right, the pool just below the little waterfall) was seen empty earlier this week. I just caught it in overflow as usual. It bubbled every time I passed. It appears to be hotter with more steam and no algae growth around the vent. I hope if it is doing something, it keeps it up. Little Cub was seen often but I have no closed intervals. Lion was active too, it was seen in series about once a day. Nothing but the usual intermittent overflow was seen from North Goggles. Ear Spring appears unchanged. No eruptions were seen from Kitten. Pendant Spring appears slightly cooler to me with a bit more algae growth in the shallows. Nothing was seen from GHG-5. The crack above Pendant Spring is overflowing lightly. Beach Spring had some nice overflowing boils for me and I even caught a picture of two of them. There is an odd copper green color on the sinter on the west edge of the pool, the side closest to the Solitary junction. I wonder if it is from pennies in the pool but I can’t tell. It is an almost perfect Copper Sulfate green though. GHG-6 and GHG-7 were active with “6” erupting a few times during my visit and “7” just giving an occasional bubble. Aurum’s in winter mode but the intervals are longer this year, in the 3.75-5.5 hour range. Right now the area stinks due to the remains of a bison and deer or small elk in the area. The Bison is on the Giantess side of Aurum and the deer or small elk is across the boardwalk near two warm water muddy pools. I guess the smell is a combination of rotting carcass and bear poop. Doublet Pool is acting normally. I did get to hear one set of thumping. The little vents between Doublet Pool and the Boardwalk are still active and have opened one more small vent. The vents rarely put water above ground. Pump Geyser is its usual self. Sponge is active and maybe six inches high, maybe a bit more. Plate has water in it but no eruptions were seen. Slot and Boardwalk filled with water twice while I was watching, stayed that way for a while, and then drained. They did this simultaneously. But the real interesting thing is the new hole just of the edge of the boardwalk to the Giantess side if Sponge. This looks like either a breakout or a collapse, it is about 1 meter by a bit over one meter (3 by 3.5 feet if you like) and it has thermal water and energy. On 4-30-14 I could hear it bubbling down in the vent but I could not see any water. Later on 5-1-14 and 5-3-14 there was bubbling water in the bottom of the feature. I will try to post pictures on facebook on the feature. It is filled with broken blocks of sinter. It is in the general area of the steam vent that appeared about eight years ago and lasted for a couple of years before just filling in. Giantess was only doing weak north face boils for me. Vault is about two inches below overflow. Infant Geyser is almost in overflow, it looks like some water is leaking out through the broken sinter around the edge of the pool. Butterfly Spring was quiet. Dome had an eruption series on 5-3-14. Model Geyser was active but I saw nothing else erupt from the flat area beyond Model. Castle is unchanged. I think the VEC is still using 14 hours to predict the major to major intervals and 15 to predict the interval for the first major after a minor. It has one minor overnight for the visit. Gizmo is active, I think in series. On one day there are several euptions at about half hour intervals and then another day it is only rarely seen. However, there were few watchers in the park so eruptions were missed. Tilt’s Baby was seen once, it is unclear is it is less active now that Gizmo is more active. Again, more watches are needed to tell. Crested Pool has some nice boils while I was close by. Sprinkler was frequently active. UNNG CGG-10 was heard bubbling but no water was seen. It has built up a big wall of sinter gravel around the vent. One or more of the vents of Terra Cotta Geysers were seen erupting but the observation was from Grand so I am unsure which vent was active. Spanker Geyser downstream was acting as a true geyser with short intervals and a couple of eruptions each minute. UNNG-CGG-6 appears to be cooler also with no bubbling. The Sawmill group was in Tardy mode for three of the four days I was in the group. The other day was mostly Sawmill function. Penta erupted once and Churn was seen with most of the Tardy cycles. For the most part, just about the time Oval pool was nearly full the system would go into drain and Churn would then erupt. Crystal Spring was doing rocking and overflows with small eruptions out of its satellite vents every minute or two for almost all the time I was in the area during my visit. No activity was seen out the Old Tardy drain hole. No activity from Slurp. One Uncertain was seen on the day Sawmill was in charge as was Nifty and Old Tardy. Oval pool also has a color change like West Triplet. Bulger Geyser was very active. For most of the time it followed is usual pattern of minor eruptions every 10-20 minutes for an hour or so, then throwing in some majors and finally after a few majors it would stop for a while. However on 5-1-14 it was having minors every 1-2 minutes for about a half an hour, then had a major. After that Grand started and I lost track of what it was doing. I have never seen minors every 1-2 minutes before from Bulger. Rift did not show for the visit. Neither did West Triplet, it just had that off olive green color and intermittently overflowed. It would not even start after Grand started. I only caught two Grands, one T2C and one T1Q. The Turban intervals before Grand are longer, most were in the 22-23 minute range until the interval that caused the eruption. I did not see Percolator or the Sputniks. Topsoil Spring appears unchanged. Key Spring is flooded by spring runoff. Economic to Wave spring the features have water, but only lukewarm water at best. Beauty Pool has the overflow. Oblong, WOW, Oblong had a huge eruption on 5-3-14 seen by me and Will Bokel at 1245 ie. It started off big, as big as the largest eruption of Oblong I have seen, and then it gave a bigger burst, not a boil, a burst that was 20-30 feet higher. I am not that good at estimating height, but I estimate it was 80-100 feet high for that one burst. By the time I got my camera out the big stuff was over. The big burst looked like a tall shot from Fountain or Morning. Will tells me he and Rocco Paperiello saw Oblong overflowing for about an hour before it started erupting before I got to the park. I am not sure I caught any closed intervals during my visits but my shortest times between eruptions were in the 5-6 hour range. Giant was quiet and Bijou was on every time I went past. Grotto was doing short durations and short intervals with no marathon eruptions that I saw. When someone was down to watch them several ended with a Rocket Major. No Spas of course. Daisy’s intervals are about 2.5 hours. No evidence that Splendid made a winter trip to the park. I did not get out to Black Sand Pool but Kathy and Andy Stirling did visit it and told me it is still thumping and having boiling periods. Riverside was usually caught once each day so it is hard to be sure of the interval but from the daily data it appears the intervals are in the 6-6.5 hour range. It usually walks forward about an hour or less each day. Link Geyser has very little overflow and was not boiling. The snow buildup around it seems to make any recent activity unlikely. Fan and Mortar has not erupted since the part opened, or at least had not as of 5-1-14. I intended to visit again before I left but my bum knee thought otherwise, and it won out. Artimesia was seen a couple of times during the visit. In the Myriad group Litlle Brother bubbles intermittently but did not erupt for me. Three Crater Geyser did erupt a few times. Basin Spring is overflowing and is hot but I saw no eruptions while I was in the area. In Black Sand Spouter Geyser is active. Sunlight Geyser (BSB-6) has an eruption about every minute or so with splashing 1-4 feet high. It is bigger than I usually see it, but still so far off that it is not much to watch. Cliff is active as usual. Ragged and Jagged erupted during my visit but only to a few feet high. The perpetual spouter down the boardwalk on the Ragged/Jagged side of the boardwalk is a bit stronger. The pool is a few inches below overflow and the splashing is 1-2 feet high. UNNG BSB-2 has warm water and is bubbling but it does not appear to be using its runoff channel. Green Spring is hot and intermittently bubbling. There are only a few new bison drops in the splash zone and no old ones so it could have been active over the winter. Cinnamon Spouter had all its activity from the main vent when I was watching but it may still shift back and forth between the satellite vent. The runoff channels from the Satellite still are well demarcated. The spring to the east of the boardwalk going out to Emerald pool appears to be acting as an intermittent spring. Emerald Pool is about the same, maybe a bit warmer with a little bit more runoff. Handkerchief Pool and BSB-5 were erupting when I visited and Handkerchief Geyser was several feet below overflow. Neither Rainbow Pool nor Sunset Lake would erupt for me but they did look pretty when the steam blew away. In Biscuit Basin Rusty Geyser was its usual frequent self. Salt and Pepper are about the same, Salt has the stronger splashing because the runoff from Black Diamond runs into the Pepper vent. Black Opal pool is prettier, it has a strong opalescence and appears to have some different water source than just from Black Diamond. Black Diamond is cloudy but not the strong murkiness that occurs after a recent eruption. Wall Pool has a couple of hot, apparently boiling vents active. Sapphire is unchanged from last year. Jewel had intervals in the 7-8 minute range. East Mustard had intervals of about nine minutes. Shell Spring was active while I visited. Avoca Spring was much quieter this spring, the water level is visible with very little rise and fall. The boiling at its best is about 1-2 feet high. Nothing else was active in the Silver Globe complex. I did not catch an eruption from anything in the area north of East Mustard. Farther on Coral and Black Pearl sound like they are boiling down in the vents but nothing makes it to the surface. In Midway Geyser Basin Till was active and so was Flood. I did not catch any intervals. Will Bokel tells me Opal Pool was drained out when he visited. In the Fountain Group Fountain is erupting with about 5-6 hour intervals and durations of about 30 minutes. The Fountain rise usually starts from a pool that is out of sight from the boardwalk (if you are 5’ 8”) but on one eruption I did see water in the pool before the rise started. Usually you will get two to three eruptions from Morning’s Thief after Fountain starts and these may be bigger than Fountain. There were no reports or evidence of Morning being active. Twig may or may not show up near the end of Fountain’s eruptions. Spasm may or may not show up before Fountain erupts. No one saw any Jelly eruptions but one day it was cloudy. Jet is all over the place. I did see my first Fountain eruption with no Jet eruption at any time during Fountain. Super Frying Pan is active like last year with multiple rises that erupts on the rises. Height is still 10-15 feet and it can still hit the boardwalk. The intervals appear to be in the 1.5 to 9 hour range. PEANOT pool was usually full with rare intermittent periods when it dropped an inch below overflow. It was cloudy whenever I looked at it so I suspect it still drains now and then. The mud pots are in good condition and sometimes are throwing mud over 10 feet in the air. The boardwalk around Red Spouter is currently torn out and is being replaced. No word yet if it will include guardrails. The new vent on the flat between the mud pots and the overlook took damage over the winter, it looks like from Bison. The edges have crumbled in several places and it is partly filled in. But it still has a pool of water and it still bubbles. The Weather was usually good but windy with highs around 60 and lows of about freezing I think. As for animals, I saw no bear this trip. The few Bison I saw still have their ribs showing and some have some patches of fur missing. As for birds I saw mountain bluebirds, osprey, a bald eagle, there are several sandhill cranes in the upper and lower basin, the ravens are out of course, and one day at Fountain I watched seven turkey vultures circling around looking for bear leftovers. The marmots are out and running around like kids in the spring weather. Some chipmunks are out also. The VEC is on short hours and short staff. The Geyser Grill is open and the Snow lodge opened on 5-2-14. The Inn should have opened 5-9-14 and the Snow Lodge next weekend. Upper Ham opened on 5-2-14 and Lower Ham will not open until Memorial Day weekend. The lower gas station also opened on 5-2-14. Gas prices in West are about 3.50/gal. Not bad really. Sorry, I don’t know what is open in West Yellowstone.If I think of any thing else I will post it later. Too bad I didn't have time to catch Vixen again. Stephen Eide </div></div>