Observations for 13 July 2013
The day started out boring. Despite arriving at 06:00, I didn't make any entries in my logbook until Turban at 10:30. That was after a quick trip out when I arrived to see the empty pool at Grand, and after breakfast. But things picked up after that.
Only had to wait one Turban interval for Grand. A long one burst, so nothing out of the ordinary there. Then while waiting for West Triplet to end (and to see if Rift would start), caught the start of Castle after the overnight minor eruption.
Made a visit to Daisy. It looked good, like it was close, but probably because of the wind, it just sat there like that for about half an hour before the surging finally reached the point where it could initiate an eruption.
About an hour later came the report that Penta had started. Deciding that I shouldn't pass up the opportunity, since it might be the last Penta eruption in a while, I went out to see it, getting there about 10 minutes into the eruption. Shortly after I got there, Spasmodic stopped overflowing. That's usually a sign that Penta will stop soon, but this time Spasmodic, along with all the other features in the Sawmill Group, just sat at their pool levels for about an hour. During that time Oval had three episodes where it came up, started having waves, then had some boiling bursts before dropping back down. Each time it lasted a minute or two.
Finally Spasmodic began to drop, and within 15 minutes was down in what would be expected from a deep drain of the group. Instead of quitting, Penta went into a strong steam-phase type of activity. The top vent was roaring away, being cut off by jets of water which got weaker as the activity progressed. I had to leave at the 90 minute mark, and Penta was still going strong at that point.
During the day Beehive's Indicator erupted about every 3 hours or so, starting about 6 hours after the pre-dawn eruption that no one saw locally. This continued all day.
The evening Grand wait was long, but worth it. Grand had a Vent delay with a short but vigorous eruption of Turban. After the next Turban eruption, it refilled rapidly, such that it caught me a little off guard. I was reading, and suddenly I noticed the sound of the overflow much earlier than expected. Looked at my watch an we were only at about 12 minutes, with the pool completely full. Over the next few minutes, the pool stayed high, so that by 17 minutes Grand was pouring out water and starting to have strong upwelling over the vent, easily visible in the low sunlight. Finally, Grand boiled up and started the eruption, quickly followed by Vent overflow and then Turban.
The timing was perfect, as by the next Turban the sun would have probably been hidden behind clouds on the horizon, and definitely the next Turban would have taken place with the sun below the ridge. Grand also quit at a little over 8 minutes, which while not guaranteed, did promise a second burst. This burst was huge, again with the low sun illuminating it perfectly. After that, Grand gave only a slight indication that it might want a third burst, but drained instead. The eruption was short enough that Vent & Turban didn't quit.
At the start of Grand, there was a small geyser erupting out in the flat to the northwest of the boardwalk. The last time I can remember seeing activity out there was in the early 1990s, about 20 years ago. There are a lot of holes out in that area, so this may not have been the same geyser (or geysers) that I saw, or the Bush Geyser that was named by Marie Wolf. It was perhaps less than 0.25 meters high, and lasted only a couple of minutes.