Observations for 29 August 2018
After last night, I decided that six hours was the magic interval. The temperature was well below freezing (the weather site said 29°F, but because it was a dry night, there wasn't much frost. I arrived at the cage at 04:30, and I timed it pretty well. At 05:04 there was a fairly strong hot period, with feather restarting, but again, not much surging in Giant. It was just starting to get light, but I could still go back in and get a couple more hours sleep.
Four hours seemed a good bet for the next opportunity, so was out there well in advance. Bijou was having short pauses about a minute long every 20 minutes or so. Nothing changed when Grotto started, but within seconds of the start of Rocket, Bijou paused and within a minute water was visible in Mastiff. This was another one of those weaker hot periods, where we got Feather's Satellite, but no overflow or surging in Mastiff.
The hot period was quite strong, until it was time for Giant to start surging. Despite what appeared to be a high water level, it never seemed to try to start erupting. It was amusing after the hot period was over because there were several vertical surges that were probably higher than anything during the hot period.
After the hot period, about 70 minutes later, activity from the Southwest vents was observed. Don't know if this was unusual, or normal. No one really hangs around Giant for several hours after a hot period, so this might be normal. In any case, I waited around a bit, and about an hour later there was a normal 1m39s Bijou pause. About the same time interval after that was a report of water in Mastiff. So not sure what was going on there.
Did get a real strong hotperiod about when expected, at 23:04 for a little under 7 hour interval. It looked like the last few hot periods, and we are starting to get a sameness to all of them. The most telling part is how Giant just does not seem to do any strong surging, and what surges it does have are later, after a lot of wasted effort.
The last couple of nights I've heard an owl off in the trees across the river from the cabins. I've heard another one over north of Castle on occasion, too.