Observations for 2018 October 10
Today looked like it was going to be a repeat of yesterday, and it was and it wasn't.
It wasn't because the weather was different. The snow last night was over quickly, so there wasn't much accumulation. But it did mask a bit of ice, which made the boardwalks interesting in areas. The day started clear, became partly cloudy, and then warmed up as the sun came out. Warmed up enough for much of the ice and snow to melt, or turn to slush.
But Giant was a repeat of yesterday. We got out to find something probably happened shortly before we got there, then had to wait several hours for the next attempt at a hot period. In this case, it was Grotto, which was off for over four hours before it started at noon. For over an hour, Bijou looked like it was off all the time, with an occasion splash or two to let us know that it wasn't paused. It was like in years past when Grotto had just had a marathon eruption. Finally, there was some sort of real pause, with a lot of steam from Mastiff, and then Bijou started jetting heavily. Twenty minutes later was when Grotto started, followed at almost the same time by one of those long Feather eruptions where nothing much else happened. Pretty much a duplicate of yesterday's first hot period.
At least we got to see a couple of Grand eruptions with almost no wait. The first started as we were picking our way through the ice near Economic. (There were also coyote and goose tracks that preceeded us.) That eruption had a long second burst, which in the steamy cold was nicely backlit. It was impossible to see anything from most of the benches, though, especially near West Triplet. Then the second One Burst Grand eruption started before we even had a chance to get settled onto the benched. The snow was just starting up, so again it was a lot like a nighttime eruption, in that it was easier to tell what was going on by sound than by seeing anything.
Back at Giant, waited in the increasinly heavy snow showers. After about an hour, it was starting to stick to the boardwalk. Four hours almost exactly after the previous hot period, we got a repeat of yesterday's second hot period. The only real difference was Cave did erupt for a while. There was a feeble attempt at a restart, with Posthole and Feather blipping along for a few minutes, but Giant never had any surging during that time.
It's beginning to look like Giant has changed since the last eruption. I've yet to see any hot period that had any activity that looked encouraging, oras if Giant was trying to erupt but just not quite there. There's been little to no surging from Mastiff, even when it overflows heavily. Cave has been seen only once, and the restarts look like the first couple of minutes are missing, and are going directly to the after-effects where all the vents are splashing around.
Between hot periods Giant just looks quieter. The water level seems lower and there doesn't appear to be as much of the angled jetting as before.
The last couple of days there's been a crew putting together the edge logs along the new pavement. At first it looked like there were going to be buried in the dirt along the pavement edge, but as the photo shows, they are going be the low barriers like they have in places where parking is being discouraged.
I think this is a mistake. All these barriers are going to be used as seats, especially when they face a geyser like here at Grotto. People are going then be scuffing the ground in front of those logs. And then stand up and walk around, "off-trail". A better arrangement would have those barriers on the pavement, so that people seated on them would still have their feet on pavement. But, we'll see how things work out next year.