Geyser Notes

The day started with a visit to the huge mudpots at the north end of the Waiotapu area. These are free to the public, and are impressive.

The area is a small pond with mud islands scattered through much of it. Mud bursts out of the center, or from below the surface, to keep the island from disappearing. Not sure if this is a wet season, but everything looked like the groundwater level was high. There weren't any fumaroles surrounded by old, cracked mud.

After that, we went to the Waiotapu area proper to get our passes. With a little time to kill, we went through one of the loops. That part of the area consists of multiple, huge collapse pits. There's nothing in Yellowstone like them. Calthos and Pucher, north of Morning Glory, are tiny in comparison. They are formed by acid water creating voids in the ground, which at some point are complete undermined and then drop down. At the bottom of most of there there was a small acidic pool.

There was also the Devil's Bath, which is a huge pool filled with runoff from nearby springs. The color was a bright green normally only seen on safety vests. It was florescently bright, especially in the clear, hot sunlight.

Normally, I'd have wanted to investigate the area before the crowds showed up, but this day we needed to join the crowds. So we headed down the road to the site of Lady Knox Geyser.

Lady Knox Geyser is a heavily altered pool, with a man-made cone, which is induced to erupt at a daily spectacle. We arrived well beforehand, and picked out some seats upwind right at the railing. The benches were full when the show began at 10:15. After a short speech, a small quantity of soap was dumped into the vent. It took only a couple of minutes for suds to appear in the vent, and for that to quickly turn into a full eruption.

Within about a minute, people in the crowd started heading for the exit. Over the next few minutes the water column became less soapy and reach heights of around 10 meters. It looked a lot like White Dome in both style of play and the formation. Then the activity began to cycle. It would drop down to about two or three meters for a minute or so, then climb back up to full height. The full height was still around five or six meters when we left about 40 minutes later.

Back at Waiotapu, we were in the thick of the crowd. All those people who had left before us, and that most everyone, was in and around the area. We quickly got through the crowds to pickup from where we left off.

From Champaign Terrace, the next stop was an overlook over the Artist's Palette. This was a large flat with a number of multicolored pools. From there, the trail drops down to to follow a stream coming from Lake Whangerarangi. Further on, there's the Frying Pan Lake, Oyster Pool and lots of acid sulphate features.

We passed by Waiotapu Geyser when we went through the area where its located. It was so busy I was concentrating on making videos and avoiding the people. When we returned to the Champaign Pool, looked at one of the geothermal maps I had and figured out where we went wrong. Part of the problem is that they've renumbered the guideposts, and the old info I had was wrong. Another problem is that they've upgraded the walkways near the geyser, so the descriptions we got from other gazers was no longer valid.

In any case, it worked out, because when we found the geyser, over in the Alum Cliffs area, it was sitting there quietly full of water. Every minute or so, it would release a bubble from depth.

Intervals are reported to be several hours, so the fact that the formations around the vent were completely dry were a good sign. At least we didn't just miss an eruption, or have it erupt between the time we blindly walked by and the time we found it.

Over the next hour, the bubbling became more frequent, with more bubbles at once, and the bubbling lasting longer. By then it was almost continuous, and it appeared that the runoff was getting stronger. About twenty minutes later it looked like an eruption was about to start, as water flooded over the rim.

This lasted for maybe a minute, then the water level in the vent dropped lower than we'd seen it any time in our wait. It was really disappointing, thinking that that was the entire eruption. But the level quickly rose, and about ten minutes later, it again surged and overflowed.

This time there was actual bursting from vent, maybe 0.5 meter high. It lasted just over two minutes, then again the pool dropped. Based on the descriptions I've read, hoped that this was some sort of minor and not the actual eruption.

And we were right. Ten minutes later, there was another surge, and this developed into a full scale eruption just like ones in videos that are on-line.

The eruption lasted exactly 13 minutes, and at times reached four meters in height. Some of the later splashes were intermixed with steam, and hit the boardwalk and us, too. As the eruption progressed, the water level dropped, so that the last few minutes were huffing and the occasional wet steam from down deep. Finally there were no splashes, and the activity died down. A very nice, small geyser.

That evening, after a snack and restocking of groceries, we went for a walk into the forest south of Te Puia in search of an overlook. We found it, and it's quite nice. The entire area is easily visible, and while we were there Pohutu was erupting. The only drawback is that Kereru really isn't visible, although an observer from there could see the huge steam cloud of an eruption.