Geyser Notes

Came out this morning and saw something new for the year: a 36 minute long Turban interval, which ended with a 7 minute long eruption. Unlike the other day, that was the only unusually long duration during the rest of Grand's interval. But four Turban eruptions after that we got another delay, this time when Vent overflowed. And that took three more Turban eruptions, so we ended up with what could have been a short interval being over 10 hours.

The eruption itself was quite nice, as the steaminess of the chilly morning was long gone. After the second burst, Grand did try for a third burst, with a short fill of the crater, but then it drained and almost immediately Vent and Turban quit.

One nice thing (the only good thing) about these recent long intervals is that they've not been one burst eruptions.

Funny how just as Beehive was getting out of its habit of erupting at the same times every day, Giantess erupts and it pushes right back into the same behavior. But these mid-afternoon Beehive eruptions are nice because we are guaranteed the opportunity of a predictable daylight eruption.

While walking up for the afternoon Beehive eruption, I saw my first up close Plume Geyser eruption of the trip. What caught my attention was that there really wasn't a gap between the second and third (of five) bursts. Between the others there was a distinct pause when water wasn't even visible in the vents, but between those two, Plume continued to surge up to about 1 to 2 meters before taking starting another burst. I don't know if this has been the normal behavior, or is a Giantess eruption effect

It was clouding up by the time I went out to Grand, but mostly sunny, but that didn't last. At one point I realized that the hot sun that had been beating down on me had been replaced by a steady breeze and thickening overcast. As the interval progressed, that overcast turned to rain. At least the rain stopped for the Grand eruption, by which time most folks had abandoned their stay. The eruption continued the trend of two bursts. This time Grand had to really fight for the second. By the time it began, Vent was blasting away and Turban was thrashing madly. And almost immediately, the rains began again, but fortunately, I made it back to the cabin before the heavy stuff hit.

Today, I was sitting on the Snowlodge while posting the previous day's observations, (gotta go where the wifi is…). Down below I noticed our dog owners sitting at one of the tables with umbrellas with their two hounds. A little later, I heard someone down there ask, "Are you with the Disney group?" A lodge manager was walking up to them. The head of the family said, "no", and the manager said, "those sandwiches are for them," and confiscated some items off their table, and walked away. Some people just seem to generate trouble wherever they go.

Posted by HKoenig at 04:27 AM | Permalink

This day started out with my going from geyser to geyser at dawn. First, I got out to Grand just in time to see a two burst eruption, the first with overcast, but that cleared just before the second burst started. During that eruption, Beehive's Indicator was announced,but I failed to hear it. I did hear a second announcement after it had been erupting for 10 minutes, but assumed it had just started. So while I thought I had time to maybe even get over the Geyser Hill, Beehive ended up starting as I was riding down past the trees below Castle. I did have time to go down to the overlook, and while walking out there was rewarded with a moonbow in the eruption spray, a sight I wouldn't have seen if I had been at the overlook at the start.

Just as I had arrived back at my bike an announcement of the start of an event at Fan & Mortar was made. I knew I would hate myself if I didn't go down and it did erupt, so north on the bike I went. It was a typical event, and when Fan's vents came back on, it quickly became apparent that the water levels weren't high enough. So back in for a nap I went.

There was a second event a few hours later, but it pretty much followed the same path as the earlier event. The only good thing that could be said about these two events is that they were far enough from the Grand eruptions that I didn't have to worry about interference. The midday Grand was a long interval, but did result in a nice two burst eruption.

Fan & Mortar Geysers 2010 July 27

This continued for quite a while, and when Fan's vents finally reactivated, they didn't take any time getting started, but almost immediately started erupting vigorously and continuously. This activity slowly, almost excruciatingly, built to the point where Fan's High vent was going to 15 feet, with the Gold vent not much smaller. The Angle vent seemed to be alternating between water and steam. Finally, we started to see steaming from Mortar's Frying Pan and the little vent on the back of Lower Mortar's "back armrest." The conditions were ideal, as most of the breeze was away from us, and the sun still high enough to provide perfect backlighting.

When the eruption finally began, it was one of the tallest and most powerful that I can remember. Most eruptions are dominated by one or the other geyser, but in this case both were huge. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had measured Upper Mortar's column at 70 feet. Fan's first surges went a good 10 yards beyond the walkway toward the Pit of Eternal Stench. The activity of the Mortar vents seemed to last a lot longer than it had in the previous eruption, and this time I remember actually seeing Fan's East vent during much of the first active phase.

The breeze did push some of the eruption into the walkway, and with the low sun, it was easy to get a huge, full circle rainbow. Outside the drizzle zone, a 240° double rainbow was obvious when standing north of Spiteful Geyser. Some of the activity of Fan in the subsequent phases was impressive too.

After than, it was time for another Grand eruption, and once again it was a long wait. There was overcast (some of it might have been smoke from Idaho fires), but it broke enough to illuminate the post-midnight two burst Grand eruption.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Even after all these years of watching Grand, it is still capable of doing something new or different. This morning was one of those times.

As Grand's pool refills, and until about the time of first overflow, it is not unusual for Turban eruptions to have long durations, up to 9 or 10 minutes. But after that, anything over 6 minutes is unusual. This morning, several hours after the first overflow, I saw an eruption that lasted 7m21s. The next lasted 6m43s, and three of the next seven Turban eruptions were over 6 minutes long. The only short eruption came with a short Vent overflow, leading to a 5 Turban delay. So nothing really spectacular, but it does show that the system might be changing in other ways. Only keeping an eye on it these next few days and weeks will tell.

The evening eruption was back to more typical behavior, the only similarity was that both intervals were over 10 hours. The eruption itself took place in a dead calm after we'd had a moderately strong breeze all afternoon. As such, there was a beautiful base surge of steam rolling across the platform as the eruption started. It's been a long time since I'd experienced one of these, and forgotten that it also means that the bench areas around the runoff channels have a good chance of getting rained on. Which is exactly what happened. Not much, but enough to scatter the crowd to farther ends of the benches.

Mid afternoon Beehive finally erupted, its longest interval in quite a while thanks to Giantess' eruption.

That was also the time that the circus came to town. The head clown was here to see Old Faithful and visit the Inn, but also went down with his entourage to the overlook across from Beehive and watched the eruption. And unlike a visit when the RIngmaster showed up a few months ago, security wasn't tight and there was no change in access.

Today also had a couple of events down at Fan & Mortar, but nothing came of either one.

The night had an adventure of a different sort. When I got back to my cabin, there were a couple of dogs tied to a truck which were barking. Not only that, but it looked like they had food dishes, too. (Maybe just water). In any case, I realized it was a situation that needed complaining,and so I went to the front desk. They were busy, with only one clerk because there was a medical emergency; a 66 year old woman had fell and hit her head. I finally got to make my complaint and went back to the cabin. The barking continued, and so I called the rangers to make another complaint. The cabin next to the dogs was all lit up, with the windows wide open. I thought the medical might explain the seemingly abandoned cabin, but that turned out to be wrong. Coming back from the restroom just before midnight I heard a family of three walking over from the Inn. I waited at my cabin, and sure enough, it was them.. I will complain even more if they are still here tomorrow.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:58 AM | Permalink

This morning Grand erupted just as the sunshine was starting to clear the hillside. So the tops of the water jets were in the sun, at least when there was enough breeze to push the steam away.

During the eruption I also noticed a lot of steam downbasin in the vicinity of Giant. Was just a trick of the cold morning, because a later check showed no evidence of anything, and Grotto wasn't even erupting.

For the day's second Grand eruption, it took advantage of erupting before West Triplet instead of waiting for the next window after an eruption. And it was a nice, straightforward start with only 21 seconds from Vent overflow to Grand start.

Uncertain Geyser 2010 July 25

I had just finished getting dressed for an evening of waiting for a Grand-by-moonlight eruption when I heard the call that Beehive's Indicator had begun. Perfect timing, as I was able to go over and see the eruption, then head out to Grand. Beehive started just as the sun dropped behind some clouds that were moving in from behind the ridge.

Those clouds thickened as the evening progressed until we reached the point where the moon disappeared. But I'd checked the infrared satellite map, and it showed that the clouds were probably nothing more that the remnant of thunderstorms out of Idaho, and they'd clear soon. In the meantime, Penta had a steamphase eruption, which got the attention of some of the folks waiting for Grand.

A few minutes later, I remarked that that Penta eruption sure was loud, but the eruption was over. That's when the call came over the radios; Giantess was in eruption. That cleared the benches out. I decided to stay put because I wanted my moonlight Grand, and this might be my only chance. So I got to easily hear Giantess' steamphase roar from Grand.

Grand rewarded my patience shortly after midnight with one of the taller eruptions I've seen. The dead calm and relative coolness of the night air may have contributed to that. But Vent also seemed to reach a height I've rarely seen. (I say relative coolness as it was still warm enough that after Grand I was still being attacked by mosquitoes.)

New Visitor Cathedral at dawn 2010 July 25

New Visitor Cathedral and Old Faithful Inn

Posted by HKoenig at 11:17 AM | Permalink

From Castle I could see that Rift was erupting, but there didn't seem to be any steam from Turban and Grand. But as I made the turn at Sawmill, I could see that Turban was erupting, and it might even sound like Vent was starting. So for a moment there was this panic that I was about to experience the previous night all over. But it turned out it was just a normal Turban eruption, and the pool was still full.

So while waiting for Rift to quit, did get to see Daisy and Oblong off in the distance, and a Castle start. I didn't go over for Castle, but watched it from Sawmill, which was also erupting. The moonlight gave a nice glow to the edges of the steamcloud, which was vertical at first, then sheered off to the north. Castle had several attempts at stopping, but eventually it did go into a steam phase. Not sure if there had been a minor before I came out, as the interval was nearly 17 hours without one.

Unlike previous nights, this time Grand erupted before the moon set. It was nice and low, giving us some nice moonbows. At the start of the second burst, there was even a hint of color, a touch of red and yellow.

That second burst ended just 9 minutes into the eruption, so anticipation of a third burst was high. Except nothing happened. Vent and Turban never changed their behavior, and after 8 minutes, there was no sign of afterplay. Since the pause between the bursts was 49 seconds, that means there was barely 8 minutes of water in this eruption.

Some of the geyser groupies need to understand the prohibition against sleeping in the basin. You really can't claim to be "waiting for the geyser" while lying down next to West Triplet, with a pillow, when all of the geysers in the area have already finished their eruptions.

The Beehive eruption in the morning showed one of those things that can be so frustrating about being around here. I woke up at about 08:00. I'd turned off the radio because I knew it would wake me up, and sleep was more important. So when I woke up and turned it on, the first thing I'm greeted with is a series of warbles and tones and assorted noise. I made the right decision there. So I make a quick trick to the restrooms, leaving the radio behind. After I return, I start putting away all the stuff, like blankets, long underwear and jackets that had seen use last night. Suddenly there's a call, asking how long Beehive's Indicator has been erupting. Fortunately, it's only been a few minutes, but I had no idea. And based on this past week's experience, not one of those people on Geyser Hill would make a further announcement. The only thing that didn't surprise me is that during that time I didn't hear one "switch to 5" announcement.

Anyhow, the Beehive eruption was quite nice, with full double rainbows and only the occasional spray hitting the walkway. It's also nice that Beehive is finally looking like it's going to shift out of the mode it's been for the past week and erupt at other times of the day. I tired to take a video with my new phone's video recorder, but discovered that I still need to learn how it works, as all I took were still photos at the start and end. Oh, well, try again later.

Later in the day Grand had a fairly normal one burst eruption. At least this time it was long enough that we didn't feel cheated out of a burst.

With nothing much to do after Grand, and it being over 5 hours since the last Oblong eruption, decided to head down there and see it up close. It started as I passed Chromatic, so decide that was a good place to see it, since had never been at that spot before.

Then went on over to check out Splendid and Daisy again. Wanted to see what Splendid was doing before and after Daisy. Before it was just a quiet, full pool. The runoff channel to the north was a bit wet, but it seemed that it was drying faster than new water was coming down. The area between Splendid and Comet appeared dry.

After Daisy, during the refill both Splendid's Main Vent and the Side Boiler were active. Usually boiling would start in Main and then shift to the Side Boiler, which could then boil well over a meter high at times. Later on the Side Boiler would initiate its own activity, which could be even higher. By about 20 minutes after Daisy, the area between Splendid and Comet was wet, but it didn't seem like there would be enough to wet the flat, orange area north of Splendid which seemed even drier than before

Beehive still hadn't erupted by the time it was time to go out to Grand. When I got out to the Sawmill Group I discovered that the water levels were high, and Tardy was erupting. Penta looked promising, but not encouraging. The bottom vents were well below overflow, but periodically the top vent would rise up and spit like it was going to start erupting. I also saw a couple of Oval Spring's palpitating eruptions, one that actually included some boiling. All that continued for almost an hour, and then shortly after Beehive, Sawmill finally found the means to start erupting.

At Grand the coyote made an appearance, this time skirting northward along the base of the slope until it got down to the boardwalk. Then the moon rose and the sun set, and we had a Vent overflow delay. This was one of the rare times when the consensus was that the delay was desired. The lighting then was poor, and would only improve as the moon rose and the sky darkened. As it was, we got the eruption three Turban eruptions later. It was a strange start, in that the interval was less than 17 minutes, and the preceding Turban duration was only about three-and-a-half minutes. Usually Grand would have gone on the next Turban. But as it was, the lighting was nice, and more than we could have expected.

Also today was an eruption of North Goggles Geyser over by Lion Geyser. I didn't see it, but a number of people did from various vantage points. The consensus is that it lasted at least three minutes and reached as much as 6 meters high. So it would qualify on the smaller end of a major eruption.

Squirrels are nothing more than rats that live in trees and don't shave their tails. Chasing the vermin out of a cabin with an open door is normal, and I've had to do it several times already. The other day I went into my cabin for a nap and forgot to close the back door during that time. This morning I discovered that one of the [expletives deleted] had somehow found its way inside the truck, found the only large plastic box back there whose lid I hadn't closed securely, and then got down into the bottom of that box in a crack between a second, smaller box and the side and gnawed its way into a couple of peanut M&Ms packages at the bottom.Seems like an awful lot of work for very little reward.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:51 AM | Permalink

Fan & Mortar Geyser 2010 Jul 23

Mortar Geyser 2010 Jul 23

I had set the alarm for midnight for the middle of the night eruption. After getting three hours sleep, I got out to Castle by 00:15, at which point I realized that the steam from the Grand area didn't quite look right, and I knew that look. By the time I got to Churn, I was certain that what I was seeing was post-eruption Turban and Vent. That was the sound of Vent I was hearing. I got close enough to light up an empty crater and returned to my cabin to get some more sleep.

Not knowing the previous Grand time, i just assumed midnight and so decided I should get up at 06:00. So I was slowly getting everything organized, like putting away the clothes and jackets and blankets I had carried out six hours earlier, when the call came that F&M were having an "event." Which was excellent timing. I could go down there until the even ended and then go to Grand. The odds of two less than 7 hour intervals made that an easy decision.

So I got down for the later portion of an hour long eruption of Bottom Vent. Once Bottom finally turned off, and Fan's vent started back on, it became apparent that the water levels were high enough. And they stayed high even when the activity in the vents paused. From my vantage point north of Spiteful, eventually we got a steady but low eruption of both High and Gold. Nothing all that unusual, the kind of activity that could easy turn into steam.

At that point Upper Mortar suddenly started to splash heavily, and Mortar's frying pan began to steam heavily. Another surge from Mortar and it was erupting to at least 10 meters/30 feet. That activity seemed to last for 15 to 20 seconds (I didn't take times) and then quit. So at least we got to see an Upper Mortar minor. Then moments later water appeared jetting from Fan's Main and East vents and the eruption was on.

The conditions were perfect, as the photos show. It's perhaps the first eruption of F&M that I've seen that not only didn't you need an umbrella or raincoat, but except for the initial surges from Main vent, you couldn't get wet even if you wanted to. Neither did you have to constantly shift positions due to the shifting winds. The sun was high enough to give a full semi-circle rainbow, and what little breeze there might have been always blew the steam away from us.

After a few minutes the Mortar vents turned to steam, and the majority of the activity in Fan seemed to be concentrated in the Angle and Main vents. The East vent was quiet for the remained of the first burst. The second burst saw the re-emergence of the East Vent, which joined the Main vent in a couple of nice sized surges as big as any in the first burst.

Grand Geyser eruption 2010 July 23

The end of the second burst came only about 10 minutes into the eruption, which meant we had a chance for a third. The pool filled and sloshed, but eventually drained. If the vigorous Turban and Vent activity had continued, we would've had to watch for an afterburst, but that activity died out.

In the afternoon, once again I had Beehive erupt while I was at Grand. Getting to be a normal occurrence every afternoon. As the West Triplet window was closing, Grand had the first heavy, "delay overflow" since I've been here. Was typical of this sort of behavior: Grand's pool filled early, and looked good, with even some small waves, until about 20 minutes at which point it slowly began to drop. One difference was that the Turban duration was long, when often in these cases it's a short duration.

Perhaps because of this long duration, we didn't get the usual short Turban interval with no overflow, but something that looked more like the second interval after a delay. The period from the start of Turban to the start of Grand was a bit long, almost a minute. The pause between bursts was also a bit long, a minute, so not surprised that Turban and Vent quit without any attempt at a third burst.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:55 AM | Permalink

Nothing much to report. One of those dull days where Grand had a couple of one burst eruptions and Beehive erupted during one of those Grand waits. So spent a lot of the day on computer work and even catching up on some sleep.

Posted by HKoenig at 10:00 AM | Permalink

If Grand is going to have one burst eruptions, at least the middle of the night eruption showed how to do it. It lasted 12m09s, and other than one slight pause around the 10 minute mark, never had any of those slowdowns that make you think it might be stopping. This after it took Grand 1m44s from the start of Turban to finally get going.

The morning itself started out with a few clouds which about an hour later pretty much covered the entire sky. And it only got worse as the wait for Grand got longer. Fortunately, it never actually rained, although putting on the rain gear helped cut down the wind. Once again Rift had erupted earlier, and Grand showed no inclination to get into any sort of pattern which would give an indication of how long it would be. A West Triplet eruption even came and went.

The eruption, when it did come, was another nondescript one burst whose sole interesting feature was that it took a minute from the start of Turban (and Vent overflow) until Grand joined in.

The nasty sky persisted, but the sun finally started breaking through the clouds just before the afternoon eruption of Beehive. Since I've been here, that was my first good, close up view of Beehive. All of the other eruptions seem to always be during the wait for Grand or in the middle of the night.

The wildlife were out for the evening Grand. First, it was a coyote wandering southward on the rocks. Then a little later a deer appeared at the base of the slope to the north of Turban. It took its time grazing there, then moseyed up the hillside.

Grand itself once again delayed itself until two hours had elapsed since the last West Triplet. On the third Turban following what appeared to be a Turban eruption with Vent visible, there was never any overflow audible. Turban started out slow, but within 30 seconds had built to that heavy bursting stage that says that an eruption is imminent. But it took two and a half minutes before Grand finally started.

But what made the eruption special is that when Grand quit at 8m44s, that ended the eruption. It was possibly the shortest one burst eruption I've seen. (I'd have to check my records to be sure, and they aren't here.)

Posted by HKoenig at 08:40 AM | Permalink

I tried to get some sleep before going out to Grand at midnight, but my neighbors seemed to have brought with them boulders which they insisted on rolling around. Then, once it seemed that I was finally sleeping, they had some sort of medical emergency, which strangely enough, resulted in them being quieter than they had been before. But the rumbling of the ambulance engine wasn't going to let me get back to sleep, so I decided to head out to Grand a half hour before I'd intended.

Which wasn't so bad, as the moon was still up and low, which made for some nice lighting, with long shadows and even a moonbow in the steam over Crested Pool. Sawmill's eruption was nicely backlit, too. Grand itself behaved the same way the night before, erupting on the first Turban eruption after the moon had set. Fortunately, the soon the moon will be up the entire night, and I'll finally be able to see the eruption instead of just hearing it.

In the morning, there was a slight amount of frost on the boardwalks still in the shadows. Grand continued the shorter intervals, and again I only waited for one Turban interval. Unlike yesterday morning, there was a slight breeze which made the activity visible, even without backlighting. It was quite nice seeing several successive spikes appear out of the steam cloud of the second burst.

The hopes of a four Grand day ended with the 9h43m interval leading up to the day's third eruption. Rift had erupted early in the afternoon, but Grand just got into the mode where each interval was a little shorter, and you just have to wait until you get a really short one (less than 17 minutes) before you even have a chance of an eruption.

But the eruption itself was a bit different. Only one burst, but Grand did refill and at least look like it was making an attempt at a second burst. Then, when the vent drained, Turban and Vent acted like they were going to quit. But for about a minute there were a series of small blips not much bigger than the ones you get at the end of a solo Turban eruption. Then quite suddenly Turban was fill and splashing as vigorously as it can. I hoped this might signal an afterburst, but it was nearly nine minutes before Grand started splashing.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:23 AM | Permalink

So this morning started with the news that no one went out to Fan & Mortar until it had been daylight for several hours. And then proceeded to walk up on the eruption. That took care of my intention to spend any free time down there today.

But I still figured that I would be able to eat breakfast at Grand. I had just dropped the pack after having dried off a section of bench, and was facing away when I hear Turban start. Followed immediately by the sound of Grand starting. It was calm, so it was a steam two burst eruption. The steam was so thick that the sun wasn't visible when trying for a backlit view.

The afternoon Grand eruption was nothing unusual and nothing special. A dull, typical one burst eruption.

Also today Castle had two minors which resulted in an interval between major eruptions that was almost exactly what the interval would have been if the first minor eruption had been a major eruption.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:38 AM | Permalink

I decided I'd rather try for a good night's sleep than try to get up for Grand. But I still woke up around 04:00, which would've been fairly early in the window. I still decided I'd rather try to snooze some more, so I was able to confirm what I'd half-expected: I should've gone out because I'd have seen the 05:16 eruption.

With Beehive erupting shortly thereafter, there wasn't much going on. So I spent the morning down basin just seeing things. Caught a couple of Daisy eruptions, and even a Riverside.

It's been awhile since I paid attention to Link minors, but the one I saw today struck me as having larger boils than I remember. It built up to one at least a meter tall and then the boiling (but not the overflow) seemed to completely stop. The overflow continued, but for the next ten minutes I didn't seen anything like that big boil.

Giant may have shown slight signs of progress back in May, but today it looked about as bad as I remember it back in the 1980s. All that was missing is the grass growing on the platform.

I also noticed that Daisy's runoff channels seems to have shifted. No longer does it appear water flows from an eruption into the pools around Splendid. The runoff to the southwest is much wider, and has invaded an area of trees next to the trail. One advantage to not having Daisy runoff at Splendid is that should Splendid ever start showing signs of life, that will be reflected in large pools around it and even the rejuvenation of its runoff channels.

Made the mistake of going out to Grand too soon. Hearing a report of West Triplet at about the 5.5 hour mark in Grand's interval, I thought that it might have a chance to go on the next West Triplet eruption and have a short interval. As it turned out, it did go on the next West Triplet opportunity, except that was a three hour West Triplet interval, and Rift had already started.

The eruption itself was a nice change from the usual one burst. After the end of the second burst, several times Turban looked like it had quit, only to become active again. Then the activity really picked up, and that meant that an afterburst needed to be considered. As it was, there hadn't been any play by 10 minutes. Didn't want to stay any longer because of incoming black clouds.

Beehive's Indicator started during Grand, and today we had a Beehive interval shorter than the coincident Grand interval. Which gives some idea of the frequency (or lack thereof) of the two geysers.

The middle of the night Grand was a bit hard to see, since the moon had just disappeared behind the ridge since the previous Turban start. But it was a relatively short interval (8h30m) and I did get to see the Castle minor eruption and an Oblong while waiting.

Posted by HKoenig at 05:55 AM | Permalink

Since I was coming in the South Entrance anyhow, and I had already been told the last Grand and Beehive times I decided that I should at least stop by and see if King Geyser was still active and at least make an attempt to see it. That was my first visit to West Thumb in years, and during the 45 minutes I was there all I saw was periodic boiling. Maybe I'll stop again on the way out.

Tilt Geyser 2010 Jul 17

Tilt Geyser 2010 Jul 17

At Grand, got a Vent overflow delay, with Grand erupting 4 Turban intervals later. The eruption itself came near the end of the West Triplet window, about two hours after the start of West Triplet. The eruption itself was an ordinary short one burst. (You can tell it was short because Vent and Turban didn't pause.)

Posted by HKoenig at 06:26 AM | Permalink

This morning Fan & Mortar could have erupted in daylight with no one around. I'd been up since 05:30, and not hearing anything from that part of the basin, decided I had to know what was going on. I got down there about 06:45 and found the area deserted. Fortunately the marker was still in place and the walkways showed no sign of wash. But still, at over 5 days, with a large crowd of geyser groupies in the area and even an expert or too in attendance, you'd think that one of those folks would have comet at dawn.

The weather was no excuse. There'd been no rain overnight, and it was pretty calm and relatively cloud free (at least compared to this past week). As it was, everyone got lucky as F&M appeared to be in a garbage mode, a mode that persisted all morning.

Tilt Geyser blowout

With the relatively nice day, and since I was already down at that end of the basin, I also decided to check out the Giant platform. Wasn't quite as dead as I'd expected. At first I thought the water standing on the platform indicated something might have happened, but later evaluation by myself and some others was that Mastiff and Giant are just really splashing hard, enough to keep the puddles in front of them wet and full. It probably means that Giant just might erupt in September.

Overnight Grand had a short interval, and followed that up with one that was just within my window. So glad I'm not going to be here anymore to fight with it. The morning eruption was probably under the best conditions I've seen this trip, with sunlight most of the time, and even a second burst. It started only about 40 minutes after the end of Rift's eruption, so it might even be said that it appeared in the proper West Triplet window.

By having the morning eruption go on a short interval also meant that there was now a chance for one more daylight eruption, at sunset.

Once again, Beehive erupted at almost the same time as Grand, this time starting during the second burst. That also meant that once again, there were several hours of nothing to do. Fan & Mortar did fill that gap, either.

The weather stayed fairly nice until the time for Grand approached. By the time I got out there, it was already sprinkling, and I spent the wait under an umbrella. Once again, Grand erupted about 2.5 hours after West Triplet.This was a little long, as indicated by West Triplet starting during the first burst.

At that point I made a mistake. The first call of a possible event at Fan & Mortar was made. I considered just heading in and getting ready to go home, but the idea of missing an eruption down there just didn't appeal. Even though I know that those things never give me a break or cooperate. This was no exception. Spent another hour and a half in the rain. The only thing of interest is that once Fan's vents started to die down, Upper Mortar started having splashes, the kind that can possibly build into an Upper Mortar initiated eruption. But after a couple of good meter high plumes, it died down and it was time to bike in in the dark.

Posted by HKoenig at 04:23 PM | Permalink

Started out the day by seeing a coyote nosing around my cabin. Then out at Grand saw the first elk of the season, when a couple of them wandered through over by Economic.

The morning itself was dry, but overcast and windy, making it much more miserable than it needed to be. I decided that I didn't need to be out until 8 hours, and arrived just at the end of a West Triplet eruption, so everything worked out. Grand did wait almost 2.5 hours, which makes for a bigger window than I'd like, but still one about an hour wide.

Fan & Mortar didn't erupt overnight, so they could have been the timewaster of the day. Turns out they cooperated in their not erupting. Made two round trips down there, the first from the cabins in the morning after Grand, the second, from Grand right after the eruption. In both cases arrived for Bottom Vent activity which led to normal looking activity from the Fan vents. So the middle of the day was free to do nothing much, but at least not spent out in the showshowers and wind.

We finally got a Beehive eruption. There was a rumor that it erupted last night at or before midnight, so it appears that the reason it was missed yesterday was because it had also erupted shortly before dawn.

That evening Grand I mentioned was post-Rift, which is a case where the West Triplet window doesn't really apply, at least for now. In the past there used to be a period post-Rift where Grand wouldn't normally erupt, and with some observations, it might be determined that that's still the case.

On my back from my morning attempt to make yesterday's posting, I saw something new: someone who'd driven onto the pedestrian walkway/emergency road to get to the OF entrance road. Another reason I take the trolley to work instead of playing in traffic twice a day.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:02 AM | Permalink

Not much to report. Another dreary gray day with not much going on. Beehive either erupted during the night, or can have intervals much greater than 24 hours, as it wasn't seen during daylight.

After the long wait at night I got out to see another long wait. Coming to the conclusion that the 7 hour interval was unite an outlier and needs to be ignored when going out in poor conditions. West Triplet is providing a couple of eruption windows, the first with its early interval eruption around 7 to 8 hours, the second about 1.5 to 2 hours after the stat of an eruption. West Triplet itself is erupting with intervals of around 2.5 to 3 hours.

If the NPS were a flexible organization, and there were people around to make the changes, it would be easily possible to adjust the Grand predictions based on this information, reducing the current (and wrong) 4 hour window to a smaller one hour one. It just requires someone to see West Triplet erupt.

(The current Grand window is from 6.5 to 10.5 hours, which means that the first half of the window the NPS provides to the public is not only useless, but actually making it harder for visitors to see an eruption. Right now, there's no one with any authority or motivation to get that window changed, either.)

Posted by HKoenig at 11:36 AM | Permalink

So after multiple intervals of 10 hours, and none shorter than 8.5, I decided no reason to be out any earlier. I was looking forward to going out in the dark and experiencing a dawn (as long as it wasn't raining, like it did overnight). So I get out to Rift in eruption and an empty crater. So it appeared that Grand finally took advantage of the early West Triplet window instead of delaying for two hours like it had been doing earlier this week.

That's what can be really annoying at Grand, the inconsistency. The length of the interval is irrelevant (at least once it gets up to 8 hours). But the range, jumping from ten hour intervals down to a seven and then probably more tens, is what gets frustrating. It leads to a lot of two or three hour waits, unless you are willing to forego those short intervals. (which is fine if you are letting others do your waiting for you…)

So for the mid-day eruption, came out early, and of course Grand erupted two hours after West Triplet for a nice 10 hour interval. And almost like yesterday, Beehive's Indicator started right as Grand was ending. So at that point, I had nothing more to do, and with rain heading in, too.

Went out to the evening Grand at a break in the rain. But first I had to dodge a small herd of bison who were moving through the trees next to the Lower lift station. Then, when I got out to Grand, I noticed a coyote nosing around the rocks behind Rift. Apparently I didn't bother it.

Right as I got there, West Triplet started. I hoped that this was a good sign that it would be a short wait, at worst getting the eruption in a couple of hours for a nice 9 hour interval. Instead, that time came and went, and then the rain returned. Finally, West Triplet started at the ten hour mark, with Rift joining in at midnight. At least Grand didn't wait the full two hours, just an hour and a quarter.

The rain also had stopped by then, and at least it was a two burst eruption. Might actually have been better to delay one more Turban as the moon came out right after the end.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:52 AM | Permalink

After a clear night, it was a gray, overcast morning. No rain, but the threat was there. While waiting I heard that West Triplet had started at the 7h30m mark in the interval, so I figured there might be a chance that this could be a short interval. No such luck. Once again, it took Grand two hours after West Triplet to erupt.

Geyser Hill was reopened. There didn't seem to be a mad rush to get over there. Depression still erupting about every two-and-a-half to three hours.

For the evening eruption, Grand took the opportunity to delay just long enough to completely avoid the intermittent sunshine coming through the clouds. During its eruption, it appears that Beehive's Indicator started and so did Beehive.

There is nothing quite as creepy as the lock-step over-reaction of neo-Victorian bureaucrats. This year it's all the little signs advertising "bezerk gunmen welcome here" on all the building doors that just reinforces that feeling.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:41 AM | Permalink

Put together an overnight eruption of Fan & Mortar and a bear closure of Geyser Hill and you get a number of people standing around with the look you get on an old dog whose food dish has been moved from the spot it's been in the last few years.

So Fan & Mortar did erupt overnight, and based on the amount of water still on the walkway at 08:00, I'm guessing just before daylight. Castle had a dawn minor, and Grand appears to have had another long interval.

For me the morning was one of watching GeyserHill from the parking lot, working on a project and watching a woodpecker trying to work on the tree next to the bike rack. (Whenever people would walk by, it would fly off, only to reappear a few minutes later. So there must be something to like there.) The weather itself was nice, a little breezy at times, but a great improvement from previous days.

The early afternoon Grand eruption was a pretty unspectacular 1 burst which this time was only an hour and a half after West Triplet.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out for the middle of the night eruption of Grand. The day had become overcast, and before sunset (which couldn't be seen), there was even a sprinkle or two. I decided that maybe I should stay in, when I noticed the moon was visible. SInce I could at least get out with some light, decided to go out.

It cleared as I waited, but it was really steamy. At one point, I heard a bison or two grunting away over by Calida. There was other wildlife out and about too: drunken Amfac louts were making noises, but I never saw any until after the Grand eruption. Even Sawmill had quit by then, so they were going out only for exercise.

The eruption of Grand was spectacular in its own way. Rift had just finished when I arrived, so no need to worry about West Triplet. Finally there was a Turban that had all the right sounds for an eruption, and Grand's pool looked steamy than before. But the Turban eruption just kept on going, with no Grand. Finally, at 3m18s, Grand took off. It was so steamy over toward Turban that I couldn't see what Vent might have done.

With that long to get started, I was half-expecting a short one burst, so not surprised when the first burst ended after only 7m36s. This had to mean a second burst, which I did get. After it ended, I could hear Vent blasting away, a sign that the pool was probably trying to refill and a third burst was possible. It took 1m13s before that finally happened, and once it was over, so was Vent and Turban. SoI would have liked to have seen exactly what they were doing back in that steam, it was still enjoyable.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:29 AM | Permalink

I woke up at what might have been the 9 hour mark if Grand hadn't yet erupted, but with the snow and cold and such, it seemed like I wouldn't get out there by the 10 hour mark. So I stayed in, and Grand had a second interval longer than 10 hours.

I've seen several eruptions of Depression the last few days, including a couple of intervals of about 3 hours. Quite a change from my last visits when one Depression eruption per day was about it.

Bison herd at Grand

Turns out the bison delay didn't matter, as once again Grand waited two hours from the start of a West Triplet eruption before itself erupting. And once again, there was a considerable period (75 seconds) between the start of Turban and the start of Grand. At the 9m30s mark, Grand had a false pause at least 5 seconds long. So it was a bit surprising that both Vent and Turban didn't quit with Grand.

The odds of walking up onto an eruption of a geyser measured in days is low. The odds of that happening the very first time you walk up to that geyser are even lower. So when you walk up and see what appears to the activity which may lead to an eruption, your first assumption should not be that you are going to see an eruption. Especially when an eruption would lead to an unusually short interval when compared to recent intervals.

So some advice I don't expect to be followed: not only find out what the geyser has been doing recently, but also at least spend a few minutes determining if it really is going to lead to an eruption before you begin a radio play-by-play.

I may or may not have a full Geyser Groupie rant later in the week. That was just a sample.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:00 PM | Permalink

Early morning snow accumulation

Sawmill with bison herd and Grand's runoff

The big surprise though, was that West Triplet was in overflow but not erupting. For about ninety minutes I watched have about five minute long overflows with 12 to 19 minutes intervals. Finally, the overflow increased in intensity and upwelling began to appear over the vent. After a couple of minutes of that, a burst finally occurred.

The activity appeared no different from what I've seen the last few days. WIth its start, West Triplet was quickly joined by Percolator. The eruption lasted a bit less than 31 minutes, again nothing unusual, and Percolator quit with it. Rift make no attempt to start, as only once did I even see a whisp of steam form it.

At the end of the Grand eruption West Triplet's water level was near the point where it could erupt, but I didn't stick around long enough. A few hours later I came back and it appeared that both West Triplet and Rift had erupted while I was gone.

The evening's eruption of Grand was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for another West Triplet overflow, but all we got was a normal eruption followed by the two hour wait until Grand. All while waiting in windy snow showers. And because it had warmed up during the day, it wasn't sticking but was just getting everything wet.

So the West Triplet overflow may have been some fluke, for reasons unknown.

So after I did yesterday's posting, I noticed a couple of rangers park over behind the Lodge and head over to Geyser Hill for a while. Then later I saw one carrying a new signboard over that same way. The next morning, on my way back from Grand, saw one finishing a patrol. Perhaps the fact that prints would be visible in the snow kept people out.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:36 AM | Permalink

Woke up to a light overnight dusting of snow and watching an eleven hour interval of Grand from my cabin window. I had been planning on getting up around then, so I didn't have to endure the wait, but it did mean there'd be no reason to go out for a while if the weather remains nasty.

Outside my cabin door I found not only my footprints from earlier in the morning, but a new set of elk prints. So that noise of some sort of commotion outside wasn't entirely a dream.

The day started out looking like a continuation of yesterday, but as it progressed, it got nicer. The wind died down and the clouds disappeared, even though it was still cold. (The light snow which was in shadows took hours to disappear. It wasn't until after Grand's afternoon eruption that the clouds came back in. But by that time, there wasn't much reason to be out.

I made a sweep down basin, visiting all the features which weren't going to merit a visit in yesterday's conditions. Got suckered into some early interval chaos at Fan & Mortar: Lots of Bottom Mortar activity accompanied by Lower Mortar splashes and Upper Mortar rumbles, and big splashes from Fan's Main Vent. All during that time, Fan would start steaming like it was having River Vent pauses. Then suddenly it all shifted to Gold erupting and everything else quiet. If I hadn't known that it was less than a day and a half since the last eruption, I would have been disappointed. As it is, I still wonder what it is that makes that same sort of behavior seem so important to an eruption when it occurs later in the interval.

Otherwise saw a nice steamy Castle and your typical Daisy eruption. The Grand eruption surprised us with a second burst, since the first was over 10 minutes long. The lead-up Turbans were all the same, bland and average, so it was an uneventful wait in relatively nice weather.

I found out that the responsible party for the lack of bike racks is not the NPS, but for once we can blame Xanterra I've already voiced my disappointments to my contact within that organization.

Over on Geyser Hill, located below Lion, is a fresh elk carcass. There've also been bear sightings, so the prudent step was taken to close Geyser Hill last night. Today it was still closed, but the closure wasn't being enforced. By the time I was heading out to Grand, it seemed like there was a small but steady stream of people visible over there. When Beehive's Indicator was announced while waiting at Grand, and number of geyser groupies were seriously considering running over there for the eruption. Word was getting around that the closure wasn't being enforced.

Which is all fine and good, but I also am fairly certain that they'd have screamed for sympathy if they'd been caught. It seems every few years gazers and other such hangers on need to be taught the lesson about the application of the rules, and we must not have had a volunteer for the case-study recently.

As for the NPS, what's the point of having a restriction if you aren't going to enforce it (seems like the Feds so that a lot, doesn't it?). If they can't or won't enforce their restrictions when they are so publicly flouted, then they need to use a different policy. How about posting signs like the current ones, warning of the bear activity, and basically telling people, "beyond here, you're on your own." That might actually keep more people out.

Yeah, I know, the first such incident and the idiot (or idiot's estate) sues, and wins. But I also don't like the idea that those of us who follow the rules are punished (by not seeing Beehive up close), while those who break them get rewarded. (Again, seems like a common policy with the Feds.)

(And as I post this, it's starting to snow again…)

Posted by HKoenig at 05:35 PM | Permalink

I haven't come into the park through the South Entrance in 20 years. For that matter, I haven't come in any entrance but the West during that time. So today was almost a new experience.

But getting there was lots of fun. It started snowing in Dubois, and there was several inches accumulated by the time I reached Togwotee Pass. Sometimes the wind would shake so much snow off of the trees that I couldn't see anything ahead of me. Fortunately, the road itself was bare, with only occasional patches of slush.

The snow showers continued all the way to Old Faithful, but it really didn't slow the traffic down.

There, once I'd checked into my cabin, I discovered that Grand was due in the next few hours. I got lucky in that once I put on the long underwear, the weather going out was nice. That quickly changed, and I was glad I and did the clothing change. Grand decided that it was a good time for a delay, So I got to also see the starts of West Triplet and Rift.

So after four more Turban eruptions in which it was obvious even through the steam and snow that Grand wasn't going to erupt, finally got a good vigorous Turban. One that went on for 2m14s before Grand finally joined in for a short one burst eruption. At that point, was time to head in and warm up.

Once again, the NPS has come up with a new way to be annoying. The bike racks at Castle are gone. I don't know about the ones down basin, as didn't get that far. Checking that out is on tomorrow's agenda.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:57 PM | Permalink

I heard the call for Beehive's indicator, but decided that since the actual start hadn't been seen, I had no idea how much time there was to get out of bed, get dressed and get over to Geyser Hill. Actually, I just rationalized it that way because I'd forgotten to have things ready just in case, and was too lazy to get moving. As it was, I might have made it, as Beehive was 8 minutes later.

Getting up for Grand was a bit disappointing. The moon was obscured by a band of clouds. Not what I'd wanted, but as it turned out, by the time I got out to Castle, the clouds were mostly gone, and the few remaining were not going to cause a problem. The rest of the night was clear. It was a quiet night. In front of the Inn, on my bike, I also could hear the bursting from Giantess.

The wait for Grand was one of those where everything else has to erupt first. Not only was Grotto in a marathon, but I also got to see Castle, Daisy, Oblong and Riverside first. Once again, Turban avoided the chaotic activity and fell into a nice pattern where I could predict what should happen next. The eruption of Grand was two burst, both nicely illuminated by a low moon (a penumbral eclipse was in progress, but I couldn't tell the difference).

Wanting to get some sleep, and not expecting anything much to happen, I left the radio off. So the first thing I hear when I turn it back on in the morning was a report that at Fan & Mortar the Bottom vent was erupting and still in a long pause. Figures. Three and a third days is also long enough that it could erupt. So instead of a leisurely start to the day, I ended up zipping down there just in case. Looked good, but what do I know, for quite a while until suddenly the water levels in Fan dropped and Mortar's frying pans started steaming.

Giantess was still active over 30 hours after the start, with some nice Big Sawmill type spikes throughout the morning and afternoon. Geyser Hill just didn't look right with all that activity going on. Giantess also doesn't appear to have had an effect on Beehive. Again this morning there was an interval in the 12 hour range.

The morning's non-geyser entertainment was when someone in a car decided that they wanted to drive up to Old Faithful. I saw them negotiating the little connector between the Inn parking lot and the trail, then make a right to go up the hill. I heard they figured out that they were not on a road, but didn't leave it until they got out to take some pictures of Faithful.

Grand could've had a short interval, but instead decided to try all sorts of tricks. Not only did we have Rift, but a couple of of times Vent came up to overflow on a less than ideal pool. This caused the interval to almost put Grand in conflict with the next Fan & Mortar event. But fortunately, Grand couldn't wait any longer, and I was able to leave the two burst eruption at a civilized pace and still get down to see another failed attempt at an eruption by Fan & Mortar. Like this morning, the water levels never wanted to progress beyond, "looking okay".

While waiting for Grand, a pair of coyotes did make an appearance from the north, then moving up the hill. I'd guess this is the same pair I saw back in May, and are probably the reason this whole trip I haven't seen any marmots on the hill behind Grand.

The next Grand eruption was going to take place after sunset. As with last night, there were quite a few clouds to the south, but like last night, whatever storm that was went right by, and within an hour the sky was clear. But heading out meant bugs. There must've been a fly hatching as there were more than just mosquitoes in the mix, and they were so thick that I had to breath through my nose or ingest more than few as I biked down from the Inn.

The first view of the moon I had was through the steam of a West Triplet eruption, with it casting shadows of the trees by the trail onto that steam cloud. Viewed from my usual spot while waiting for Grand, there was an almost 3-dimensional appearance as the steam caused various parts of the shadows to disappear and reappear. The Grand eruption itself was nicely illuminated, but one burst eruptions are always a bit disappointing.

Beehive made up for that. After the eruption, just as I was going to leave Grand it was announced that the Indicator was erupting. I decided that I didn't want to walk to Geyser Hill and back, but could easily ride the bike to the overlook. I arrived there just moments before the eruption started. I believe that this may have been the first time I'd seen a moonbow in Beehive's spray, which was to the northwest over the river. (And at the start we had the usual idiot with a light, out for the full moon, who thinks he can do a better illumination job than the moon is doing.)

Posted by HKoenig at 06:12 AM | Permalink

The plan was to take a few hours nap, then head out to Grand just as the last bit of twilight disappeared. Just not much twilight as there were still quite a few clouds. But unlike the previous nibht, these were scattered and there wasn't any layer scattering the moon when it was in the clear.

A check of the weather radar sites shows a nice storm in Idaho between Idaho Falls and Pocatello heading in a direction that should take it just south of her. So as the night progressed, so did the cloudiness to the south, along with occasional flashes of lightning. But moon did make it between the clouds for the crew who got to see the middle of the night Beehive eruption, and by then it appeared we were going to miss that storm.

But for some reason, just as Grand started, the wind shifted putting my position directly in the line of precipitation. A fairly unusual occurance, as only rarely do I have to make a run for it at the start of the eruption. Like several other eruptions, this one had well over a minute and a half from Turban's start to Grand's. Then Grand wasted the opportunity by denying us a second burst by low moonlight.

I decided getting to Grand by the 7-1/2 hour point would be okay, and so was just turning into the Inn parking lot on my way to the Lower Ham's lot when I heard someone announce the current time and "Great Fountain". Which didn't make any sense, since there's no way to report s Great Fountain start time from there. Then the report was amended to "Giantess" or something that sounded like that. I glanced over toward the Inn and the new Cathedral and saw a large steam cloud rising, so I knew that it must really be Giantess.

I considered turning around and following Scott Bryan, who I passed on the utility road, but decided that going to Geyser Hill via Castle and Sawmill worked just as well. As it was, I could still hear the boiling from the initial bursting as I walked through the trees towards Lion. That bursting stopped around the time I broke into the open. The main burst started almost precisely at the half hour mark. The water jetting wasn't all that impressive, and after only a couple of minutes quickly turned to steam.

That part of the eruption was pretty impressive. The roaring was louder than anything Castle can produce, and a naturalist on patrol reported hearing it over by Grand. Standing on the boardwalk near the Vault sign, I could feel the rumbling in my feet. Turns out the walkway was acting as a sounding board, because standing on the gravel didn't have the same feel. At one point, when there was a miniature rainstorm landing on the walkway down by Pump, I got out my umbrella and went looking for a 360 degree rainbow. Which was easy to find, but there wasn't a sign of a second rainbow.

The weather conditions slowly worstened, and by the end Beehive (a long indicator but almost the interval one would have expected without Giantess), Giantess was starting to have pauses and was transitioning back into water. So it looked like the rest of this eruption was going to be in Big Sawmill Mode.

After all the excitement earlier in the day, a one burst Grand in windy conditions was just ordinary.

Posted by HKoenig at 09:27 AM | Permalink

After all the long Grand intervals, I decided that there wasn't much point in going out in the morning at the seven hour mark. I could use the extra hour sleep. As it turned out, the interval was a minute under eight hours, and I arrived no more than a couple of minutes before the start of the eruption. Another two burst eruption, but this time the first burst lasted 10m15s, making it a minute longer than all of last night's eruption.

I finally got around to seeing what conditions are like around the new Visitor's Cathedral, and discovered that they had provided a bike trail bypass around the new junction. That's all I really wanted when I was here last time, I can slow down for the gravel detour. But what I don't understand is, why did they up pull up the old concrete walkway only to replace it with an identical one? Are they planning to do more concrete replacement?

Waiting for the morning Beehive eruption, for the first time in years I saw an eruption of Depression up close. A combination of little time spent on Geyser Hill and Depression's long intervals were the reason. Still need to do the same for Aurum. Beehive itself waited until the mid-day clouds had a chance to form and block the sun for most of the eruption.

Castle started a minor just as I was about to head out to Grand in the morning. The sound gave me a brief start. A few hours later, it had another minor, this one over 10 minutes long.

The midday Grand was another case of waiting for Rift to end, then waiting a few hours of chaotic Turban activity before finally getting a one burst eruption. Time to revert back to normal and get used to a bunch of one bursts.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:08 AM | Permalink

So it turns out that the assumption that Fan & Mortar was safe to ignore for the night because of the event it had at sunset was not true. It ended up erupting in the early morning hours with no one around. I might even have heard the start. Like I said in an earlier post, by the time I went it, it was calm and quiet and easy to hear Old Faithful from the Sawmill Group. A little bit farther on, as I was trudging up the hill to Crested, I remember stopping and looking back for quite a bit of time. Some noise down basin caught my attention, but I couldn't place it. There was just general steam down there, but nothing that looked like an eruption of Giant. So I went on in.

I made the right decision to eat breakfast in the Lower Ham's store right when the opened at 07:30. Because Grand decided for no good reason to have an 11.5 hour interval. Instead of a steaming, backlit eruption, we got a warm midday one. None of the patterns I've seen recently seemed to work or matter. An eruption of West Triplet came and went. There were several short Turban durations in a row. At least once we saw water boil up in Vent. Nothing seemed to matter. The eruption itself was a nondescript one burst that didn't even give the appearance of trying for two.

So at that point, there wasn't much to do until evening, at least in terms of large geyser activity. Mike Keller pointed out that Great Fountain would be erupting during the afternoon, so this actually looked like a good time to risk a trip to the Lower Basin. The afternoon itself was a series of thundershowers, but Great Fountain managed to wait until things were generally dry before erupting. Nothing spectacular, and a bit steamy, but there were some nice bursts during the first and third burst periods.

The rains continued off an on, but by the time it was time to head out to Grand, the rains had quit and the clouds seemed to be promising to disappear. Thanks to the cloudiness and rains, it was a bit chillier than would normally be expected in July. But not cold enough to discourage the mosquitoes. Shortly before sunset I noticed that the moon had risen, and was increasing the distance between itself and the clouds as it rose. An announcement of Beehive's Indicator then cleaned out all the geyser gazers. The Beehive eruption itself was easily heard at Grand.

An hour after sunset, about 22:05 or so I notice what sounds like thunder off in the distance to the northwest. By this time the clouds have mostly cleared away, and there's nothing that looks like it could produce lightning in any direction. I hear it several times. It sounds like it could be a thermal feature, but there's not been any changes in the steam clouds. Then it occurs to me-- I'd heard that West Yellowstone was going to have fireworks tonight, starting at 22:00. So what I was hearing was the sound of those fireworks, about 20 to 25 miles away with all sorts of terrain in the middle.

On the next Turban, it had finally been long enough that Grand couldn't hold off any more. It was too dark, despite a near full moon, to seem much more than the steam, but Turban gave the typical explosive start that signals that Grand is having waves. This time, that Turban activity seemed to die down, and by a minute and a half, despite all the steam coming from Grand's pool, it sure did seem like there wasn't going to be an eruption. As it was, it was 1m40s before Grand started. All that Turban activity must've had an effect, as the total duration of the two bursts was only 9m10s. I wouldn't be surprised that if we could have seen the pool of Grand, we'd have seen water sloshing around for about a minute or so before draining.

Posted by HKoenig at 05:36 AM | Permalink

Usually leave the radio on on the off chance that I might hear something interesting. Last night, decided that I didn't care what F&M were doing, and whatever happened after the start of a River pause, I would learn about it in the morning. So I shut the radio off and added and hour to the alarm.

That meant that instead of going out in time for Grand and Beehive's early morning eruptions, I got out just in time to miss them. Leading to another day with a huge gap before time to head out. But with the intermittent showers of the late morning, having no reason to be out and about wasn't so bad. Did get down to check out Daisy and the wash zone from the recent Link eruption, and to watch an hour of Bijou pauses. (Easier to recognize unusual behavior when you have some idea of the look of the current normal behavior.)

The Grand eruption in the afternoon was a bit of a disappointment. Other than the first few intervals being shorter than the previous one, the Turban activity leading to the eruption showed no clear patterns giving any indication of when the eruption would occur. Worse, an eruption of West Triplet came and went without either Rift or Grand. Usually a bad sign, but at least Grand did decide after a couple of Turbans to erupt. Like yesterday, we had two bursts, but unlike yesterday, they were short and the total duration barely totaled 10 minutes. One bit of amusement was that because of the storms and general bad weather, the wind was coming from an unusual direction, and all the folks gathered on the benches by West Triplet found out the hard way that Grand can get you wet. A few people didn't learn that lesson and were there for the second burst, which gave a repeat performance.

Beehive turned out to be quite cooperative in the afternoon. The weather didn't improve after Grand, and on the whole, got worse. The only good news was the wind direction, it was blowing away from Geyser Hill, so no need to worry about getting drenched by Beehive. Only getting drenched by the weather. I took a look at some weather radar sites via my iPhone, and saw there was a nice, strong cell headed our way. So as I was deciding if it was time to leave, water appeared in the Indicator. That made the decision easy, as since I was going to head in immediately after, I could risk getting doused. As it was, the rain held off just long enough to give us a nice eruption, one that drenched the people gathered across the river instead of us.

Before the evening Beehive eruption, Plume had a couple of eruptions that varied from the norm. The first, which I didn't see, was a six burst eruption. I was told that the last two bursts were the smaller, minor variety where the height only reaches about 10 feet. The next eruption was a typical five burst. The next one I saw, right after the end of Beehive's eruption, had an unusual fifth burst. It started out looking like a minor burst, staying around 10 feet for a good 10 seconds or so before lifting to a more typical height. The burst also seemed to last much longer than I'm used to seeing.

The rainstorm was pretty heavy for an hour, finally ending before sunset with a nice full arc double rainbow from my cabin door (with a Pipeline Meadows bison below it.) It was then that Fan & Mortar decided to have their first event since the activity of the night before. With the rain nearly over, and at least another hour of light, I decided that I had no excuse not to bike down there. To get there just in time to see a weak restart of the Fan vents. At least didn't have to spend much time down there.

At that point it was only about an hour before it would be time to go out to Grand, and with the clearing skies, decided that I would go out for the nighttime eruption. The moon was shining through a high thin layer, so there was plenty of light, but the sky was gray instead of black and full of stars. I arrived to find Rift in eruption, but with the overcast, it wasn't all that cold either. A couple of hours waiting for a two burst eruption wasn't so bad, especially when the second burst lasted over two minutes.

One thing I like about nighttime are the sounds you don't hear during the day. As I was leaving Grand, walking toward Sawmill, I could hear, but not see, an eruption of Old Faithful. This particular night I also got to hear a new sound. Having seen/heard so many nighttime eruptions, all the various sounds are familiar, and even expected: the gurgling of Turban after the post-eruption quit. The spitting of Percolator, and rumbles from West Triplet. As I was getting ready to leave, standing by West Triplet, I suddenly became aware of a new sound, a liquid splashing I'd never noticed before. Quickly realized it was an eruption of Sputnik. I'd seen it during the earlier eruption waits, but never heard it before.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:49 AM | Permalink

I arrived just in time to have to wait a full Grand interval before the next eruption. But Beehive did oblige me by erupting with a less than 12 hour interval just as I was about to head out to Grand. With two eruptions per day, now it's jut a matter of it adjusting the intervals so we can have a few days with both eruptions in daylight.

The day was cool and blustery. I encountered some showers in Island Park which appeared to headed toward the Park, and they did get some showers around then, too. But it never again really looked like we were in for rain, and the wind helped keep the mosquitoes from attacking. The less said about the drive in from West Yellowstone, the better. Let's just say that I saw "animal jams" that involved no animals.

The Turban intervals at Grand were longer than I've been used to 21 to 23 minutes, at least until we had a early overflow and Turban had a short duration. Just before the second Turban, the one that I expected to have an excellent chance of leading into the Grand eruption, West Triplet started. Considering that Rift had erupted at dawn, I took that as another good sign. And it all was. It did take Grand almost a minute to build to the eruption from the start of Turban, with good waves then appearing.

The eruption itself had a nice full rainbow, thanks to a large break in the clouds. When the first burst lasted 10m44s, I was surprised to look at the pool and see water sloshing about. Not only did we get another burst, but it lasted long enough to make it a T2*Q. Vent and Turban did act at first like they wanted to continue, until suddenly Turban shut off and Vent quickly followed. The restart, while quick (about 7 minutes) had Turban taking its time, with lots of steam and noise and very little water in the first minute or two.

Tomorrow the Fan & Mortar window opens, more or less, which should take care of a lot of my free time. Reports today were that it was having actual cycles, as opposed the chaotic activity featuring Angle vent which was featured before the previous eruption. What that means we will find out later...

Posted by HKoenig at 06:17 AM | Permalink

After several long Grand intervals, it would have been nice to not have seen the steam cloud as I drove into the Han Store parking log. Then again, 8.5 hours was about average until the other day, so I could have been out there earlier. With all the yelling of geyser times as (or before) eruptions start, this would have been a nice time to have had something besides silence, too.

When I stopped for gas in Idaho Falls, I discovered that despite my attempts to avoid them, I managed to pick up some bison deposits from the Madison entrance road. Nothing as bad as last year, but I'll be visiting the car wash as soon as I can to remove them.

Posted by HKoenig at 09:20 PM | Permalink

When I came in from the night, I was thinking that if it stayed clear, it looked like we were in for some significant fog. It was already starting to form in some areas. Instead, tday started out looking like it was going to be a continuation of yesterday, with a solid gray sky that had to rain. But by about 08:00 it had already broken up, so what we had may have been just the fog I expected, but a bit higher. From Lower Ham's, I could easily seen the fog banks of Midway and Lower Basin to the north, but there also people said it wasn't that bad.

One thing people don't realize is that a Rift delay doesn't always happen after Rift starts. Sometimes the delay is that wait you have from one West Triplet eruption without a Rift to the next one where Rift starts. This morning, though, we just had a long wait between West Triplet eruptions for no good reason. And while last night's two burst eruption was far too short, this morning we had nearly three minutes that could and should have been broken up.

Overnight, around 04:30 there were a series of small (1.9 to 2.9) earthquakes centered in the Lower Basin, somewhere between Thud Group and Porcupine Hills. It was felt by a few in this area, as well as campers at Madison. But it appears they had no effect that was visible.

On the other hand, the monitor confirmed that I did see a second minor at Castle last night, and we didn't get the major until 12:48. Despite the winds (from the north) Daisy's intervals dropped below 2 hours. And Beehive reminded people that just because the last few indicators were over 15 minutes doesn't mean it still can't toss in a 6 minute one.

The rest of the day was filler time. Daisy was having intervals below two hours, and Grotto started another marathon. Oblong wasn't reported, either. While waiting for evening Grand, Penta looked good like it did the other day, but once again, just as Penta was about to start, Sawmill took over.

The pair of coyotes who tried to harvest marmots behind Grand the other day were back during the evening Grand wait. They made two attempts, the first of which seems to actually have some planning, or at least appeared that way. The first one crossed the boardwalk between Rift and Belgian, and slowly made its way along the base of the hillside, right next to Grand. All the while the marmots were chirping, but the coyote seemed to not mind or care. A few minutes later the second appeared. This one quickly ran up the hill a ways before trying to snatch a meal. No such luck. About an hour later one of them appeared on the northern edge, again without success. In any case, it appears these two know that there are meals to be had behind Grand. Now if they can only acquire them.

Grand itself first waited for Rift, then for sunset before erupting. As it seems happens way to much to be mere chance, the eruption occurred on the last possible Turban before darkness. As it was, we even had a little light to see the way back. The eruption itself was another eleven minute long one burst, notable only for Turban and Vent continuing instead of their usual pause.

Posted by HKoenig at 01:21 PM | Permalink

An overcast night turned into a gray, dull morning. Grand was there, somewhere, inside all that steam, and Castle would have been much nicer if it had been backlit by the rising sun. But there's no rain with these clouds, which is an improvement over many Memorial Day weekends I remember.

In the dark I thought I heard frogs croaking off in the distance, north of Castle. Years ago that swampy area north of the lift station was their home. The racket they made would cease when people got close, and then one year they just disappeared completely. Would be nice to get them back.

Also, I noticed how it is possible for things around here to improve instead of get worse. Years ago there were problems with the lights from the buildings and parking lots. Over the years it was the Lodge, or the Inn parking lot, or Lower Ham's or the gas station. One year it was so bad that I could see my shadow on the trees by the trail at Rift. That's no longer a problem. There are still lights in from all those areas, but they are unobtrusive and do not detract from the nighttime experience. (Although I must admit I don't know if that's also the case on Geyser Hill, with it's direct exposure to the developments.) I hope the new Visitor's Temple creators resisted the temptation to illuminate their masterpiece, although I have my doubts about that cupola on the top.

Until around noon or so it was a dull, gray day. Then the hints at dawn that the clouds might break became reality. Sort of. At least the sun came out and things warmed up, but also got windy. It only lasted an hour or so, and then it was back to dull gray, but the wind didn't go away. After the mid afternoon Beehive eruption, the promised afternoon showers finally materialized. Enough to dampen the roads and walkways, but not much else. And even that didn't matter as by then there wasn't anything much going on. (Well, unless you had an uncontrollable urge to see Oblong or Grotto start.) Besides, it's not a Memorial Day weekend if there's not at least some rain.

The rains appeared ended by the time Castle was due, and the weather radar maps showed that there should not be any more heavy showers after that. Unfortunately, because of the rain I was a bit slow getting out to Castle, and saw the start from the parking lot. I got there just in time to get a duration on the minor eruption.

The weather radars were wrong, as there was one last shower as I arrived at Grand as the last light faded. Just enough to wet things down one last time and to make sure I had to put on all the rain gear. A West Triplet eruption with neither Grand or Rift accompanying it let me know I'd be there a while too. Was there long enough to catch the next eruption of Castle just before Grand, at least I thought it was Castle.

So after a long string of steady Turban intervals, suddenly Turban starts when I was expecting to hear the first trickles of overflow. Yep, Grand is reaching into the past and letting me know that it can still have sub-sixteen minutes Turban intervals that lead to an eruption. Because of the dark, I have no idea what went on out there, but assume it was a very good, early fill. Then one more reminder of who is in charge-- a two burst eruption lasting less than nine minutes. After all that wait, I really wanted that third burst. But that also meant that Vent and Turban never stopped, so I was back at the parking lot within half an hour.

As for Castle, I'm not sure what I saw. It sure looked like major activity in the three or so minutes before Grand, but when I walked by, it was quiet. I may have got to witness a pair of minor eruptions in a row.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:02 AM | Permalink

Looking at the weather predictions for the next few day, I decided that today would be my only real chance to be out for a nighttime Grand eruption. Besides, Castle was also predicted for the same time frame, and there was even a chance for Beehive. So worth the effort. But what kind of interval to expect. Decided to compromise on getting up at the 7 hour mark.

The night before a small herd of bison was hanging around the Lower Ham's parking lot. (Such that when I arrived at the end of Grand, I thought I might have to wait to get to my truck. So when I pulled into the parking lot in the dark, it occurred to me that I might need to take that into consideration when I biked out. I know there was a least one bison out there somewhere, as I could hear it snort both when I left and when I came back.

It turns out that I wasn't out long, either. When I arrived in the parking lot, I thought I heard a thumping type sound, but dismissed it as Sawmill. Walking up it was obvious that Sawmill wasn't erupting and hadn't erupted recently. West Triplet was erupting, and hoped that it was the reason that the Grand area looked so steamy from Castle. Nope. I arrived during the post eruption pause, and thanks to the steam, I had to finally hear the deep rumbling of an empty Turban vent to be sure.

Wasn't a complete waste of time, as Castle did start as I crossed the bridge going out, and was going into steam on my way back.

The bison herd that hanging around last night was still in the area in the morning, all spread out in the meadow between Castle and Old Faithful. I noticed that it looked like some of them were headed towards crossing the river and invading the Sawmill Group. So I headed out for Grand a bit earlier than I would have normally, but I was also hoping for a short interval. As it was, most of the bison went elsewhere, although about six or so did wander downriver past the Scalloped Springs and Witches Cauldron.

Next morning's Grand was a classic example that the Rift delay can come before the eruption of Rift. Based on Rift's intervals, I was hoping that Grand would get in a eruption and then we'd get the West Triplet and Rift eruptions. We did, but about two hours later than it could have. West Triplet was erupting as I arrived, and quit shortly thereafter. At about that time, Rift was steaming heavily, and it looked as if it was going to start, but didn't. The next Turban interval was a little over 24 minutes long, a sort of half-hearted delay. After that, there was nothing more to do than to wait out a series of mediocre Turban intervals until it was time for the next West Triplet.

After Grand's second burst, the pool refilled and stayed up and sloshing for about a minute. Too long, it turned out, and we had to settle for two nice bursts, the second one much higher than the first. After that, it was West Triplet and Rift, as expected.

  While waiting for Rift, I notice a large bird circling overhead. Too big to be one of the osprey (one of which came over Grand yesterday with its catch). Binoculars showed it was an eagle. I never saw its wings move, but it kept circling higher and higher until once when I looked away I couldn't pick it back up.

Oblong had been full since first observed in the morning, and by the time Rift started, that was close to seven hours. So I decided to take advantage of having nothing to do to put in an hour when an eruption there was likely. My hour was about up when we got the eruption. There were some audible thumps, but nothing that I felt, and the height of the surges did not match the impressive activity I've seen from Grand. So it was time to trudge back to Castle and get my bike and take care of more mundane activities, like eating. I had just unlocked and mounted my bike when the call came out that water was visible in Beehive's Indicator. Great timing. So I walked back to Sawmill (which was in a Deep Drain mode eruption) and over to Geyser Hill. The wind was ideal, no one on the walkway got wet. That also meant I was able to station myself right in the shadow of Beehive's water column to get a nice backlit eruption. Then it was back to the bike. Again.

A few hours after Beehive, the clouds came. No rain, other than a few droplets on the windshield, but it was a definite mood change from the previous days. While waiting for the evening Grand, I got to swat my first mosquito of the season. I'd prefer that to be the last, but know I won't get that lucky unless it rains for the next few days.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:04 PM | Permalink

This morning I knew that Grand wuold have gone well before I got out there. Unless, of course, it had a really long interval an, which would mean that I still made the right decision in not going out to wait for hours in the cold and dark. What I didn't want to see was Vent and Turban. I got my wish, as the pool was near but below overflow. I did see the overflow start at around 06:30, which put the eruption at around 02:00. Perfect, as that put the next eruption, most likely, before noon.

Another reason I was out there was to check on the Sawmill Group. Definitely wanted to catch a Penta if I could, and at first it looked like the group was going to oblige. Sawmill overflowed for a bit, then dropped, but Penta never really had the look of an immenent eruption. The surging over the bottom vents, though, was an encouraging sign that I might want to be around for the next cycle.

Since it was still early, I decided to take advantage of a loop around Geyser Hill. On a hot, crowded afternoon, Geyser Hill isn't all that pleasant, but in the cold morning, it's well worth the time. I did get to wait for an over 80 minute Plume interval, and saw a few new holes I hadn't noticed before, but otherwise, it looked unexciting.

When I returned to the Sawmill Group, I noticed that there was evidence of Churn eruptions.The gravel near the boardwalk was wet and there were puddles. Churn itself was well below overflow. But the group was rising, and again everything looked good for Penta. The water levels rose nicely, and as Spasmodic started to overflow and the back vent to erupt, Penta started to sputter from its main vent. A little while later, as the Penta pool neared overflow, the bottom left vent started to bubble heavily. Another good sign, I thought, until I heard some thumping over to my left. So much for Penta, as it's pool dropped into the vents within moments of Sawmill's start.

Turns out my guess for Grand's previous eruption matched the monitor time, so it was time to shed some jackets, reload the pack and head back out. On my walk back to the Sawmill group I noticed some fresh, wet dog-like tracks on the boardwalk among all the cold springs. At Grand we got to see the makers of those tracks, a pair of coyotes who failed in their attempts to harvest a marmot or two. One failure and they decided to move on.

The Grand eruption itself was very nice. What little wind there was pushed the steam an spray back onto the rocks and towards Rift. Considering that usually at that time of day the wind has picked up, and is blowing the steam to the north, it made for a nice backlit eruption without all the steam of early morning. And of course, Beehive's Indicator started during the second burst. Unlike yesterday, I decided that I'd had enough exercise for a while, and watched the eruption from the bridge. Again, the nice wind conditions made for an impressively tall column.

And then, what to do? Time to take advantage of the time to visit Daisy, then it's nap time. Today, perhaps thanks to the lack of wind, the Daisy intervals were a little over two hours.

The evening Grand was preceded by a not unexpected Rift eruption, but if Rift is having a delay effect, this time it only added about 45 minutes. During the wait we got to see a second Oblong for the day, an interval that was identical to Grand's: 9h17m. The one burst eruption was nice, thanks to the lack of wind and low sunlighting. At one point it was so calm that Grand had a small base surge develop and obscure the base of the water column.

The new Visitor Temple is at the stage where they are installing the insulation, so it's covered with white Tyvek making it look like a huge white plastic wrapped block. Or as Paul Strasser suggested, one of Christo's lesser attempts.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:26 PM | Permalink

Let's start this year's visit with a rant.

Every first visit of the season seems to have one thing in common. I get to find out what has changed since I left in the fall. Not changes in the geysers, that's a given. Changes in the way the place is run. Rarely does it seem that the changes are for the better. It's not just nostalgia for the way things were a quarter century ago, either. It seems that every year, there are more restrictions, more inconveniences, more actions which would get businesses cited by OSHA or the EPA, more cutbacks in service. The little things do matter. Sometimes I get the feeling the motto should be "for the benefit and enjoyment of no one but us."

This year has been no exception.

Let's start with the removal of trash containers, like the one at the Lower Ham's. The excuse is that it takes too many hours to service all the trash cans. While that may be true, where will those freed up hours be used? What is the average visitor, who doesn't seen any obvious receptacle going to think or do? I expect another increase in the general shabbiness of that area.

Then there's the large trash dumpster, a replacement for some of removed trashcans in front of the Inn which is blocking one of the paved access paths between the parking lot and the bike trail. I guess it's convenient for the trash crews, but what about those of us who used the bike trail as a bike trail?

Speaking of bike trail. In front of the new Visitor Temple (a monstrosity that will deserve rants all its own...), the cement bike trail and path to Old Faithful is all torn up and closed as a "construction zone". I assume that the powers that be have decided that a new building deserves a pretty new walkway all the way out to the boardwalk. (Wonder how much that's gonna cost...) In any case, the only way between the current VC and the Lodge and the rest of the basin is either on the boardwalk itself, or you have to ride all the way over to the Snowlodge and then behind the Inn. There is simply no alternate route provided. (And I found out the hard way, that plastic walkway at Old Faithful is extremely slippery on a bike.) Can you imagine some business doing this and getting away with it? "We're the NPS. You just get in the way of our job."

All the boardwalks from Biscuit Basin to Fountain Paint Pots are closed, "due to bear management". Bear Management being the all purpose excuse for not bothering to actually provide visitor services in the springtime. This particular closure came about because, supposedly, someone noticed that the bear closure regulations which have been in use for decades include those walkways, and for some reason, now we must enforce the exact letter of them. As opposed to the Superintendent amending those regs to keep those walkways accessible.

Maintenance of course, took that closure opportunity to redo the Fountain Paint Pots walkways. Which would seem, at least, that someone was looking ahead and taking advantage of an existing closure. But as anyone who saw the speed at which the boardwalks were rebuild in the Upper Basin a few years back would tell you, they are not finished, and apparently not even close to finished. So the trail there will stay closed.

"I feel much better now, I really do."

What about the geysers? Both Giant and Fan & Mortar are not going to erupt any time soon. Bious is powerful and continuous. Penta appears active almost every other day, with frequent Tardy cycles in that group. Today Beehive provided a bonus eruption in the evening with a nice wind direction, no shifting, and a full arc double rainbow.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:34 PM | Permalink

The promised snow didn't appear, everything was only slightly wet this morning. But it was cold and overcast, and quickly got windy, too.

The Grotto marathon eruption ended overnight, and by the time I got there, Bijou was already back to erupting strongly and continuously. There was some indication that Giant might start having hot periods, but I didn't stick around. But on my way down there, I did have an animal encounter of sorts. As I passed by the grove of trees below Castle to the east, a couple of coyotes suddenly took exception to my passing by. They yelled at me the whole time I was in view, even when I got up to the Castle bike rack. This also set off all the other packs in the basin, so soon the whole areas echoed with yelps. In all the years of biking on that trail, both day and night, that was a first.

Since Grand was an empty crater, and Beehive's Indicator started while I was checking out Bijou, that meant that there was nothing to do in the Upper Basin, I decided to leave, but when Lynn Stephens told me she was headed for Great Fountain because it was probably due soon, I decided that I had the time to see my eruption for the year. I got there well into the overflow, and the start was pretty good. I guess it didn't realize I was there. I also forgot about parking and the wind direction there, but my truck wasn't in any danger this time.

On the return from my first trip to Yellowstone in 1982 with my then just purchased old truck, I got a nice rock chip in the windshield in a construction zone near Burns, Oregon. I then went 25 more years without another such hit. This time at least it was on the last return trip of the season, in the just completed construction zone around Rigby, Idaho. Oh, well.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:29 PM | Permalink

After yesterday, it was to be expected that the day would be a bit dull.

As I reported before, the night was warm. The weather prediction for today was for cold and rainy, but the only rain was in the morning, and nothing more than a few drops. The rest of the day was warm and blustery, with rain only returning at the end of the day. It's supposed to snow tonight.

The only real geyser news was that sometime during the night Grotto began its first marathon eruption since Giant's eruption on Tuesday. My mid-morning Spa had already had its eruptions, but Bijou showed little inclination to go to sleep. There were distinct Bijou shutdowns accompanied by some of the trappings of a hot period attempt, but that was only another indication that the platform was in flux.

Add in a couple of Grand eruptions, a Beehive and even some Daisys, and it made for a quiet day.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:19 PM | Permalink

On a normal morning, by 06:00 there's a certain amount of radio chatter. You get a lot of reports of eruptions on Geyser Hill or of larger features down basin, along with the occasional "switch to 5". This morning from when I awoke at 06:00 until 06:45, there was dead silence. I was wondering if my radio was mistuned or not working in some way, but Alan Friedman demonstrated that it was working just fine. He then got people down basin to confirm what all the vehicles in the Lower Ham's lot was saying (both the ones there and the ones missing). That Fan & Mortar had not erupted overnight.

It turned out to be a busy day. Grand had a nice two burst eruption, but the nearly three minute long second burst let us know that we could have had more.

Down at Grotto, there was quite a crowd waiting for an eruption of Rocket. Of course these were really people waiting for F&M. Over the period of about an hour, Rocket had several false starts before finally and reluctantly erupting. Unlike my experiences in the past, this Rocket Major did not start suddenly but at first looked like one of these "Rocket Minors" we'd been seeing.

After that, it was more Fan and Mortar. Some people stayed out there overnight, and so we knew definitely that there had not been any attempts at eruptions. After the Rocket Major, we were approaching 26 hours since the event yesterday. When I arrived, the people who'd been there were ignoring what to me (and others) looked like some strong activity from Fan. I asked, half-jokingly, "so tell me what its about this that looks so bad?" That when things got interesting. The vents of Fan really did look like the strong play that preceded eruptions back in the 1980s. After all the random "garbage mode", it was quite a difference. Tara belatedly put out a radio call, only to have F&M moments later force her retract it as the vents suddenly dropped in vigor and height. And went back to previous behavior.

Looking at the time, I decided that I could just as easily wait for any further events in the parking lot, and after a while, head out for the mid-day Grand. But first, a stop for Daisy seemed worthwhile. It was right after that eruption that I heard that splashing had been seen in Fan's Main Vent. Well, so much for my plans. Back to F&M. By the time I got there, the splashing had pretty much stopped. It wasn't long, however, before the Fan vents started, and they didn't follow the pattern of the last day-and-a-half. This time they were taking their time. Instead of Gold Vent following High vent within a minute, we saw several minutes of High splashing. Between these splashes the water level, just below the overflow lip, could be seen from the right locations. Finally, when Gold did start, the activity of High stayed vigorous, and its height seemed to increase.

By now I was getting to experience activity which I'd not seen before. In years past, when I'd seen a start, once the "lock" stage had been acheived, it was only a matter of moments before the eruption began. Here the lock seemed to drag on and on. In a few minutes High vent was erupting at at least 8 to 10 feet, with Gold going 4 to 6. Angle had turned to steam and still no eruption. Then Main vent began to have small surges, each one bigger than the previous. Even after the East vent began erupting it took Main about ten seconds to join in.

Mortar's vents showed a bit of water, then shut down. Not even steam. With a fairly strong breeze from the west, this gave us a clear, unobstructed and dry view of Fan for several minutes. Then suddenly Mortar came back to life, and everyone who'd tried for that closer clear view became wet. All three of Mortar's vents seemed to come and go independently of each other. While getting wet from Main vent meant getting hit on the fly by warm water, from Mortar it was a cold, soaking mist.

With the considerable warning, and it being the start of a three-day weekend, there was quite a crowd of gazers there. No census,but wouldn't surprise me that the number was close to one hundred. There must have also been and equivalent number of visitors who wandered up during the preliminary excitements. Fortunately Riverside wasn't near an eruption, because adding in that crowd would have made the walkway impassible.

The F&M eruption was short, only 29 minutes to the last water, and then there was a final huff of steam from all the vents. During the eruption we also got activity, of a sort, from South Norris Pool. The water level rose and was accompanied by boiling along the southwestern edge. It was almost an eruption.

After the eruption it was time to head for the Grand eruption which I had thought would be my place of waiting for the event. Turns out Grand had other ideas, as just as I was about to get on the bike to head out, the call comes that Grand has started. A 6 and a half hour interval. I did get there in time to see the second burst, which was perfectly timed just as the wind paused. An already tall burst was not cut down by wind.

Next up was Penta. It started a steam-phase eruption shortly after the Grand eruption. Most steam phases aren't really that interesting, but this one put out a lot of water. The runoff eventuallly reached beyond the walkway. The Top vent was roaring loudly, at times putting out nothing but steam. Meanwhile, Oval started to rise and burst to several feet. This activity lasted several minutes before the water level resumed its usual Deep Drain levels.

By this time it appeared that everything of interest that could erupt had done so, but not quite. After erupting some time during the night, Beehive had what had to be a short interval to finish off the day with a nice, but wind reduced water column.

Meanwhile, down at Giant, Bijou is starting to have shutdowns and Mastiff is showing that it can have "bathtub" hot periods. It wouldn't be surprising for Giant to erupt some time in the middle of the coming week. It's been iknown to do that in the past.

The weather prediction was for increasing cloudiness and increasing wet, and by sunset that had become obvious. But with the clouds came a warmer night. During the wait for the nighttime Grand, I never even felt the desire to dig out all the coats and blankets I would have put to use on a more typical night (like the day before...) We were also treated to occasional heavy gusts of wind and periods of dead calm, and a few spits of wetness.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:07 AM | Permalink

Fan & Mortar continue to show their contempt for me, and everyone else gets to suffer too.

Last night I learned that the previous eruption was not at 02:37, but four hours earlier, at 22:37. This was both good and bad news. Bad in that it meant that the window would open just about the time I arrived at dawn, and that I now had a chance of missing an eruption by being late. Good in that two short (less than two-and-a-half days) intervals would allow me to see the chance to see two eruptions.

F&M took the third option, which was to throw in a long interval after having several shorts. Shortly after I arrived it started having the kind of activity that can lead up to an eruption: it had a lot of powerful surging in the Main Vent, and three pauses before the Fan vents began erupting. But that wasn't enough, and we got no eruption.

Then it spent the next twelve hours not even trying to erupt. By sunset, there had yet to be anything seen from main vent. Most of the cycles had Angle vent playing the whole time. Quite disappointing, and just another reason to never be optimistic about that geyser.

Elsewhere, Grand is taking advantage of the shorter days to make sure that two of the three daily eruptions occur in the dark, with the third right in the middle of the day. The evening eruption was one of those where Grand was waiting for West Triplet, while W.T. was waiting for Grand, so neither wanted to erupt any time soon. But it was only a nine hour interval, so guess I should complain too much.

I did see the latter stages of a Tilt eruption, my first of the year. I also noticed that the hole across from Scalloped Spring has, for the first time I know of, water visible in it, about two feet below the surface. Just another reason that the board walk there will need to relocated. (The more likely alternative is a collapse, and then the NPS will shut it down for weeks while deciding what to do about it.)

Posted by HKoenig at 03:53 PM | Permalink

Weekend trip wasn't a total bust, but you'd think that by showing up at the start of Fan & Mortar's eruption window, I'd get to see more than one attempt at eruption. Which is what I got: over half an hour of the Bottom Vent erupting and pouring out water only to be followed by what was quickly and obviously not very strong Fan activity.

That happened around noontime on Saturday, and by sunset there hadn't been a second attempt. I was out almost at dawn (06:00) and by the time I left at noon, there still hadn't been any attempt.

There is something about those geysers that makes me have to work hard to see them. There have been some years when they've been fairly active, like 1997, where I could be there for weeks (months?) and still miss all the eruption starts. When I do see an eruption from the start, it sure feels like I've always had to spend at least a day down there waiting for it. Sure, I might walk up onto it, but that was the second day, the first being spent broiling on that gritty embankment. (Back in the days before the benches and boardwalk.

On the other hand, I did get to witness the next stage in the evolution of Sputnik and friends. Previously, Mary Beth Schwarz has been seeing them erupt at or near the start of a West Triplet eruption. On Sunday after Grand, at about a time when we'd have already seen West Triplet start, we saw two independent eruptions. They were twenty minutes apart, and twenty minutes after the second was when West Triplet started and we got a third eruption.

We also saw activity from a new vent. All of the previous activity had been by vents that were active back in the late '80s/early '90s, and correspond nicely to my maps and notes from back then. (I've got some Lynn Stephens photos from 1989 I'll try to scan and post, and see if I can still get at the disk files with my maps.) But this little sput, only a couple of inches high, is new. Or at least never caught my attention. Like Sput "a", it's out on the sinter sheet, on a slightly raised ridge that lead to, if I can remember correctly, the site of East Triplet, and is about half-ways between the two larger features. Now if we can only get East Triplet itself to try to clean itself out.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:03 PM | Permalink

Finally saw the reactivated sputs by Grand. These are in the exact same place as the sputs of the early 1980s, but their behavior has changed.

Back then they were pretty much active all the time up to a Rift eruption,which would kill them. Sort of like the way Percolator behaves even today. But now they only erupt for a few minutes. The activity, especially from the leftmost one,which probably is at the location of the original Sputnik, was going at least two or three feet high at one point. Also of interest is that the water starts out a muddy gray, only to turn clear as the eruption progressed. A good sign that they are still cleaning a decade or so's accumulation of debris out of their vents. And based on this behavior, I'm even more convinced that this is North Triplet we're seeing.

I also learned that an umbrella is no protection from Beehive when there's a still breeze right at you. I had a circular dry spot on my front, but my pack and legs were soaked. Fortunately, the day was warm and sunny, so it only took a few hours to dry out completely.

On Saturday Castle also pulled one of its pause eruptions. It really didn't look like it wanted to start, and after about 4-1/2 minutes, it finally quit. After determining that it was definitely quiet, I waited for the mass of people to leave and then followed them. But before that, I remarked to several people that it was known to restart at any time. I got partway down the hill when I heard it erupting, again. So after about a seven minute pause, it restarted and continued with the major eruption. And it was no surprise to learn that it did have the minor eruption during the night.

Otherwise it was a pretty dull weekend, but the point was to field test my new iPhone geyser-log program. In that regard, I was successful, as I got over four pages of notes on bugs, enhancements and things that just weren't going to work the way I had expected. Now to spend the next few weeks fixing all of them.

Posted by HKoenig at 05:46 PM | Permalink

A morning of watching Fan & Mortar do nothing much persuaded me that I might as well head home. Plus I followed my rule of never letting Grand suck me in when heading out.

It was nice of Grand and Rift to keep Grand's eruptions synchronized so that at least two of the three eruptions per day took place during dark, or semi-dark conditions. This despite it being the time of year where it's dark for only about 7 hours.

But I was wondering about one thing. On my first night trip out to Grand I encountered a coyote in front of the Lodge. This morning it appears that it had found all the stuff one of the cabin guests had left outside, and scattered some of it about. Which got me to wondering. Years ago, every evening I'd hear over the radio scanner that one of the Protective Rangers was about to do a "food security" sweep of the Lodge cabins. And it wasn't unusual for them to make contact with someone just about every night. I've seen a lot of coolers and grills and other such stuff out in the open in the Lodge area. When did they stop the sweeps, and who gets sued when a food-related wildlife incident occurs? (The woman at the front desk when I checked out also said that the Rangers had finally collected the carcass sitting on the plastic bag behind my cabin. It'd been pretty well picked clean, so there wasn't any smell.)

One advantage to having the bison herd in along the Madison River is that people in the outbound lane have already seen bison, and aren't as likely to cause the two mile long backup that they had of all the people arriving in the Park.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:12 AM | Permalink

Yesterday evening Mary Beth Schwarz warned me that she'd seen the old bull bison who hangs around the area in the open space between the Lower Ham's Store and the Inn.

As I'm headed out for the middle of the night Grand, I stop at the top of the slope headed down to the Store to pull up the hood on my jacket. Off to the right, I hear some crunching sounds. The MagLite reveals that it's the bison, slowly making its way toward the Inn. Fortunately, it paused far enough from the trail that I could scoot on past.

Later that morning, the bison was busy again. This time marking his territory, leaving two large gooey hazards on the bike trail cutoff in front of the lift station and gas station. I saw it put down the second hazard, and it was almost like it was positioning itself before release.And since it's the time of year where there's not much rain, the bison's handiwork could be there for weeks.

Because of the quick trip, I did something I normally wouldn't do. When a call went out that Fan & Mortar had had the activity which is indicative of a possible eruption (River vent pause, Main vent splashing), I left Grand. Normally I'd just hope for the best, that Grand would cooperate and erupt soon, or that Fan & Mortar wouldn't erupt at all. If they did, then I'd just rationalize that I would have plenty more opportunities.The worst case is to leave, and end up seeing neither.

Which is exactly what happened. I got down to F&M just in time for things to die down. I waited to return just long enough that when Mary Beth made the call that the eruption was imminent, I was only as far as Grotto when it started. I could have lived with having gotten as far as the bend of the River. It's a nice view, and I watched the eruption from there. So when it quit after only about 9 minutes, I thought it would also be a great place to see a second burst. Which never came.

The rest of the day was spent watching F&M play around and do nothing. They didn't even try to look like they were going to erupt until about 8 hours after the first false alarm. Then Grand had another short eruption, but this time at least it was a two burst one.

The day did end nicely, however. While we were waiting for the evening Grand, it was obvious that the Sawmill Group was in Tardy mode. Which means that the next cycle has a good chance of there being a Penta eruption. I waited after Grand to see what would happen, telling myself that I could leave after the sun set. I didn't want to get sucked into waiting until after dark for nothing to happen. I was just about to follow through with my promise to myself, as things didn't look that great. Penta had overflowed a bit, but not the flood I remember seeing before a start. Sawmill had also started to overflow, and that's a sign I could do without. But then the left front vent bubbled, and I got sucked in. That's too good a sign, even with less than ideal overflow. There was one more, stronger series of bubbling, along with some bubbling from the right vent.Then the third time, the bubbling continued, with both vents getting stronger until the main vent finally joined in.

Posted by HKoenig at 05:33 AM | Permalink

I thought that Thursday was pretty boring, but Friday was even more so.

The day started promising enough, with a predawn but well lit two burst Grand. But then Beehive erupted before I could even go past Sawmill on the way to Geyser Hill. Which meant that the best use of my time would be to head in and take a nap.

The mosquitoes are bad, and aren't going to get better for a while. While sitting next to the dorm trying to upload yesterday's report, I splatter at least two of them who left crimson splotches. Well, I have experience worse. There was one trip coming back from Shoshone where I stopped at the Grand Pass spring only long enough to refill the water bottles. Every time I stopped they were everywhere, being held at bay only by applications of full strength DEET Cutter's. And even then some would get through.

Without a big feature or two to liven things up, these short trips can have a lot of downtime. If I were here for weeks, I'd have some other projects to fill in the time, or maybe take care of those maintenance tasks like doing laundry or cooking a real meal. It's my hope that Fan & Mortar fill that void for the next couple of days, and maybe for future trips this summer.

It also doesn't help when all the geysers erupt within a half-hour period. Between 20:00 and 20:30 we had eruptions of Grand, Beehive, Oblong, Daisy and Riverside. Castle had already gone a few hours earlier. And then the one geyser I wanted to see finish off the list, Rift, didn't put in an appearance, meaning I'd get to deal with it during the night.

My first night in the cabin area, there weren't any parking spaces. So I was surprised that when I got back from Grand, the place was empty, with space everywhere. Around 23:00 I found out one reason why: a large tour group arrived, with the usual dragging of suitcases and discussions of who goes where and banging doors.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:53 AM | Permalink

If I hadn't known that it had erupted the day before (at 14:33 on 02 July), I could have been fooled by Fan & Mortar's behavior this morning. Around 06:00, only about 16 hours after the eruption, I got to see a perfect example of post-eruption type activity. The water levels are low, which seems to make the normal splashing and surging that F&M are always doing even more vigorous. During the fifteen minutes I was there, Mortar's Bottom Vent was erupting most of the time, with some bursts to two meters. This produced overflow  down the various catchbasins and into the river. On the Fan side, the Main Vent as the star. As it always does, the surging in the two geysers dies down only to be followed by a quick restart. A number of these restarts were accompanied by Main Vent splashing well above its rim accompanied by explosive sounds. But none of the other signs of high water were there, so time to move on.

Grand appears to have had two long intervals in a row. The second, daytime one was accompanied by Rift. The Turban intervals leading up to the eruption started long but after a couple got progressively shorter until dropping just under 17 minutes. Some of the sputs between Rift and Grand have reactivated, but have only been seen for a few minutes, unlike past years when they could be active most any time.

Giant is dead for now. The platform was mostly dry. I was told that the puddles that I did see were probably due to huge cone-filling surges out the front that look impressive, but mean little. Mastiff is having the same sort of activity, but there are no real hot periods any more. Some day this summer, it's just going to erupt without warning, just like it's done in past slowdown years.

For a short trip, it doesn't make sense to not take advantage of a geyser I wouldn't put in the same effort if I were here for weeks or months. Since it was obvious that Grand wasn't going to be anytime soon, I went to Geyser Hill and waited for Beehive. Perfect conditions, dead calm but warm enough that the steam wasn't obscuring. I was able to stand on the boardwalk closest to the cone and see a double 210° rainbow, and only get wet once. (But the umbrella served its purpose there.) I may even have to visit the Lower Basin.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:26 AM | Permalink

After a string of single burst eruptions, this morning it tossed in a three. And considering the weather, it was pretty good: no rain and calm. Also the sky behind the water column provided some contrast making the water column visible. But following the eruption, I was left with the bigger question— what to do next? By 09:00 it was obvious that the best choice was to head home.

I think I need to get over to Geyser Hill more. Shortly after making the last posting, I talked with Scott Bryan who informed me that the water level I'd seen in Vault was normal, at least for the last few years. It dropped to that level a few years ago after a series of independent Vault eruptions.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:02 PM | Permalink

It's a lot easier going out into a cold, rainy day when you've got a good night's sleep. The early morning Grand eruption of course started just as the rain picked up, and the rain ended soon after Grand did.

The channel leading to the new drain for Old Tardy's runoff appears to be wider and deeper than it was last week. The hole itself doesn't seem much changed, but I have yet to see Old Tardy in eruption, either. The vents by the bridge aren't as murky as yesterday. I'm assuming that that means there's not been an eruption recently. (Alternative is that they are erupting frequently enough to start to clear out the system.)

The river seems higher and murkier than it had been yeserday, but I guess the cold, steady rain is having its effect.

Probably the best indication that Giant is not going to erupt soon is that all the people who in previous Mays (or previous days) would have made an effort to go down and wait for something to happen instead today went to see Great Fountain. (You know the basin is empty when no one reports a Plume eruption on the radios.) Not that that wasn't a good decision. I killed an hour down there. The amount of splashing from Giant is impressive. On several occasions it slopped out the front, leaving a steaming pool at the base of the cone that could almost have been mistaken for the result of hot period activity. But when it came time for the hot period, everything looked wrong. The southwestern platform vents preceded Feather by over a minute. Bijou didn't even try to slow down. If it had any reaction to the hot period, it didn't show it until the end. That's when it went into a nice steam phase which in previous years would have followed an eight to ten minute long hot period. Otherwise, Bijou reminds me of its appearance back in the 1980s.

Since it seems a waste to be here for only a couple of days and not be out and about, I decided that I should make an effort to visit various parts of the basin. Another sign of how dull things were is that I did something I probably haven't done in close to two decades. I waited for an eruption of Riverside. It was too steamy to see much, so maybe it shouldn't count.

Paid a visit to Geyser Hill: walk the loop, catch a Plume and get lucky with anything else. In this case, got to see a nice eruption of Lion that started while I was down by Depression. (There was an Aurum while I was at Plume, but that doesn't count.) But what I found interesting is that both Vault and Infant were down about 3 inches from their respective rims. It seems a bit long for them to have not recovered from the Giantess eruption. Or have my Geyser Hill visits been so rare that I no longer even know what is normal for them?

While waiting for the late evening Grand eruption, I got to witness a perfect example of how people get themselves lost.

The sun had already set but it still wasn't totally dark. There were three other people besides me waiting for the eruption, when up from the Sawmill Group up walked a man. From accent it was obvious that his native language came from somewhere in East Asia. But language didn't seem to be an issue. He asked the couple, "is this the way to Old Faithful?"

Now at this point all that could be seen down basin were the whitish splotches of various steam clouds. Behind him were all the lit up buildings of the Old Faithful area. He was told, no, you need to go back the way you came. But he insisted that he needed to keep heading downbasin, despite repeated attempts to make clear that he was wrong.

The second woman waiting even gave him simple instructions, "go back to the junction, go right across the river to the paved trail, then left towards the lights." The last we saw of him, he was headed towards Geyser Hill.

The man asked for information and directions multiple times, yet every time he got an answer that he didn't like, or didn't fit what he needed to hear, he'd asked again. It would seem obvious with it getting dark that the way to civilization was toward the lights, yet he wanted to go farther into the dark. Why did he bother to ask us when he wasn't prepared to listen? What would he have done, how far downbasin would he have gotten, if no one had been waiting at Grand?

Posted by HKoenig at 07:18 AM | Permalink

Today showed a number of the ways that things can go wrong on a weekend trip, or at least how they can not be as good as they could be. Nothing catastrophic, like for last year when my old truck immediately needed repairs the day I arrived. Just a bunch of annoyances.

First, I left from home too soon, so I arrived in the park while it was still dark. I'd forgotten what nighttime driving here can be like. It's something I've never liked it, even if it's the one time of day that the roads are free of other vehicles. The odds of meeting up with a bison are just too great. To make things worse, there was thick fog almost the entire way from West Yellowstone. Doing 30mph was more than fast enough, but some stretches, like the Firehole south of the canyon until the Lower Basin, seemed to go forever.

And the bison still made their presence felt. There must have been a large herd using the road as a trail just a few hours earlier, because the lower part of my truck behind each wheel on the left side was thick with manure. I will definitely be visiting a carwash when I get home.

So I figure the best time to arrive would be just before sunrise.It will be light, but before the bison and most visitors are up and about and blocking the road. Last weekend I arrived after the ranger-in-a-box went on duty, and had to deal with both varieties of obstruction. I want to set up a nice routine that gets followed every trip, so I keep the thinking about it to a minimum. (The same goes for prepacking needed items not used at home, and making checklists for the stuff that I need to gather up.)

The weather wasn't nice either. The fog turned into gray overcast skies, which turned into precipitation. Unfortunately, it warmed up just enough so that it was rain and not snow. This continued off an on all afternoon, although it could actually be nice when the sun broke through and the wind died down With a limited amount of time, it seems a waste to be sitting and waiting to go out, but if there is nothing to wait for, there's also no point in getting soaked and chilled. This was typical weather for late spring, and one of the reasons I have usually avoided long visits this time of year. (Last year being an exception due to job commitments that worked out well.) I knew from the forecast it was going to be scattered rain. Just means in future years, springtime trips will be limited and subject to cancellation.

Then there were the petty annoyances: I broke the wire on the bike's odometer. It's horrible not knowing how far I've gone and how fast I'm going. On the other hand, I can get it fixed or replaced before the next trip, and will also figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Perhaps for the best to get all these things out of the way. It does help set a baseline for what to expect, and I always prefer being pleasantly surprised when things go right. Having to use the rain and cold weather gear did show that I'd packed the right items And I've got another day and a half this trip, in which thngs can go either right or wrongl .

And what about the geysers themselves? I saw another Penta, which is always nice, even if I missed the start. On my way there I finally got to see activity in those features on the other side of Sawmill's runoff at the end of the bridge. I'd seen it before, sometime in the early '90s, but that had been from the walkway just below Crested. This eruption only lasted 39 seconds, so you've really got to be there to see it. The second vent between it and the river drained, then refilled to the rim only to drop down a foot. The water also turned a milky white in all the vents. During the Penta eruption, Churn filled as the rest of the group dropped, but no eruption.

There's also a new feature over on Geyser Hill at the north of that expanse of sputs between Depression and Arrowhead. At least I've never seen it before, and didn't see it last week. I really should try to get to Geyser Hill more often,and for more than just Beehive, especially since it's an easy walk from the Lodge Cabins. There's something about not being able to bike over there that keeps me away.

Grand at least waited until I could get out there this morning. I caught the end of Rift, which was probably the reason. The next Grand was during one of the aforementioned rainstorms. I tried to catch Daisy but a wind shift meant I saw a lot of steam, and not much Daisy. Giant is going to be a great timewaster for the next few weeks. It looks so impressive with all the activity until you realize its been essentially unchanged all month.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:10 PM | Permalink

After returning from last night's Grand eruption, I figured that today not only could I get a slow start, but would have several hours to head down basin to take a look at Daisy, Grotto, Giant and other points of interest. Except it didn't turn out that way.

As I was getting up and about in my cabin, I heard Scott's voice on the radio announcing that Penta was in eruption at 06:44. Knowing that most eruptions of Penta last well short of an hour, I was resigned to not seeing it erupting. So I was surprised when I biked up past Castle and there it was, still going strong at 07:30. I figured I had at least an hour before it was time for Daisy, so I could head over there and catch Penta draining away. Instead, it just kept going, with all the other members of the Sawmill Group full.

Penta, Sawmill & Churn Geysers, 2008 May 18

The Churn eruption seems have been the key to getting Penta to finally quit. As the window for the next Grand eruption was approaching, I took the opportunity to head back to the gas station to prepare for another wait. Sawmill was still going as I returned, but as it seems to do far too often, it quit about the time I passed Scallloped Spring.

Speaking of Grand. Both last night and today's series of Turban eruptions were quite similar. In both cases there was a "Two Turban Delay". Instead of heavy overflow and waves as in years past, in these cases there was visible bubbling in Vent along with what appeared to be a full pool. In both cases, the duration of Turban was short (less than 4 minutes) despite what appeared to be vigorous activity. The following Turban intervals were short, around 17 to 18 minutes, with the Turban eruption lasting around 6 minutes, which is typical activity in such a delay mode. The bubbling in Vent is hard to see unless you know where to look and what to look for, but I wouldn't mind if this became a preferred delay mode. (Sure beats the 7 Turban Delay which takes 10 or more...)

The photos of the new drain vent near Old Tardy will have to wait until tomorrow. I've discovered that, thanks to software upgrades in the last year, I only have one computer that can still read the old Kodak KDC format. And that requires and it can't connect directly to the computer I use to post these messages. So it's become a convoluted task, and probably the incentive I need to finally get a new camera.

I also confirmed that, with my iPhone, I can add geyser eruption times to my Geyser Log database while in the basin and during the actual eruption. The speed is modem-slow, but I can make things a little faster/better by changing around the webpage.

The drive home was exactly what was expected: 6 hours of dullness that ended in my garage.

Other Geyser Times

• Penta, 06:44ie, d>2h15m
• Churn
  • 07:45ie, d>30s, during Penta
  • 08:54, d=1m16s, during Penta and Sawmill
• Sawmill, 08:52, d=55m05s

Posted by HKoenig at 09:06 PM | Permalink

A weekend visits to the park is always different than a long stay. They always seem to feel too hectic,at least for me, and I've always prefered the long stays. It's okay to miss the an eruption that takes place as you arrive, whereas with a weekend, that's a significant portion of what you came for. But when a weekend is all you can get, you take it. Earlier in the week it became farily obvious that this was going to be a really nice couple of days, perhaps the best of the spring, and a good time to figure out how to prepare for future weekend trips this summer. What t I didn't count on were the bears getting in the way.

The entire basin was closed yesterday because there were a couple of bears seen roaming about, including one which earlier in the week had take down a baby bison in full view of visitors up on Geyser Hill. So when I arrived, tthat closure was still in effect, and the choices for what to do were severly limited. I decided the Beehive overlook was the best place to spend my exile. The advantages are that it is near something erupting (Geyser Hill), you can see most features down basin (at least their steam clouds), and Beehive was probably going to erupt this morning. Fortunately, the three hours I spent there resulted in my missing nothing interesting down basin, as Castle had a minor as I arrived and Grand waited until well after the opening. (The less said of Giant and Fan & Mortar, the better.)

The indicator preceded the 10:39 Beehive eruption by only 19 seconds, and was maybe a couple of feet high at most. Beehive was already sloshing heavily when it started, and it quit moments after it became obvious that Beehive was in eruption. It did awaken for a bit later in the eruption, but due to the wind, I was not in a position to see much of it. So while Beehive has been fairly reliable erupting every day, the amount of actual warning you get may be none.

The Sawmill Group was interesting, too. During my exile, I noticed that Tardy was always on every time I looked down basin. So the wet runoff channels but dropping pools was no surprise. Looked like Penta might have a chance during the next cycle. Instead, as I was leaving the area, I saw Churn erupt for the first of three eruptions in the series. The first eruption even had that dead fish smell even though I was told that Churn had been active earlier in the week. During that same series, I saw a Bulger major, the first one I've probably seen since the 1990s.

Penta was not to be, however, as the pool levels didn't look right and Sawmill had a steady stream of small bubbles reaching the slowly rising surface. Sure enough, Sawmill began eruting while well below overflow.

Even worse, Rift started an eruption while I was there. I didn't see when West Triplet started, but it was active when Rift started, but quite within a few minutes of Rift's start. It seems typical of the Grand Group for West Triplet and Rift to reactivate in mid-to-late May, but why can't it ever wait until after I get to see West Triplet as an intermittent spring?

But the most intriguing thing is a new hole in the Old Tardy runoff channel, just before it joins the Crystal Spring/Slurp runoff. THis hole is about 8--12 inches across, and has that same layered appearance that the holes near Scalloped Spring exhibit. When I first saw it, I thought that it might have been a feature that appeared over the winter, but Scott Bryan said that it wasn't there when he was in the basin on Thursday. From where the ground is wet or dry, it appears that it might be a drain for all of the Old Tardy runoff that used to flow in that direction. Years ago there were some patches of steaming ground around Old Tardy. I'll have to go through my old notebooks to find the maps to see if any of those places correspond with this hole. (And I'll try to post pictures of it tomorrow.)

There's a lot of snow still on the ground. Coming in through Island Park, it seemed that if there wasn't snow, then there was standing water But the Madison and Firehole Rivers don't seem all that high, at least compared to some of the seasons I remember. The shelf in the Firehole at the Sawmill Bridge is just barely under water. So perhaps the worst is yet to come. (And if there's standing water around here like there is in Island Park, gonna be a long, nasty mosquito season.

Other Geyser Times

• Churn
  • 12:01, d>1m
  • 12:21, d=1m22s
  • 12:40, d=1m18s
• Rift, 12:57
• Oblong
  • 08:12ns
  • 14:00
• Castle
  • 08:01, minor, d≈3m
  • 11:39

Posted by HKoenig at 03:35 PM | Permalink

This morning the webcamera shows an eruption of Giantess, the first eruption in about 22 months. Based on the nature of the play from Giantess, and that I think I saw activity in Vault, it appears that the eruption started in the early morning hours.

Update: 10:45

Well, it appears that the activity was the final stages of a steam-phase eruption that started early last night (say around 22:00). The OFVC seismograph should have the start time, so let's see how wrong I am.

Posted by HKoenig at 07:49 AM | Permalink

Mary Beth Schwarz reports that since I've left, the mode shift at Grand continues. There have been several more false Vent overflow delays, and then yesterday (04 July) Grand had it's first known "boop" delay in several years. (A "boop" is when, during a Turban heavy overflow delay, Grand has boiling to up to several feet over its vent which does not result in an eruption. )Like the false Vent overflows, this usually results in several Turban interval delays.In this case, six. Fortunately, the delay took place early in the Grand interval, which kept that interval from being excessively long.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:35 AM | Permalink

Grand decided that it needs to not only have more long intervals, but to resurrect a pattern I've not seen this trip: the one where every Turban interval is about 30 seconds shorter than the previous,and Grand won't even try to erupt until there's an interval of about 17 minutes or so. And even then, there's no guarantee that you won't just get some sort of Turban delay. But this time everything cooperated and we got a less than ten minute long two burst eruption.

Then while starting to pack up the truck for the trip back, I got a bonus. Haven't really seen Beehive all trip, because so many of the eruptions have been without the Indicator. The previous eruption someone announced that water was rising in the Indicator, and within a minute, Beehive was in eruption. I was in my cabin, and barely got out the door from one radio call to the next. Weeks ago I'd resigned myself to seeing Beehive no closer than from the river overlook, if I was lucky.

Today we got another such call, but this time the Indicator cooperated. I was able to walk fast and get to about Anemone when Beehive took off. With the prevailing winds, that meant I was on the wrong side, and took the cold drenching to get to the other side. There were full 360° rainbows in there somewhere, but I didn't stick around for them. That water was cold. I wish I'd brought the camera, because not only was that the first time I've seen the Second Indicator, for much of the eruption it appeared taller than the Indicator itself. And I still don't know who exactly it was who gave out the call.

Elk below Castle Geyser

Posted by HKoenig at 04:27 AM | Permalink

Lately Grand has been having a long interval followed by a couple of shorts, or some sort of variation on the theme (like two longs in a row, or three shorts, etc.) Today it tried something different. The early morning interval was a long, so I expected a short. Instead we got one of the longest intervals of my stay. It seemed to break all the rules. We had a false Vent overflow, West Triplet erupted a second time without Grand following along, and had several short (under 17 minute) Turban intervals, and Grand finally initiated the eruption for The Burst and Quit. It was a hot day and fun was had all around.

At least it kept to form for the nighttime eruption, with a little over seven hour interval putting the start in the second minute of July. But what I don't understand is why tourists come out on a moonlit night and then proceed to wave weak flashlights at the eruption. Fortunately the moon was so bright that they didn't matter.

Posted by HKoenig at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Coming back from downbasin, I always look over on Geyser Hill as I bike up that well-despised hill the Inn sits on. It's mostly to check for a Beehive Indicator, but occasionally I do get to see something else of interest. This morning, after Grand, I noticed that Giantess was putting up a strong, well defined steam cloud. Now it was around 08:45, which is a bit late for any dry ice effects, but the last few days we've been having calm mornings, and those are excellent conditions for Giantess to have its big boils. Not making any predictions, but just noting that this is the first time that I've seen anything at all from that pool.

The second burst of the mid-day Grand eruption was had a long second burst that featured lots of Big Sawmill action. During the last half minute, Vent was reduced to a steam jet with little to no water visible. The post-eruption pause, at over 23 minutes, was unusually long, too.

I was a bit surprised that for a Grand eruption that would take place just after sunset with a full moon in warm conditions, there were just a few tourists out beside me. No gazers or even geyser groupies. I remember years past where there would have been a dozen or so of us out there. Then again, most of those people have gone, been driven away, or gotten older. But still, you'd think that some of the newer gazers would take advantage of such opportunities.

Posted by HKoenig at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Thanks to Grand once again deciding to have a long interval when it could instead have erupted by moonlight, I got to see that Grotto was still in its marathon eruption when I left at 04:30. Which, it turns out, was just about the time it shut down. Grotto was off and dead by 05:20. So once again, the Bijou Monkey Cage would be filling mid-morning and overflowing by noon. Grand had a consecutive long interval, and despite the breeze, it was a hot wait there.

Mastiff Geyser 2007 Jun 28 12:31

Giant Geyser 2007 Jun 28 12:33 from Grand and Oblong

Giant signs

Posted by HKoenig at 04:37 PM | Permalink

The Grotto that started the night before didn't last, so when I came out for the middle of the night Grand, nothing much was happening down there. Giant's platform looked like there hadn't been an event in hours. Thanks to Grand having a 9 hour interval, I got to see the platform again, when it looked unchanged just before a short, weak hot period. But then Grotto started, and it became apparant that this was going to be the hoped for marathon.

Morning's Thief 27 Jun 2007

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Fountain 06:33
• Grotto 06:44
• Giant hot periods
  • 06:27 d=1m57s
  • 07:35 d=4m21s
  • 08:40 d=1m40s

Posted by HKoenig at 08:25 AM | Permalink

The marathon quit shortly after sunrise, setting things up for an afternoon of Giant. A short afternoon, as the hot period took place at 12:44. It was disappointing because it didn't last long (about 9 minutes) and did not feature much in the way of Mastiff activity. And then the hourly hot periods resumed with a Mastiff bathtub.

That activity continued, with the last daylight hot period actually the best of the day, and in some ways better than the recovery hot period. Grotto also started only about a half hour earlier, so it was hoped that it was a new marathon starting, and this all meant everyone could get a good night's rest.

Grand finally almost cooperated by erupting just before sunset, with the light disappearing late in the eruption. There was a particularly intense rainbow coming straight out of Vent when you stood in the right location. It would cooperated better if it had had a second burst.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto 19:48
• Giant hot periods
  • 12:44 d≈9m
  • 14:04 bathtub
  • 16:14 d=2m00s
  • 17:27 d≈6m
  • 18:57 d=2m
  • 20:14 d=7m15s

  Posted by HKoenig at 03:36 PM | Permalink

Turns out it was a mistake. Spent a whole night, and the next day, seeing weak hot periods and short Grotto eruptions. Grotto finally went into a marathon at 14:35, and Giant had the big hot period we'd been expecting for 36 hours shortly after that. The first six minutes of it seemed fairly ordinary, the only distinguishing feature being a number of previously quiet vents were active. Then, several minutes after Feather had quit, it restarted and Giant started massive surging. So much so that observers there insisted Giant was about to start. Unfortunately, it didn't, and now we wait out the marathon.

Grand seems to like having short intervals during the evening, night and early mornings, reserving the longer intervals for mid day when the crowds are the largest. The morning eruption was right at the time when the sun was appearing over the trees, so that only the tops of the jets, and the mass of the second burst were illuminated.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto 00:42 d≈2h15m, 09:00 d≈1h15m, 14:39
• Grotto Fountain 08:57, 14:35
• Giant hot periods
  • 00:16 d=4m37s
  • 01:17 d=2m08s
  • 02:27 d=4m32s
  • 03:58 bathtub
  • 05:02 bathtub
  • 06:08 bathtub
  • 07:15 bathtub
  • 08:10 bathtub
  • 09:05
  • 10:04
  • 10:56 bathtub
  • 11:57 4m53s
  • 12:51 bathtub
  • 14:02 d=1m55s
  • 15:11
  • 15:57 d=2m22s
  • 17:02 bathtub
  • 18:02 d=5m55s + restart

Posted by HKoenig at 03:48 PM | Permalink

Another pretty dull day, with lots of weak Giant hot periods and waiting for Grotto to do something. But as the day progressed, the amount of surging in Giant and Mastiff got stronger. Made it easy to believe that something might happen, and soon.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Fountain 10:44, 18:44ie
• Grotto 10:48, 18:44ie
• Giant hot periods
  • 11:30
  • 12:24 d=1m44s
  • 13:32 d=3m46s
  • 14:22
  • 15:28 d=4m40s
  • 16:17 bathtub
  • 17:13 d=2m27s
  • 18:18 d=5m20s
  • 19:10 d≈2m
  • 20:12 d=2m46s
  • 21:11 d=4m19s
  • 22:08 bathtub
  • 23:17

Posted by HKoenig at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Grotto at sunset
23 Jun 2007

This set the recovery hot period in the early nighttime hours. The duration was a bit disappointingly short, but an indication that at least we don't need to worry too much about any eruption taking place on Sunday.

Fan & Mortar continued their usual chaotic behavior with flashes of " hot periods" which sucked in a new set of the newly arrived who someone get the idea that the very first cycle they see is the one that's going to initiate an eruption. Despite being the same as what everyone else has been seeing for weeks.

Beehive broke out of its window, with a late evening eruption. Again, it appears that there was no indicator. Beehive surged a couple of times and then took off.

Other Geyser Times

• Giant hot period 22:30 d=5m37s

Posted by HKoenig at 09:21 AM | Permalink

Been a dull series of days, with little to report, other than Beehive had yet another Beehive eruption with not just no indicator, but no warning. Someone whose voice I don't recognize was at Lion for the start, and because she was facing away, was caught by surprise.

And yes, below is another Grotto Fountain that didn't result in the start of Grotto.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Fountain 15:40, 17:12
• Grotto 17:22
• Uncertain 16:46

Posted by HKoenig at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Giant signs 20 Jun 2007

I did see a new bit of touron weirdness on my way to Grand: an orange car (I don't even bother keeping up with the models and makes any more) that was practially in the old plaza area between the old VC's theaters. It seems someone thought the walkway leading from the road across from the old Photo Shop was a road. It was headed by the time I got near enough to get a better view. No camera on me at the time, either.

Grand itself was another short interval. The best feature of that was that it put the next eruption squarely in the dark to dawn time frame, and that was more than enough excuse to use the night to catch up on sleep instead. (And the rain showers I heard at 02:00 helped, too.)

Posted by HKoenig at 10:12 AM | Permalink

The day started out as expected: Grotto still erupting along with a several hour wait at Grand. But just before the Grand eruption, I noticed that the steam cloud at Grotto had suddenly ceased. Scott Bryan confirmed that Grotto was off, giving us a fourteen hour duration, and a Giant window opening sometime in early afternoon.

The rest of the morning was spent in trying to catch up on a little of the sleep I hadn't gotten the last few nights. Then it was out into the basin to see what would happen next. I figured the Bijou Cage was near capacity, so no reason not to wait at Grand, even though it was well before time for an eruption. One indication of just how full the cage probably was was when I saw an eruptions of Aurum and that weren't announced on the radio about an hour earlier. On the way out, ran into Lynn Stephens at Castle.

Since I was in time killing mode, we were talking there for quite a bit when Lynn suddenly goes, "Beehive!" Sure enough, there it was, climbing to full height, and once again without an indicator. You could almost tell by the radio reaction that there were a lot of people who once again were thinking of how they'd heard of another Beehive eruption while at Giant.

Beehive was nearing the end when Scott announced the rise in water in Mastiff. Now this was a bit of a disappointment, as we were only a little over six hours since Grotto quit, and the last time there was a quick hot period/recovery, it lead to a weak hot period and nothing much. But not this time. Lynn and I both got on the bikes and headed down that way. Within two minutes, at 14:01, the hot period had started with several vents starting. By the time I was in sight of the platform it was apparent that Mastiff was in charge, with nice boiling visible even at a distance.

Mastiff Geyser 2007 Jun 20 14:10

Giant Geyser 2007 Jun 20 14:12 Start Sequence

After two consecutive nighttime eruptions, and two more under less than ideal conditions (although 31 May was more than acceptable), it was wonderful to be perfectly positioned to see a start on a warm afternoon. I quickly took the sequence of photos here, then used my clinometer to get a reading on the height. I was disappointed to get only 60%, which comes to 180ft. But as the photo sequence shows, this just didn't seem like a huge, high start.

(My camera is an ancient, ten-year old Kodak DC-50 first generation digital camera. It takes up to 7 seconds to process and store an image, so that sequence is at least 30 seconds long.)

I noticed that the northern corner of the cage got soaked nicely, and took pictures of the resting places for the marker signs. After that, it was enjoy the spectacle time.

Shortly after the start it was announced that Castle was erupting, as if anybody cared. I assume by an NPS naturalist on rove, as unless they were lucky enough to be stuck in an NPS staff meeting, every gazer seemed to be at their chosen spot in sight of Giant.

Grand kept up the tradition of being difficult in erupting after Giant. The two nighttime eruptions of Giant I saw featured Grand erupting within ten minutes or so (at least from the steam clouds I saw.) For this one, like the early morning eruption in May, Grand erupted while I was tying down my bike at Castle, denying me the enjoyment of waiting for Grand while watching the waning Giant activity.

Now the pressure is really on. I figure I've got one more chance at a Giant eruption, next week before I leave, and can't leave with a five out of six record.

Posted by HKoenig at 06:06 PM | Permalink

The morning hot periods were a bit disappointing. I was expeciting a bit of a wait, and the first one occurred within minutes of my getting settled in. Doing the math, I realized there was no reason to go back in, as Grand would be due in a few hours more, and besides, the next hot period might be the real one.

As it turned out, I went to Grand, and caught a Penta eruption, too. The geyser fog was as good or even better than I remembered it. I really enjoy it when it's so thick and patchy that you get situtations like you can't see Sawmill group from Grand, but Beauty and Chromatic to the north are easily visible by their immense steam columns.

Back at Giant, things got progressively weaker, so that as noon approached, it appeared as if the platform was in a post-marathon phase. Both Scott Bryan and I noticed and commented on this at about the same time, how it reminded us of what things looked like last week. But this time, just as everyone was about to abandon the Bijou Cage, water rose in Mastiff and we got a fairly good (but not great) hot period.

So the rest of the day was a series of disappointments, at it just seemed that Giant did not want to erupt, and was using the hot periods to make that clear. Then we got a Grotto start which turned into yet another marathon, about the fourth for this interval. Ultimately, a less than satisfying day.

At sunset, we did get the first bug-hatching of the season. The Firehole River by the Castle-Sawmill bridge was thick with all sorts of insects, and the trout seemed to be actively feeding too. Over at Grand, the mosquitoes were not quite thick enough to be annoying, but it is definitely time to find that bug juice.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Fountain 06:39, 17:36
• Grotto 06:56, 17:44
• Giant hot periods
  • 03:55 d≈4m
  • 05:20 d=5m20s
  • 06:25 d≈2m30s
  • 07:51 d=6m48s
  • 09:14 bathtub
  • 11:47 d=6m55s
  • 15:33 d=3m47s
  • 16:40 d≈7m
  • 17:35 d≈2m
  • 18:43 bathtub
  • 19:46 d=2m02s
  • 20:49 bathtub

Posted by HKoenig at 09:50 AM | Permalink

It's amazing to think that I can be awakened by Kitt Barger saying "Water rising in Mastiff" and be fully dressed and equipped and biking past the Inn when the hot period ends about 6 minutes later. (More on this hot period under "Stupid Geyser Groupie Tricks")

Turns out we had another short marathon, with Grotto starting before 05:00 and ending around 20:30. So now have a busy, " hurry up and wait for Giant" day ahead.

The middle of the night Grand was uneventful, but the morning one went and erupted when I've said it shouldn't: with both West Triplet and Rift both in eruption. Oh, well.

The other middle of the night eruption, just before midnight, delayed just long enough to not only miss out on a four Grand day, but erupted about ten minutes after the crescent moon set.

One of the examples of who atrocious yesterday was that I forgot to mention was that when Daisy erupted, the steam cloud was horizontal all the way to Oblong.

Other Geyser Times

• Giant hot periods
  • 05:24 d≈5m30s

Stupid Geyser Groupie Tricks

During this morning's Giant hot period radio wake-up call, one of the usual annoyances, Mr. Radio-Voice-Of-The-Upper-Geyser-Basin, had to interrupt to first inform everyone that he was arriving at Daisy (I assume he meant at Black Sand by car as he has been staying at West Yellowstone), then asking if Castle was erupting. Some people just can't seem to shut up and listen.

And nothing to do with geysers

In the Lodge cabin area, the ravens have figured out that on the housekeeping carts, there are goodies in the form of bags of trash. When housekeeping takes their lunch breaks, they leave the carts, and the ravens move in, ripping them open for the goodies inside. On windy days, this also means that trash gets scattered everywhere. I would assume that eventually housekeeping will figure out that they need to put the trash in the "bear-proof" dumpsters, especially if they have to keep cleaning up enough times. But in this particular "intellectual arms-race", I would bet that currently the ravens have the upper hand.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:30 PM | Permalink

There was nothing unusual or out of the ordinary about the middle of the night Grand eruption, other than it had two bursts, which I think was a first for my nighttimes, and it seemed like the wind picked up about the time of the eruption. By the time of the next eruption, it was an ugly, windy day that threatened to turn atrocious.. While we had to endure an endless wind mixed with sleet and rain, Grand did pick a time when things were a bit nicer to give us the usual one burst.

The afternoon wasn't so fortunate, as atrocious moved in and stayed. The wait for the afternoon Grand was miserable, not because of percipitation, but the winds that kept shifting directions. Things finally calmed down by sunset, when reasons for being out and about were few.

Grotto started sometime during the night, and by that time it appeared to be headed to a marathon. But around 11:30, it shut off. So instead of the full Giant-free day, it shaped up to be trying to have another event about 24 hours after the big attempt last night. Except the event seemed to come early. At 16:07, after only 4-1/2 hours,we got an 8m25s hot period which seemed to not really want to initiate an eruption.

Other Geyser Times

• Giant Hot Periods
  • 16:07 d=8m25s
  • 18:57 d=3m16s
  • 20:49 d=4m55s>/li>

Posted by HKoenig at 09:53 AM | Permalink

Grotto continued through the night. I was pretty sure it was still active for the middle of the night Grand, and the way the Amfac louts illuminated it seemed to confirm that. It was seen to send around 06:15, meaning that it had been erupting for at least 25 hours.

In the dark of the night, one can't observe Grand's pools or much of anything that's going on. Instead, one must rely on hearing. One thing that I've noticed is how many of the Turban eruptions on which Grand starts sound decidedly different. More vigorous, noisier and not as slow starting as other Turban eruptions. This applies even to those eruptions where there's a considerable lag time between Turban's start and Grand's. I would supposed this isn't as noticeable during the day because of all the background noise, but if you listen for it, you'll hear it.

The morning Grand gave us the last three burst eruption Grand will ever have (the last was back in May.) Instead of quitting, Vent and Turban continued, but there was no attempt by Grand to have afterplay until much to late for a fourth burst.

Giant Hot Period 16 Jun 2007

This hot period seemed a daylight version of the one I saw earlier this week in the middle of the night, 24 hours before the actual eruption. It lasted even longer, 16m50s, and the late surging from Giant seemed even stronger. (My photos didn't capture any of the big surges.) But like then, things just sort of died down. Now the hope is that it'll take Giant about eighteen to twenty-four hours to try again, and get out of this nighttime eruption mode.

Thanks to the person who made a donation. Much appreciated, including the fact that I know now that that button really works! But when I saw the confirmation email, I almost tossed it because I thought it was another one of those scams to try and get my passwords.

Other Geyser Times

• Giant hot period 19:26 d=16m50s

Posted by HKoenig at 11:05 AM | Permalink

Oblong, Grotto and Riverside, 15 Jun 2007

The late day Grand seemed to be determined to ignore my recipe for when eruptions occur. Not only was it between the two windows, but Rift was still erupting. Not sure why I try any more.

Grotto, meanwhile, was in eruption when I first saw it in the morning, and was still erupting 5-1/2 hours later. It was still going when the late day Grand had finished, 12 hours after I'd first observed it. Might try to catch the post-marathon Giant event, if it's in daylight, just to see my Guru Geyser Gazing proven wrong.

Posted by HKoenig at 11:22 AM | Permalink

So to catch up on sleep, I decide to skip the overnight Grand. I figure a 13 hour double interval is more than enough time, and besides, in the morning, it gives me time to get a Lower Ham's breakfast before the inevitable three hour wait. So I'm sitting at the counter, and my order is about to arrive, and I hear that the monitor shows that Grand has an interval just a bit over 6 hours. Which means right now I'm pushing 7, which is just too long for comfort.

Fortunately, Grand cooperated and let me finish my breakfast and get out there. We had a less than eight minute first burst, but yet another long second burst, but this one was so weak that calling the activity "Big Sawmill" was to exaggerate. More like "Big Tardy".

The afternoon Grand also had a long second burst. It's starting to be a trend, and a good one. While they used to be considered bad, because all that power and activity could have been used in a third or fourth burst, these seem to be acting as an alternative to a single burst eruption.

Penta Steam Phase
14 Jun 2007

Paul Strasser has pointed out that Mastiff function eruptions seem to be associated with Grotto marathons, while Giant only starts are during that time from the first pos-marathon Grotto until the next marathon. The four eruptions I've seen this trip do follow that pattern. (And like all geysers, there are known exceptions to the pattern.) But this is something to keep in mind while watching hot periods in the prime Giant window. If Mastiff is not surging in the post-marathon ones, or Mastiff is surging heavily between marathons, that might be a sign you aren't going to see an eruption. This bit of Guru Geyser Gazing is sure to be proved wrong in a few days. Then again, this is probably well known.

And nothing to do with geysers

That railing and concrete walkway in front of the Lodge may have been there for years, but it's new to me. I've found that navigating it on a bike can be a bit tricky when the crowds gather to see Old Faithful. The gravel is at least a half inch below the concrete, and it slopes downward, toward the building. I've come close to several spill thanks to inattentive tourons .

So today I had my first dive. All my own fault, No one anywhere in sight, not even a Nelson Muntz to laugh at my misfortune. I just mis-navigated the turn onto it from the cabin area and went off the edge and dropped to the side. Would have been fine, just a little scraped up, except that railing is solid, and got in the way of my chest. Which still hurts. I may have to sue Xanterra and the NPS for pain and mental anguish from this.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:35 PM | Permalink

After the morning, you really expect there to be a lot here? Once daylight arrived, it was a dull day, useful to catch up on things like eating and sleeping and getting cleaned up.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto 15:07
• Rift 17:36ie

And nothing to do with geysers

The maintenance crews were out in the basin today, painting the old wooden benches from Grand to Grotto. We joked about how, despite the barriers and streamers and "Wet Paint" signs, there would be people coming up to touch it. On my way back from Grand, I noticed they'd also painted the railing between the Inn and Old Faithful along the bike trail. And sure enough, there were two older women at one, sampling the paint.

I guess I've been away from industrial tourism too long, because I just do not understand the infatuation with striking a stupid pose in front of a geyser or bison or some other piece of scenery. Used to be cameras just made photographers stupid, the new phone-cameras must make emit some sort of signal affecting the subjects, too.

Posted by HKoenig at 11:51 AM | Permalink

I try to write up a day's posting at the end, even though it may not get posting until midday the next day. I also then not change it even if subsequent events make some of my speculations or information out of date.

So as I'm trudging over the bridge and up the slope to Sawmill, I decide to take my own guru geyser gazing advice from the previous posting. If Grand appears that it's in for a long, then go check on Giant and Grotto. Usually it seems I end up waiting for Grand for hours, then go down and check Grotto. If I go there now, I can head in right after the eruption and the three hour wait preceding it.

So I get to Grand, and Percolator is quiet, West Triplet is empty. Turban starts almost immediately. I know from past experience that I can do the round trip to Grotto in just about one Turban interval, so at worst, I get to see a Grand start from Economic or Chromatic. Besides, the steam down there looks odd. I've been fooled in the past by Grotto, so even though I think it's on, I can't be be sure. Plus I need to go down and see if Giant has erupted already, as if it has,it makes a difference in my plans for what to do for the next Grand. Off I go.

I cross the bridge at Oblong, and by then am sure that Grotto is erupting. But is it a new eruption, or a marathon? Gotta get closer. At this point I vaguely notice that the Giant platform seems awfully steamy, too, just as Giant takes off. (At 02:16) Now that's a cheap thrill and an instant wake-up call.

It turns out I was perhaps in the best position to see the start, with what little breeze was blowing toward the platform. I couldn't see anything out there until minutes later. The platform itself was soaked in a torrential rainfall, quite impressive considering how close the source, but even the main walkway was in the rain. So I can't claim to have really "seen" the start, only experienced it. I do know my outer jacket got soaked by the time I was done.

Grotto was erupting, but it quit about a half hour later. And the Variable Pool showed no drop in water level. So no marathon, just a short Grotto interval. Based on the times, it would appear the hot period started as I was still at Grand, and there was no Mastiff function, as the amount of steam and noise coming from Giant before the start wasn't great enough. (I wasn't that out of it to not notice that much commotion.)

Eventually the steam and wind started cooperating, so I could MagLite the watercolumn from various locations. It was okay, but nothing like daylight. But I must admit, just being there and hearing all the noise was worth the experience. (And the selfishness of knowing that no one else was out there made a difference, too.)

No nighttime in the Upper Basin is complete without its little bizarre moment, and this night had one. I can't claim to have been the only person to have seen Giant, only that I was the only person who cared. Because about 45 minutes into the eruption, I noticed a light that seemed to be well north of Grotto. Now I'd been illuminating Giant off and on all eruption, so expected that I'd attracted attention. But that was an odd place, as how did they get there? I could hear voices, so there must have been at least two people. The light moved on south, passed on by Grotto, and kept going up the trail. Now Giant was still putting out a lot of steam and noise, but the light never seemed to take notice of all the commotion but once. I was relieved, as the last thing I wanted to deal with at that time was a bunch of drunken insomniac Amfac louts.

I guess I should say that I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get my wish of seeing a start from Grand, as this would have been the perfect opportunity. Perhaps, but I'd much rather see it in daylight, and this way I didn't have to make a mad dash down basin. Maybe next time.

So what about the guru geyser gazing that got me down there? Grand erupted on the next Turban. I think I'm going to amend my formula to say that Percolator is not quite so important, as that was what made me decide in the first place. I did catch the very end of a West Triplet eruption on my way back, which was obviously triggered by Grand's eruption.

Think this afternoon I'll visit Geyser Hill for the first time and see if I can get Beehive up close.

Update 14:00

Giant Signs 13 Jun 2007

And I wonder if the illlumination of these past two eruptions appeared on the webcam, or are MagLites just not that bright?

Posted by HKoenig at 04:28 AM | Permalink

So I waited for the post-marathon hot period. Much longer than I'd hoped or really intended, but it was a fairly pleasant wait. Because of the cloud cover, it never really got frigid like the wait last Thursday, but by the end, there were several short sprinkles that seemed to come from nowhere. The wind was not as cooperative either, coming from the usual southerly direction, obscuring the platform.

The hot period itself was ridiculously long. By about 10 minutes, Mastiff had dropped below overflow, and so the steam on the platform decreased making seeing possible again. That's when Giant started major surging, and Feather never shut off the whole time. The surging in Giant never reached the " filling the cone" stage, but for a while it seemed like one more little push would be all it would take to get the eruption started. Instead, I packed up and headed back in. Didn't even need to check on Grand, as I could see it's steam cloud quite clearly.

After an event of that size, I figured that I could sleep until the next Grand time and not worry (too much) about missing anything. And once it got light, the geyser groupies should be able to handle keeping an eye on things. As I expected, we got a series of almost hourly events, most of them weak, some only observed from a distance (Grand, where else?). The intervals then lengthened out as the afternoon progressed.

Also got, as the first post-marathon activity, a solo Grotto Fountain (if you don't count a couple of splashes from Grotto). The next Grotto eruption lasted for three hours. Then things got weird, at least for those of us who don't know Giant well. The whole platform began to look like it does during a marathon, with Bijou dead most of all. But the hot periods, weak though they were, continued. I got this funny feeling that tomorrow morning the signs will have been moved.

After today's long Grand interval, I've come to the conclusion that there is a pattern here. Either West Triplet or Grand is going to erupt between 6 and 7 hours after the previous eruption. If it's West Triplet, the next window is 8.5 to 10. If neither erupts, then the second window applies. You can tell that West Triplet is not going to erupt in the early window if Percolator is quiet. A West Triplet eruption before that window opens is the same as if it doesn't erupt, in that Grand will wait for the second window. This bit of guru geyser gazing will be obsolete by the end of the week.

Round Spring 11 June 2007

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Ftn. 07:00, 09:13, 19:55
• Grotto 09:24, 20:02
• Rift 17:39 d=10m39s
• Giant hot periods
  • 01:48 d=15m43s
  • 07:00 d≈5m
  • 08:03 d≈4m
  • 09:13 d≈6m
  • 10:06 weak, Bijou off 3m
  • 11:29 bathtub
  • 12:57 d=5m18s
  • 14:35 bathtub
  • 16:26 d=2m50s
  • 17:51 d≈4m30s
  • 21:09 d≈2m

Posted by HKoenig at 04:24 AM | Permalink

Well, good news was that Grotto was still in eruption when I went out in the morning. The bad news was that the weather was finaly going to get ugly. As it turned out, it only got as far as unkempt, with a short sprinkle and, once again, too much wind. But it passed through before Grand erupted. A two burst eruption with the second lasting 2m12s. The evening (which should have been afternoon if not for the unnecessarily long interval) had an even longer second burst, at 2m30s. Well, I guess if that's what it takes to have a second burst, it's better than nothing.

Penta erupted again, barely. It started normally, but by the time Mary Beth and I could get moving in that direction to watch it, Sawmill started, causing an immediate shutdown in Penta.

And with Grotto active, that meant a free day to do other things. It finally quit after a duration of almost exactly a day, so middle of the night would be the time of the next major event.

PMG2 11 June 2007

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 16:03

And nothing to do with geysers

Based on how much I've seen of geyser gazers who work for that company, I'm assuming "Xanterra" means, "never seen in the basin."

I've battled squirrels in every cabin in which I've stayed, and even had the occasional bison rub against a cabin or block the door, but today was the first time I had a marmot attempt to invade.

Posted by HKoenig at 01:24 PM | Permalink

:Looks like there still might be something happening with Grand. I've seen another interval without Percolator, followed by a short West Triplet eruption. (This one lasted 5 minutes, and did overflow momentarily.) For the afternoon eruption, Percolator was again quiet, and for the first time during my visit, I got to see a D2 Turban delay.

Unrelated is that the nighttime eruption lasted 12m37s. At least that eruption has an excuse for having Vent and Turban take 20 minutes to restart.

But what I really don't understand is how the electronic monitor could come up with a time six minutes before the actual eruption time. There wasn't any sort of heavy overflow or other unusual activity, and you'd think that a sensor based on runoff temperature would run late. Which is why I never trust electronic times when they aren't backed up with an effort to confirm them by other means.

Grotto Rocks?

During the afternoon I watched Giant have couple of hot periods and a bathtub spaced about an hour apart. Again, there was lots of heavy "depth charge" surging. At Grand it appeared that the hourly events continued. When I went in, Grotto had been active for 3h30m and Spa was showing signs of life. Hoping for a marathon.

Cutting the Firehose
by Grover Schrayer III

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 04:02, 18:46ns
• Grotto Ftn. 07:09, 14:47
• Grotto 07:10, 14:51

"Stupid Geyser Groupie Tricks"

It was suggested that I might want to do a category on the things tourons do. Not really interested, as there's so much to choose from and its all so transient. But I think I will do this sub-category, which currently seems to star one person in particular. His latest stunt, earlier today, was to threaten some inadvertent cross-talk that "we have a direction finder and will use it to find you." Quite rich, considering the amount of noise he alone contributes.

Posted by HKoenig at 10:18 AM | Permalink

Of course I spoke too soon and Grand had a 6-1/2 hr with West Triplet and Rift following. But the mid-day did fit the pattern. I didn't stick around to see if Rift started as I'd had enough of Mr. Look-At-Me-I'm-Standing-On-The-Bench-For-Two-Hours when he yelled out, over a minute after the end of the first burst, "the pool's refilling" when it obviously wasn't. (I realize now that I prefer tourons over geyser groupies.) The evening wasn't much better, because West Triplet and Rift erupted too early for Grand to join in, but at least Percolator never stopped. Oh, well. So much for speculating.

Penta Geyser 09 Jun 2007

Observed several Giant hot periods up close, all short and weak. But one interval was less than 50 minutes. I don't know exactly because I was returning to wait for it only to find it in progress.

Castle seems to be having a number of "split major" eruptions, where there's a significant pause (up to 15 minutes) during the water phase, and it's confusing all the geyser groupies and NPS types who've never encountered it before.

Other Geyser Times

Uncertain Geyser 09 Jun 2007

• Grotto Ftn. 09:00ie, 12:46ie, 18:43ns
• Grotto 09:02, 12:46, 16:45
• Uncertain 11:32
• Rift 18:59 d=51m33s

Posted by HKoenig at 08:09 AM | Permalink

Friday was a wasted day, and pretty much covered in an earlier posting, except for one thing.

In years past, Grand would often undergo an interval mode shift sometimes between late April and early June. Just this time of year, actually. These mode shifts would mean that intervals would suddenly increase or decrease by a sizable amount, and often accompanied by dormancy or reactivation of Rift and West Triplet. In the last few days, I've noticed that Grand has stopped having short eruptiion intervals, even when all the signs say it should and could. Also, with last night's eruption, I've now seen in the past few days several eruptions where West Triplet did not erupt with Grand, and Percolator was quiet, too. (Actually, last night West Triplet came up to about a foot below overflow, blipped for less than a minute, then dropped.) This may be a simple fluctuation in behavior, or signal a shift in activity.

Unfortunately, in all those mode shifts, the burst count never seemed to be affected, good or bad.And just having mentioned out-loud the possibility means things are going to revert.

And nothing to do with geysers

Posted by HKoenig at 08:59 AM | Permalink

Once daylight arrived, it became obvious how close we came to getting snow. All the ridges and slopes around the Upper Basin down to Observation Point were dusted white.

One thing I left out of the Giant report is that I'm almost certain there wasn't an Oblong the whole time I was there. In those conditions it's possible to miss it, but I'd like to think I wasn't that out of it. I did notice Riverside and Daisy,for example.

So after this morning, the rest of the day was boring. Went out to see Grand do it's West Triplet-delay/Big Sawmill thing a couple of times, but otherwise it was catch up day. The wind at the morning's Grand made me appreciate how nice 37° can be when it's dead calm. The evening's eruption was just as bad.

Posted by HKoenig at 04:05 PM | Permalink

It may have been really stupid, but it was worth it.

So the evening Grand had to be a long interval in the cold and snow, one I should have bailed out on. But it finally did just about the time the sun set somewhere behind all the gray. With the exact time of Grotto shutting down not known, only the report of it off at 17:40, I was estimating that the window would be opening around 23:00, and I wanted to be there. So after Grand finally got around to its one burst eruption, I headed in and quickly dressed in just about anything I've got to keep me warm and dry.

It turns out I had plenty of time. Spent the next 4+ hours waiting for nothing to happen. At least it was calm and only occasional snow sprinkles to keep things damp. It was only towards the end, when it was time for the next Grand, that I considered bailing out. And even then, I've said I want to see a start from Grand.

The hot period finally started at 03:23. I'd call it "ns", because, magically, Feather was suddenly erupting to full height. In the dark, you realize that hot periods are really pretty quiet, and not all that steamy, either. But this time Mastiff almost immediately began surging in the 5 foot range. Over the course of the next few minutes, it would surge up and then die down, with each iteration a bit stronger than before. With the help of our strong lights (I think my MagLite's battery needs replacement), and the slight breeze from the north, it was easy to see what was going on on the platform most of the time.

By 03:31, Mastiff was in eruption, continuously throwing water higher than Giant's cone. This continued to build and quite suddenly it was noisily throwing water to about 50 feet. Visibility was finally deteriorating because were also getting some good strong action from Catfish. (And maybe Bijou, It was getting hard to see, and too much going on.) All the while, Giant was completely dead. At the time, it seemed like much, much longer, but just 2m30s later Giant finally surged a couple of times and then took off, and up.

Not much to say about the start of the eruption, other than shining our lights straight up we could see the entire water column. At the same time, Catfish went into a powerful steam phase, becoming the loudest performer on the platform for the next several minutes.

My digital kitchen thermometer said that the air temperature at that time was 37°, which was much warmer than I expected, since that was the temperature when I was out at Grand.

After about a half hour, I'd had enough. I'd been a long night, and besides, I wanted to see what a nighttime Giant steamcloud looked like from other parts of the basin. From Grand, there's no mistaking it for a measly Grotto or Oblong, and even at Crested Pool I thought I could hear Giant.

And this makes the third Thursday eruption in a row. I sense a guru geyser gazing pattern developing.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:54 AM | Permalink

Getting out to Grand and seeing what appeared to be a still erupting Grotto was not what I was expecting. On the other hand, based on the weather forecasts, I was expecting rain or even snow, and instead the moon was visible. It was still erupting after the latest one-burst Big Sawmill eruption, when I last saw it at 05:00.

Seeing Grotto still erupting when time for the next Grand was both annoying and a relief. A relief because that storm was finally coming in, and it was wet, but not cold enough to snow. Annoying because when it does finally end, I know I'll be out in the snow phase of the storm.

Finally, at 17:40, there's a report that Grotto is off. But for how long? I last saw it at 13:00, so it could be as much as 4 hours, or as little as 1/2. Split the difference, and it appears I'll be headed there after Grand for a long night of nothing happening.

That also means that the duration was around 40-42 hours, giver or take a lot because no one saw the start or end.

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 10:09ie d>46m10s, 22:32ie

Posted by HKoenig at 08:50 AM | Permalink

It appears that Grotto went back into another marathon before midnight. From 02:30 to 04:30 the platform at Giant was chaotic and week, and there was no sign of any hot periods in the hours before I got there, either.

Shortly before midnight Castle had one of its interrupted majors. After about 6 minutes of water, it shut down for about 5 minutes before resuming activity.

Fan & Mortar, 13:00 05 Jun 2007

As the day progressed, the weirdness continued. Dome became active. Little Squirt was also observed earlier in the day. Beehive had a one day interval, and I saw two indicators during the eruption. (No photo, unfortunately.) At least the afternoon Grand got in before the thunderstorms hit.

Grotto was in marathon all day, from when I first saw it at 00:00 to 22:00 when leaving the fourth Grand of the day (a whole 5 bursts).

Other Geyser Times

• Dome 11:33ns

Posted by HKoenig at 08:30 AM | Permalink

Having Grotto shut off around 07:30 meant an afternoon of waiting for Giant Hot Periods in between showers. Only in the last observed one did Mastiff show any potential. As of 19:15, Grotto had yet to start, but Grotto Fountain appeared to be getting close.

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 23:46 d=57m13s
• Giant hot periods
  • 13:06 d=8m46s
  • 16:19 d=3m32s
  • 18:57 d=6m20s

And nothing to do with geysers

Cracker packet at 7200ft

Posted by HKoenig at 09:19 AM | Permalink

The middle of the night Grand eruption ended up being the early morning eruption, thanks to Rift and West Triplet. As expected, all the clouds were gone by midnight, and with the almost full moon, there was no excuse to not go out. The wait and eruption were saved from becoming a total fiasco by the eruption being extremely unusual. The time between the start of Turban and the start of Grand was 2m56s. This is longest such interval that I've witnessed since the early 1980s. Turban started out sounding vigorous, and stayed that way the whole time. Due to the fog and low light, it wasn't possible to see either Vent or Grand's pool. But despite poor seeing, it seemed like the pool's fog was not thinning as usual.

With such a delayed start, it's not surprising that Vent started only 47s later. It appears that although Vent's start is keyed off the initiating geyser, it'll take an even greater interval to get a "Vent before Grand" start. In 1983, Mary Ann Moss witnessed one such, but Grand took over 7 minutes to start. In the past I've noticed that these extreme starts result in shorter Grand eruptions (total water and duration), but that may be the case here as a 10m10s single burst resulted in Vent and Turban quitting.

The mid-day Grand gave us the second unusual eruption in a row. First, it was only the second heavy overflow type delay that I've seen this trip. Grand finally boiled up a meter or so, then went calm again. It looked like we might actually get a "boop", which I haven't see since the mid-90s. But about 10 seconds later Grand started for real.

Where this morning's eruption featured a long time between the start of Turban and the start of Grand, this featured the reverse. It took Turban a minute to start, no where near a record, but Vent's vent didn't overflow until 17 seconds after that. Vent itself didn't start erupting until 3m12s, which is the opposite extreme from this morning.

Stopped by the Giant group in preparation for the start of a new Giant Deathwatch, and caught a weak bathtub (water visible only if you looked for it) and then a Grotto start. It took so long from the start of Grotto Fountain that I thought this might e one of those Grotto Ftn. only eruptions. And when Grotto did start, it seemed weak.

Deer behind Grand

It was pointed out to me that some information in my description of the 31 May eruption of Giant was in error. It's quite normal, post-marathon, for Bijou to be dead even hours later, and only reactivate after the first hot period. And even then, it may not be continuous.

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 02:20 d=37m53s, 12:17
• Grotto Fountain 13:10ie d>21m26s, 17:39
• Grotto 13:33, 17:50 (still ie 21:20)
• Giant Hot Periods (not complete)
  • 10:19 d=6m16s
  • 15:49
  • 17:21, d=2m02s
  • 18:45, d≈5m30s

And nothing to do with geysers

Behind the Inn, parked in a "handicapped only" space was a van with several bikes on the back and a kayak on top.

Posted by HKoenig at 11:04 AM | Permalink

Having a one Turban wait at 03:00 is nice. It's just enough time to settle in and appreciate the cold, but not long enough to get cold.

A 9m10s one burst eruption of Grand, on the other hand, isn't nice, especially on a full moon night when the slight breeze is blowing the steam to the north and West Triplet hasn't started erupting yet. The only excuse Big Sawmill has is that it took 1m25s from the start of Turban to get going. I really do miss the good ol' days when a first burst of that length was disappointing because it meant you probably were only got to get a second.

So of course the next eruption interval from Grand has to be a long. A long that doesn't fit any pattern, that erupts over half an hour after West Triplet ends, and that has no Rift. The pattern of Turban eruptions was chaotic up to the point where it had what I call a Type 3 delay (I think that's what I called it. Ishould've checked my notes back home better): On a fairly short interval, Turban has a strong, short eruption (around 3m30s) without any indication that Grand wants to erupt. That is followed by an even shorter interval (around 16m30s) and Grand usually erupts on one of the next two Turban intervals. This time it took four.

As if in compensation, the first burst was less than 8 minutes long. And as if to compensate for for that, the second burst lasted 2m20s, negating any chance of a third. Then, despite Vent and Turban quitting, the afterplay was fairly strong for a few minutes.

Giant is back to having hourly weak to medium strength hot periods, but as this is only at two days since the previous eruption, I'm not going to get excited until Monday morning.

Beehive erupted, not-unexpectedly to anyone who's paying attention, in the afternoon before the thunderclouds rolled in. I heard Beehive from within my Lodge Cabin for almost two minutes before someone gave out a radio call. And even then, they backdated the "ie" time by a minute.

The transition from early Spring to early Summer sure was quick. A suddenly noisy and gray sky is something I associate with July and August.

Another summer characteristic of the thunderstorms was their persistence. When it came time for Grand, they started up again. Out at Grand, the sky to the north was partly blue, and to the west it looked like the current shower would be the last. Except this continued for well over an hour. IT was as if the storm was just sitting directly overhead. That the lightening all seemed to be between one and two miles away seemed to confirm this. At least it was a short wait at Grand, and it even gave a bonus burst after a first lasting over ten minutes.

Posted by HKoenig at 08:26 AM | Permalink

After Giant and three hours waiting in the wind for Grand, I decided a full night's sleep was in order. despite the full moon. A midnight run to the plumbing facilities confirmed that decision, as it had clouded up (or never really cleared.

I arrived at Grand at 06:25 to find Vent and Turban restarting along with an empty Grand crater. Back to pick up on sleep.

But before that I noticed that the Penta runoff channel was wet. Yesterday while waiting for Grand, we had a complete Tardy-only cycle, and were well into a second. I couldn't stick around, so my time estimate could be eight hours off.

Mid day proved to finally be a nice day where no jacket was needed, at least until the winds kicked up later in the day. But before that it was so calm that I could easily hear Oblong erupting while waiting at Grand.

Grand 2007 Jun 01 20:18

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 18:44 d=40m00s

And nothing to do with geysers

A lone bicycle can trigger the outbound exit road's radar speed limit sign. I was doing 14mph.

Posted by HKoenig at 02:37 PM | Permalink

Coming back from adding the postings on Giant, while I was biking between the Inn and the VC, I hear a call that Beehive's Indicator is erupting. The day just gets better. So I went down to the river overlook to enjoy the first Beehive eruption I've seen this trip.

The Grand eruption that afternoon was a bit of a disappointment. Not only did we get a Rift delay, but the one burst eruption lasted 12m25s, which while extremely long, I believe is not a record.

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 13:54

And nothing to do with geysers

A few days ago the bison was below my cabin. Today, coming back, it was standing next to cabin #235, looking about as animated as the taxidermic specimen in the Upper Store.

Some additions to the posting on Giant, also added inline to that posting:

Before the hot period, as I sat down for breakfast, I noticed no activity from Bijou. Now I wasn't there that long, and it may have already gone into the shutdown, but the lack of activity wasn't attracting any notice.

Well into the eruption one of the NPS Naturalists announced that there was a peregrine falcon down toward Morning Glory. Someone needs to take her aside and get her priorities straight. Or at least to recognize the priorities of many of those people milling about.

Posted by HKoenig at 09:43 AM | Permalink

Like today (see previous posting.)

There was a small shower between the time I went to sleep and midnight, when I got up. Just enough to wet things down, and make sure they stayed wet all night. When I got out to Grand, it was still above freezing, and dead calm. Usually there's a slight, imperceptible movement of air down-valley, most noticible by the way all the steam clouds tilt slightly in that direction. Tonight, it was straight up. Comet and the sputs of the Daisy group were putting a steamcloud hundreds of feet in the air.

At Grand, this presents a problem. The runoff is all between you and the geysers, and so end up blocking your view. Being back-lit by the moon would make things visible, but that not an option (at least a legal one).. As seen from the northern end of the line of benches, I saw a solid wall of steam that was sharply deliniiated by Vent, extending all the way to the right along the runoff channel. All other views were worse. Oh, well.

Got back out into the basin around 05:30, light enough that it was obvious that today was, at least in terms of weather, going to be the best day of my visit. Out at Giant, though, the platform was dead. An hour sitting resulting in seeing nothing, and it was on to Grand.

I got there on what appeared to be a delay type overflow, and even Percolator quiet, so I was expecting a bit of a wait. Grand had other ideas, and instead erupted over a minute after Turban started. And the second burst missed being a "long" by 8 seconds.

After that, the choices were between the Monkey Cage at Giant or Daisy. So I got to see Splendid's "Side Boiler" for the first time. It was active most of the time during my 20 minute wait, and even started up about 8 minutes after Daisy, along with some weak side vent activity.

Now there was no choice, it was off to Giant. I plopped down back about halfway between the Indicator Pool and the junction to the platform, with a decent view of Mastiff and co., and decided it was time for breakfast (Cheerios mixed with left over trail mix). I noticed no activity from Bijou. Now I wasn't there that long, and it may have already gone into the shutdown, but the lack of activity wasn't attracting any notice. No sooner than I started to feed than I heard comments from the Cage about how it looked like Mastiff was rising.

I stood up, and it was. (Here I've got a minor quibble: I had to give the announcement about rising Mastiff because despite there being over a dozen people in the Cage, all with a better view, no one else did. Every second counts.)

At that point, the hot period preceded fairly normally for the first four or five minutes, giving me plenty of time to put away the food, rearrange the pack and dig out items I expected to need, like the umbrella. But by then, one thing was obvious: Mastiff was not going to wimp out after a couple of small boils. While it stopped a few times, every time it came back stronger.

Around the 9 minute mark, Mastiff was in eruption on its own, with continuous water from both vents well above the cone of Giant. Giant, however, seemed like it didn't want to start, with splashes not much bigger than those I saw last week 24 hours before it finally erupted. Mastiff continued, with Catfish joining in. Somewhere in that direction one of the vents was jetting loud steam, but I couldn't tell which. Finally, after 11m20s, Giant had a splash big enough to set it off.

I'd stationed myself at the front right corner, as close as you can get. (If no one else is gonna take that spot, I sure will.) The wind was almost perpendicular to my line of sight, but still expected that I might need the umbrella. Even though for a few moments, the tip of the water column was directly at my zenith, and I could see the water slowly droping straight for me, the wind eventually moved the water just a few feet over. Tall?yes. How tall? No idea.

Only one marker sign moved, the "Giant" one, and even it moved only a few feet and landed upright. The wind was just enough to push the steam away, so we never didn't have a bad view of Giant once it started. I wanted to take some pictures, but my ancient camera decided that it was time to go from yesterday's "full charge" to "empty".

Well into the eruption one of the NPS Naturalists announced that there was a peregrine falcon down toward Morning Glory. Someone needs to take her aside and get her priorities straight. Or at least to recognize the priorities of many of those people milling about.

Now that I've had my platform start for this trip, I can try other places, if the mood suits. I still want to try to measure the height of the first minute's water, and wouldn't mind seeing a start from Grand.

I expect the rest of the day to be pretty dull, so don't expect more than the briefest of a posting tomorrow

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 01:17
• Giant hot period 09:28 d=11m20s, eruption

Posted by HKoenig at 12:14 PM | Permalink

First, a slight change of format. Up until now, I've been trying to make these postings "up-to-date",. But that makes it hard sometimes to keep straight what happened on what date. So from now on, and definitely until the posting situation gets a bit easier, I'll have a single day (or less) per report. Of course, should something interesting happen, like an eruption of Giant or an eight Burst Grand or Economic activity, it'll add an extra posting. The geyser log times will be up to date, of course.

So that makes this report pretty short. With Grotto in a marathon, the rest of my day was spent on errands which I'd expect to do the day before. The weather was cool and partly cloudy with a sprinkle or two. Radio chatter was down, too, it seemed. As of 19:00, Grotto was still active. It was my hope that come the mid-night Grand, it'd still be going, but stop while I'm out there.

I've found that my recent changes to entering geyser times wasn't working properly with Grand burst info and Castle minors. I think I've fixed that. If you see any other problems, let me know. Even though it might take a day or two to fix it.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:12 PM | Permalink

Yesterday afternoon was another Rift delayed Grand interval in cold and wind. At least the last snow shower was a few hours earlier while waiting for Giant.

Note how yesterday's Giant hot period's alternated durations between long and medium.

Overnight was clear and calm and cold. The moon set just as the east was starting to show some light, so it never got totally dark. The Grand eruption was with the moon only a few degrees above the horizon, and a moonbow/fogbow in the steam over the main runoff channel. Like yesterday, the eruption appears to have been delayed by Rift, or perhaps more accurately, West Triplet. And I've never heard of a Rift interval of less than 10 hours before.

This morning there was only a single hot period, at 05:56, lasting 4m46s, as it appears that Grotto is having another marathon (starting around 02:57). As of the mid-day Grand eruption, it's still erupting.

Other Geyser Times

• Penta 19:07ie, steam phase
• Grotto Ftn 19:02
• Giant hot periods
  • 11:18 d=8m25s
  • 14:39 d=3m36s
  • 16:36 d=6m06s
  • 17:59 d=3m15s
  • 19:13 d=6m45s
  • 21:02 d=2m20s
• Rift 16:21 d=43m05s

• Grotto 02:57
• Giant hot period
  • 05:56 d=4m46s
• Rift 01:59 d=38m39s
• Uncertain 08:49

And nothing to do with geysers

Yesterday afternoon when I left my cabin to head out into the basin, I heard a noise to the left. Down the slope, about 20ft away, was a bison grazing away on the hillside.

While waiting at Grand, I thought I saw motion on the top of the hill. It turned out to be a coyote who ducked back into the trees.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:04 PM | Permalink

For the wait for yesterday (28 May) evening's eruption of Grand, the sky was dark and overcast to the west, while clear to the east. The wind was still as blustery and annoying as earlier in the day. As I waited, the gray got darker, and eventually, it started to snow wet, fat flakes. But at the same time, it began to lighten to the west, so that the disk of the sun could be made out. The shower was colored pink by this low lighting. By the time the shower ended, the sun would have been visible if it hadn't just set. That's when Grand erupted. It would have been a very pretty eruption if it hadn't been so steamy and windy.

The overnight Grand was in completely different circumstances. There was still some clouds obscuring a setting moon, but it was dead calm. The boardwalks were still covered with ice from the previous evening's snow. The eruption itself was unremarkable except for the fact that Percolator was dead and there were two bursts.

On to Giant afterwards, where it was obvious from the platform that there hadn't been a hot period in a few hours. Also, it appeared that Grotto was once again going into a marathon eruption. The platform also reflected this, as Bijou was chaotic in its behavior, and all the features seemed weak.

I placed my thermometer outside the cabin when I came back in at 06:15, and just a few minutes later, it read 29°F. Which means it was much colder out in the basin itself.

Of course, the problem with making plans based on what you think the geysers are going to do is that the geysers might have other plans. When I got out for the late morning Grand eruption, it was obvious that Grotto had quit. So no marathon, and it appears I'm going to have to drop some of the errands I'd planned for today.

So just as I'm about to post the above, the call goes out that "there's water rising in Mastiff". So at 11:18 we get an 8m25s hot period, and I get to add some exercise I hadn't intended.

Other Geyser Times

• Grotto Fountain 18:57 w/o Grotto
• Rift 21:07ns

• Penta 06:31ie, steam phase

Posted by HKoenig at 11:57 AM | Permalink

The Crater of Extinct
Splendid Geyser

Daisy Geyser

Later Sunday evening, Grand finally made up for all the nice short intervals it's had by tossing in a long interval, which these days is a measly 8h13m. (Ahh, for the good ol' days when a "long" was over 16 hours, and a short just 10.) I never really had a delay overflow, just alternated good looking overflows with ones that were obviously not going to result in an eruption. At the same time, the weather deterorated. It got cloudy and gray, and eventually we started getting sprinkles. FInally, at 20:03, it had what was a "Classic Two Turban Delay" — heavy overflow with waves, a drop as Turban starts and a short eruption of Turban (2m59s). That was followed by a short Turban interval (17m08s)and finally on the second Turban, the eruption. The eruption itself presented a nice contrast between the white watercolumn from Grand with the gray clouds as a backdrop.

This Monay morning was mixed. The weather was clear and could have been warm if the wind wasn't gusting up to about 40mph, or so it seemed. Grotto's marathon ended somewhere around 03:00-04:00 (best guess), and Grand went at 03:10, according to the monitor. So instead of spreading things about, Grand decided that it was time to experience a Rift delay. This resulted in everything interesting happening in a little over a half-hour span. First, this time someone saw the Indicator in eruption, which resulted in a stampede to the south. They returned in time for Grand to finally erupt. While it was a two burst eruption, it took Grand a full minute after the start of Turban to begin, and the total duration was only 9m29s, yet Vent and Turban quit afterwards

Within ten minutes of the end of Grand's eruption, Giant had its post-marathon hot period. The hot period was fairly strong, with Mastiff boiling mostly to one or two feet, with a max around four,but for almost the entire duration.It lasted 9m52s, then was followed by about 3m30s of a Feather restart but with weak Giant surging.

Other Geyser Times

• Rift 10:09, d≈50m

And nothing to do with geysers

On my way to Grand last night, I saw a duck floating on the Firehole River, then shooting the rapids below the Sawmill bridge and drifting off downstream.

Posted by HKoenig at 03:58 PM | Permalink

One of the reasons I like the early morning is because its a time unlike the rest of the day. Unlike early evening, road and people noise is non-existent. (People who like noisy machinery never seen to be early risers for some reason...) Also, it's the one time of day when the wind is truly calm. Usually on nice days, as the air rapidly warms, the winds start around 09:00 or so.

I like seeing the steam from an eruption of Grotto climbing hundreds of feet into the air, like something important is erupting. But even large pools can have their subtleties. This morning, for example, as Grand was having the heavy overflow before its eruption, there was absolutely no wind. It was so calm that the convection from Grand's pool's steam column was actually creating its own micro-wind, drawing in the steam coming from the runoff channels. These plumes weren't vertical, but all tilted toward Grand. Then a ever so slight breeze came up, and destroyed the effect.

Grand itself had four eruptions yesterday, and five in about a 28 hour period. For a day now, I've arrived at Grand and it will erupt on one of the next two Turban eruptions. I think several of these have been delay-type starts, but can't be sure because it's usually too dark (or steamy) to see clearly, and haven't seen a full Turban interval on those that I suspect.

Yesterday, coming out of a Grotto marathon, it took Giant about 13 hours to finally have a hot period for the crowd who spent a day there. At 19:58, it lasted 5m28s. There was another, weaker one at 21:50. By this morning, Grotto was back into what appears to be another marathon, with Giant's platform dead around 06:00. When this marathon ends, that's when the fun will begin.

Because of the marathon, it also appears to be no reason be hanging around down there, as I'm hearing more Geyser Hill radio reports than yesterday.

Saw an eruption of Daisy up close, started as I arrived, so I didn't see the preliminaries. But the sputs between Splendid and Comet looked little changed from what I remember seeing in years past. But Splendid was dead. It did nothing during Daisy's eruption, other than draining. Even after the eruption ended, nothing happened. There's only a narrow, barely wet algae filled runoff channel off to the north, and it appears that even that is due to Daisy's runoff.

Other Geyser Times

• Uncertain 05:40
• Grotto 05:30ie (marathon, still ie @14:00)

And nothing to do with geysers

From the NPS radios, a Sunday morning report of "two people skateboarding down from Craig Pass."

Why do new hiking boots always come with laces that refuse to hold a knot?

Somebody locked their doglet inside the car at the Lower Ham's. You could still hear the ankle-biter yelping down at Crested Pool.

At 10:30, as I'm headed down-basin, there's a bison in the Lodge cabin area blocking my way.

Posted by HKoenig at 02:27 PM | Permalink

One of the things I like about a Grand start on a delayed Turban interval is the explosive start. For the last 10 minutes or so all there is to see is a full, heavily overflowing pool that fluctuates slightly. Then suddenly, with only a couple of large pulsations, Grand suddenly rockets up to 10 meters high. It's as if Grand has been fighting for all that time to erupt, and had finally figured out how to unleash itself, and is going to make sure it keeps erupting.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to guarantee against a one burst eruption.

(Years ago Grand would have "boops", where it would have several boils to 3 or 4 meters, as if the eruption was starting, only to suddenly subside. It was amusing to see people who knew enough to be dangerous suddenly taken aback when the pools dropped instead of erupted.)

For the last few days, in what had to have been not the greatest of conditions, we kept getting eruption times on every feature on Geyser Hill (especially Plume) from dawn until dusk. Or so it seemed. So today, it what started out as a beautiful day, a day in which we've yet to have any precipitation from the thunderclouds, and on a day when there's a large influx of observers for the Memorial Day weekend, Beehive erupts in the middle of the afternoon. No one saw the Indicator, the only radio call was at least two minutes into the eruption. Webcam observers probably got a better start time.

And I saw my first mosquito today, a sure sign that Spring really has started.

Other geysers:

• Rift 11:03
• Fountain 12:23
• Great Fountain 13:50

Posted by HKoenig at 05:48 PM | Permalink

As yesterday afternoon progressed, the temperature rose,the sky cleared and the wind died down (or at least wasn't as obnoxious) so that by the evening One-Burst Grand, the weather cold almost qualify as nice. Otherwise a dull, uneventful afternoon, and one to use to settle into a routine.

Today has been nice. Still cool, and with the midday breeze, but clear and in the sunshine, a jacket isn't really needed. Grand had, if the electronic monitor is to be believed, a little over 6 hour interval this morning. Castle must've had a minor overnight, too.

In any case, it was a nice day to stick around and watch a full West Triplet (and Rift start at 11:03). I see from the weather forecast that it'll turn wet again just as it's time to start spending time at Giant.

In other notes, when zips by you on a bike and says that dogs aren't permitted in thermal areas, don't whine back, "well, I didn't see a sign". You are just admitting that you know that you aren't supposed to dragging your little darling out there, but also didn't think anyone would care. Just don't say anything would be better thing to do.

Posted by HKoenig at 12:27 PM | Permalink

Tilt does erupt! On my way out to Grand last evening, once again while tying up my bike, I saw a geyser erupt. This time, at least, it wasn't Grand.

The activity I saw lasted about a minute from when I first noticed it. It was throwing jets of water away from the boardwalk about one meter high from the northern opening in the vent. Nothing impressive, but nice to know it's not dead. (I should probably write up a few Tilt related memories for posting later this summer.

Otherwise another long one burst Grand (d=11m31s). At least it went early, so I didn't have to wait in the cold, windy and dark. Just the cold and windy.

Today Grand decided to have a longer interval for no apparent reason, and Rift had a duration which for me seemed a more normal length. Midway through that eruption, West Triplet decided to throw in one of its empty vent steam minors.

Sawmill Group had a deep drain with a couple of Sawmill restarts, followed by an eruption of Uncertain.

Other Geysers:

• Rift 10:47 d=1h19m
• Uncertain 10:57

Posted by HKoenig at 02:29 PM | Permalink

After the excitement of the morning, time to catch up on a variety of things that have been put off due to a combination of Giant, weather and lack of transport. All that done, it was time to head back out to Grand. The weather had changed back to windy, cool, and overcast with occasional snow showers.

Start of Rift Geyser

On 21 May, one lasted ≈34m. Today the eruption at 13:01 lasted only 28m21s. It was the second of the day, the first being early in the morning around 01:15. And neither eruption seems to have had any detrimental effect on Rift.

Meanwhile Grand continues to annoy. At least the afternoon's one burst eruption lasted 11m20s, and was followed by a Vent & Turban pause of 19m14s.

Posted by HKoenig at 04:03 PM | Permalink

Graham Meech stayed out all night as Giant continued to have hourly hot periods during the night, none of them as strong as the one that occurred the previous night while I was making these postings.

Giant Geyser

Giant Geyser

Giant Geyser and Grand Geyser

Other geysers of interest:

• Oblong 05:27 ie
• Daisy 05:07
• Riverside 01:44, 08:23ie
• Grotto 03:53

Posted by HKoenig at 09:38 AM | Permalink

This will be pretty short, since I spent the day between Giant and Grand. At least the latter was fairly cooperative. The weather was cool (cold when breezy) but no rain or snow.

Giant hot periiods:

• 06:28 d=4m40s
• 07:27 d=1m40s
• 08:57 d=4m00s
• 09:57 d=2m10s
• 12:01 d=1m39s
• 13:00 bathtub
• 14:16 d=6m37s
• 16:28 d=1m30s
• 17:37 d≈3m20s
• 18:35 d=2m10s
• 19:35 d=1m42s
• 20:39 d≈5m

Other geysers:

• Grotto Ftn 09:07, 13:49
• Grotto 09:12, 13:54
• Penta 13:17ie
• Grand 09:18 T2C, 17:21 T3Q
• Oblong 04:31, 07:33, 12:46, 15:55ns
• Riverside 05:46, 12:28, 19:06
• Daisy 06:04, 09:39, 12:53, 15:57, 18:51

Posted by HKoenig at 08:20 PM | Permalink

In the Grand Group it was a cold, miserable day. By afternoon,m temperature was just above freezing, so the windswept snow melted where it landed. When I arrived, Rift had just started, and we were in a delay overflow. With a short Rift duration, I was hoping for a short delay. No such luck. The second Turban was a short but strong eruption, followed by a 16m11s interval. So no surprise the total delay was D9.

Following a short Grotto marathon overnight, there was a Giant hot period at 14:33, d≈5m. A second hot period occurred 16 17:14, slighly longer d≈6m, and then at 19:29, d=5m50s. Grotto still had not restarted as of the last hot period (at least I never heard a report of that.).

• West Triplet 12:25
• Rift 12:57 d≈34m
• Grand 16:07 T1C
• Daisy 12:31, 15:50
• Oblong 14:40, 18:54
• Riverside 16:17
• Castle 18:51

Posted by HKoenig at 07:43 PM | Permalink

Having been gone a long time, some of the things I'm noticing are probably well known and obvious to those who' ve been here more recently. But I'm still going to comment on them.

Tilt Geyser is completely different. The original Tilt, which had functioned as a noisy steamvent in the 1980s and 1990s, has been completely filled in by algae and debris carried along by Crested's runoff channel. In the several minutes that I stood there, I noticed that the blowout vents were fluctuating between overflow and down about 1.5cm. The changes in level was also accompanied by ripples and palpitations. That, I assume, is the sum total of Tilt's present activity, which I guess would still qualify it as an intermittent spring.

The Sawmill Group appeared almost as I remembered it, with one minor and one major exception. Tardy has developed a new runoff channel which heads northeast and under the boardwalk, which would have been useful when I wanted to put electronic monitors around the group.

The big exception was the new hole (or holes) that have developed beside or even under the bend of the boardwalk at Scalloped Spring. Thanks to the snow showers, it was easy to see the long stretch of warm walkway. The between the walkway and the old collapse feature actually had water sloshing around about a half meter down. I'm surprised the NPS hasn't panicked and closed the trail. If the do, let them wait until July.

Posted by HKoenig at 10:55 AM | Permalink