Observations for 2018 October 09


So after yesterday's excitement, today wasn't much.

The day started at dawn with a trip down basin to see what had happened at Giant. Seeing Bijou active meant no eruption, and the depth charging without a wet, steaming platform implied that we had just missed a bathtub. Ended up waiting several hours in light, windless snow for a strangely weak hot period. Feather was on for a bit over 8 minutes, yet there was no overflow from Mastiff, and none of the other vents joined in. This activity also came well after Rocket and Grotto had finished.

Came back a couple of hours later. There was still intermittent snow, but the wind had picked up, making observations a bit more difficult and the wait much more uncomfortable. Again, probably arrived just after some sort of long pause from Bijou, as it didn't stop for the next hour. Grotto had close to a six hour interval, and it was an hour into that eruption when we finally got the hot period. (At the same time as Grand.) Mastiff flooded the area, and did have some meter high surging, But the restart was weak, with no activity from Posthole, and no surging from Giant. At that point, it was time to go in.

With the cold and with the Lodge closed, have reverted to driving to the Lower Ham's parking lot and biking from there. So it was right after we'd loaded up the bikes for a trip back to our Snowlodge cabin that Beehive's indicator started. We learned the hard way that a five minute indicator is not enough time to drive over to the Lodge cabins and go to Geyser Hill. Saw the start of Beehive just as we parked.

And that was it for the day. The expected snow, the kind that sticks and accumulates, started about then, and continued on until it got dark.