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Observations for 2020 June 24


Discovered the hard way that the bike trail to Fairy Falls beyond the Grand Prismatic overlook is closed because of bear activity. Gotta remember to chec the signboards at the trailheads. (In this case, the incident was two days ago, and didn't get publicity until today.) So returned and did a loop of the Lower Basin to find that pretty much everthing of interest was in the middle of its interval. Did finally stop by and see a full Flood eruption, but the attempt to video record the eruption was not successful due to operator error.

Spend a few hours at Three Sisters to learn more about how things work there. Got to see a major Mugwump eruption (one lasting 25 seconds with multiple bursts) and what was probably the last minor (one having a single large burst, lasting about 10 seconds). Three Crater also seems to have multiple modes, from a single large boop to multiple distinct bursts over a period of five or more minutes, but I haven't quite figured it all out.

Did see three more One Burst Grand Eruptions. Two of them came on delays. The last one of the day went into Big Sawmill mode for the last few minutes, with multiple false pauses.

A final indignity was to wait for a West Triplet to finish. It lasted nearly 35 minutes, but Rift didn't start and wasn't even steaming. So I left. Looking back from the walk up to Crested, I could see the steam from an eruption of Rift starting.