Going out at the 14 hour mark was excessively cold and excessively windy for the first half of September. Once the sun rose above the ridge, the cold did seem to moderate a bit.
West Triplet started to erupt as I arrived, and 45 minutes later, so did Rift. It was 2-1/2 hours from then that the One Burst Grand finally occurred. Once again, we got a fairly long interval without any observed delays.
2026-Sep-14 : 10:28:27 T1C 10:28:17 Vent Ovfl -0m10s 10:28:22 Boop -0m05s 10:28:26 Turban -0m01s 10:28:27 B1 --- d=09m47s 10:31:19 Vent 2m52s 10:38:14 P1 9m47s Vent & Turban continue ΣD=09m47s * * * * * 07:14:56 West Triplet d=49m06s 07:21:00 d=03m34s 07:39:43 Int: 18m43s d=04m03s 07:59:33 Rift d=01h01m 08:00:07 Int: 20m24s d=03m42s 08:20:16 Int: 20m09s d=03m32s 08:38:20 Int: 18m04s d=03m46s 08:58:04 Int: 19m44s d=03m18s 09:18:06 Int: 20m02s d=03m41s 09:35:54 Int: 17m48s d=03m32s 09:53:58 Int: 18m04s d=03m29s 10:11:18 Int: 17m20s d=02m51s Turban: 17m08s
From there, it was down to the Bijou Cage, much later than I expected, to start the wait for the next Giant eruption. For the first hour or so I was disappointed in the activity.
I witnessed several Bijou slowdowns or short pauses that seemed to have no effect on any other feature. Bijou's activity also seemed weak, and not as noisy. There wasn almost no depth charging from the front of Mastiff, and the back was having small to medium surges every few minutes. Catfish was intermittently spitting. The Southwest Vents were barely steaming, and through the wind noise, I couldn't hear any gurgling. The platform was extremely dry, including in front of Giant itself. And across the river, it seemed like there was increased runoff coming down from the Purple Pools.
Then on one of the Bijou pauses, it stayed off, and water was visible in Mastiff. The water slowly rose until it reached about 20cm below overflow. Bijou was paused for about 3m40s, and once it restarted, that's when there was some roaring and activity by the B-C vent. The end of the pause also resulted in some depth charging from front Mastiff. And then I left to get out of the wind and cold and have lunch.
The evening was a repeat of this morning's Grand wait, except I arrived to what was probably the Turban Delay Interval. Before the next Turban eruption, West Triplet started, and its eruption lasted over an hour. Forty-five minutes later, Rift started, and it seemed like the largest back vent was even more vigorous than usual.
The Rift eruption lasted almost an hour, and by then the sun had set. One more Turban eruption on an interval of less than 16 minutes, and then Grand was ready to erupt. The One Burst Grand was notable because at just under seven minutes, it had a False Pause that all of us watching the eruption thought was an actual pause, and were amazed to see a pause so early in an eruption. (With the thought of "we're gonna get multiple bursts") Instead, the eruption settled down into a weak Big Sawmill eruption that lasted over eleven minutes.
2026-Sep-14 : 19:27:37 G1Q 19:27:25 Vent Ovfl -0m12s 19:27:36 Boop -0m01s 19:27:37 B1 --- d=11m15s 19:27:39 Turban 0m02s 19:30:25 Vent 2m48s 19:34:28 FP 6m51s 19:38:52 P1 11m15s 19:39:41 V&T Quit 12m04s ΣD=11m15s * * * * * 17:03:28 d=04m49s 17:15:23 West Triplet d=01h06m 17:21:29 Int: 18m01s d=03m50s 17:39:55 Int: 18m26s d=03m29s 17:59:29 Int: 19m34s d=03m56s 18:00:33 Rift d=54m26s 18:19:06 Int: 19m37s d=03m34s 18:37:36 Int: 18m30s d=03m20s 18:55:03 Int: 17m27s d=03m02s 19:10:33 Int: 15m30s d=03m19s Grand: 17m04s
Also, it seems like some strange cult has invaded the geyser basins. They have this weird ritual where the hold a small slab in front of their faces, sometimes with both hands, and stare at it throughout a geyser eruption, deliberately avoiding looking at the geyser. As if the slab is intended as a protection to ward off evil emanating from the geyser. Sometimes a second person will face away from the geyser, and then block the slab from directly viewing the geyser while the blocker makes ridiculous poses and suspicious hand signals. Then at some point during the eruption, they drop the slab and walk away while the eruption is still in progress, never looking back. I think I heard that the slab is a representation of a holy relic called a "stultitia fabrica", which seems to translate into English as something like "stupidifier", but I can't be sure. But it's almost scary seeing all of them lined up like that along the boardwalk during a Grand eruption with their blank expressions.