Category: Commentary

This is probably the last posting here. Since I'm no longer in the park, I don't have access to any of the information necessary to make them. I attempted to see if I could interest anyone else in helping to continue it after I left, but found no takers. I am getting some information on Grand, Giant and Beehive and such, but in the "Current Activity" panel, I've disabled several other geysers on which I won't be getting any up-to-date information. The postings will stay here for the foreseeable future.

If I have accomplished anything, it was to show that doing these things, right from Yellowstone, is not only possible, but fairly easy. (I've learned that one can also buy web modem-like access through some cellphone providers, too.) With cellphones and text messaging, it should be possible to set up a server on which people can report geyser times and info, which doesn't require them yelling into a radio and the Visitor Center starting yet another Abbot and Costello "Who's On First" routine. Which then raises the question, why doesn't an entity like GOSA do it? A cynical guess would be because most groupies are happy with the current chaos, both within the park and from home. More likely, it's just because it's not occurred to anyone to try this, and leadership has always been lacking among gazers (not an opinion here, but fact based on a couple decades of experience). I'm open to some consulting and when it comes to commercial programming, my rates are reasonable and competitive.

... who want to progress to the next level.

In no particular order, here are some words of advice for those new to Yellowstone's geyser activity:

• "When did Grand erupt?" is not an acceptable greeting.
• Carrying around Scott Bryan's Geysers of Yellowstone does not make you an expert.
• Reading Scott Bryan's Geysers of Yellowstone does not make you an expert.
• Finding a mistake in Scott Bryan's Geysers of Yellowstone does not make you an expert. (Although this might change with the next edition...)
• Just because we both like geysers does not automatically make you my friend.
• The socializing benches are over there. Use them.
• Someone else saw that particular activity before you. Someone else saw that feature erupt before you. And it almost certainly has a name.
• Enthusiasm is not a substitute for accuracy.
• Accept the fact that there's a long list of people who'd like special privileges (like housing or access to restricted areas) and that you are on the bottom of the list. The only way to move up is to keep at it for years, and pay your own way in the process.
• If you make a wrong decision, or other obligations get in the way, deal with it. No one wants to hear you whine about how you were at Grand when Beehive erupted. No one forced you to be at Grand.
• If you aren't prepared for the nighttime conditions (and you won't be), know when to give up. Your constant twitching futilely trying to keep warm gets annoying Try a moonlight Grand or Castle first so you know what you are getting into.
• Bright lights won't help you see large areas or generalities, only specifics.
• Turn off the light and let your eyes adapt to the dark.
• Radios — Don't get me started, but this also applies in person: Try shutting up and listening.
• Words mean things, and geyser terms have specific meanings. If you are unable or unwilling to learn to use them properly, then please don't spread your ignorance around.
• Don't bother trying to impress tourons, because you will never see them again. People who are interested in geysers won't need to be sold on seeing Grand.

Maybe it's because I've been gone for a while, but these past few weeks I've heard some geyser gazers I've not seen before using terms I've never heard of, terms that aren't needed, terms about a geyser which I know extremely well.

I've always heard of Grand's eruptions being referred to as being a "one burst", or "two burst", or "three burst" or even "eight burst" eruption. Yet there are people using terms like "single" or "double" or "triple" to describe the number of bursts in an eruption. That's just wrong, and not just because I don't like it.

It's not just because I have proprietary feelings towards that part of the basin. The terminology for Grand eruptions has been long established, I would assume by Marie Wolf or Suzanne Strasser, or even someone earlier. There is no reason to change that terminology. For one thing, if a miracle occurred and Grand went back to the pre-1960s type eruptions with up to a couple dozen bursts, or if one just wants to refer to eruptions from that era, that terminology breaks down, or at least becomes very silly.

Besided "double" and "triple" and such implies equality between the bursts, which is not the case. The first burst, at least during the last few decades, is decidedly different, and plays a different role in the eruption, as witnessed by its length. And "double" implies the full term, "double eruption", which makes no sense. Compare that to "one burst eruption", which makes sense as either " one burst" or even "one", as in "Grand had another one this morning."

Proper communication requires using agreed upon terms and other criteria. Using multiple terms for the same phenomena serves only to confuse.

Sit around the basin long enough, and you will inevitably witness this scenario: A family walks by, and one of the children gives a silly name to a feature. An adult compliments them, even though there's a sign right in front of them. They are on vacation, none of this really maters, and it'll all be forgotten within the hour.

I can understand the desire to want to name things, or the misguided attempt to clarify unnecessarily, as seems the case here. But if a person really wants to do that, they should at least put in the effort to demonstrate why the change is necessary, and to persuade others, not just off and start using new terms used by no one else (especially one not used by those who have studied the feature and become fairly knowledgeable about it.) Doing that is little more than the tourist family giving out pet names.

Maybe I should have gone out to the middle of the night eruption. At least I'd almost certainly not had others around, and the wait would have been shorter and the weather nicer.

How annoying? Well, nothing in particular, but just the way all the little things added up.

Start with a West Triplet delay that doesn't want to seem to end. Hours of Percolator quiet and Turban just killing time. The weather is overcast, cold and blustery. I forgot my water bottle. Add in all the stupid human activity. Down by West Triplet is a large, extended family whose kids earlier were running wild, including one poking at the runoff with a stick, who are now singing loudly. On one side is are some geyser groupies who know just enough to be dangerous, and are willing to share that limited knowledge with every touron who wanders by. So you get to hear the same mangled information over, and over, and over and over. Then there's the guy biking who can't leave his whole kit behind, but at least he's walking the bike and not wearing Lycra. Can't forget to add in hearing two hours of some twit keying their radio mike. I thought the NPS chatter was annoying, but this stupid twit found a way to exceed them.

On the other side I've got this fat, pontificating blowhard leading a class passing along gossip, misinformation, mangled facts and his opinions as if they were facts to his ignorant students. It pushed me over the edge when he tried to portray Splendid's 1997 activity as somehow related to road removal (did you know 25% of pavement in Yellowstone has been removed over the last few decades, and that buildings downbasin were removed as part of the 1970 UGB road relocation? That old photos show Old Faithful had a much bigger cone?) Got as far a way as I could from that pompous windbag.

Then to top things off, you've got the geyser groupie who thinks calling in Grand before it actually starts (with an inaccurate watch, no less), is going earn him the bonus points to get that 10th Level Gazer award he so desperately craves. (A Grand start is when the surging becomes continuous and keeps rising, not when you see the first boil. Sheesh.)

No dogs, though. The only thing left to make this day complete is for there to be a group of idiots at Grand this evening with bright lights and too much booze in them.

Spend enough time paying attention to Yellowstone in the news, and you will hear reports of people having gotten themselves into spots where they need professional extraction. When I hear them, I can't help but wonder, how did they get there in the first place. Today I got a lesson on how that's done.

So I'm at Grand this morning, sitting and minding my own business when one of Xanterra's finest interrupts my reading by asking if I can answer a question. That being, "does the powerline trail go all the way to Midway?" I tell him not only don't I know that, but i'm not taking responsibility for answering him in any case if he's going to go off established trails. Is retort is something to the effect that "but the powerline is an established trail." (If he knows that, then why's he asking me?)

He makes some comment about how he's seen me out here a lot, and because of that assumed that I knew things about the Park. I reply that I know things about the geysers, and if he wants trail information, the proper place is the Ranger Station or Visitor Center. He said he already asked them, and they didn't know, either. (You'd think he'd take that as a sign? And not just ask some guy sitting on a bench?)

So off in a huff to the goes to the north to enjoy a hike along the scenic powerline. I hope he has a good time, and we don't hear about him over the NPS radios or on the news.

What happened here, it seems, is that he kept asking for answers from people he thought knew more than him, yet when those answers weren't the ones he expected, he reacted negatively and just kept going ahead with his plans. Now if he'd asked me why I though his hiking there was bad, I could have pointed out that the powerline is deliberatly place to be out of sight as much as possible, and that the linemen use powered ATVs to service them if necessary, and that wires and poles don't care what sort of terrain is underneath and between them. They aren't designed for human hiking. But that's okay, by the time I make this posting, I figure he'll have figured both out, and not had to be rescued in the process.

Here are tips based on my observations on how these have been used the last week or so:

• Talk slowly and distinctly. Speak up, because my volume control only goes up to 10.
• Don't press the "Send" button and immediately start talking. Receivers can take a second or two to recognize your carrier signal, and start playing what you are saying.
• Repeat any times, or even spell out the digits the second time.
• Give people time to write down the first time before you announce the second.
• Figure out what you are going to say before transmitting. Get to the point. Don't spend the first 15 seconds doing your William Buckley impression
• To get the maximum range, hold so that the antenna is vertical. (Don't nod down to talk into a radio held at an angle.)
• Put your radio where you won't keep hitting the [expletive deleted] "Call Button". You know, the one that makes a chirping sound in every radio at Grand or Giant. Even, better see if the instruction manual says you can disable it completely. Don't make me come find you...
• If people keep asking you to repeat, or to have your reports relayed, that is a good sign that you're doing something wrong, or that your radio isn't working right.
• If someone is calling out Giant hot period information, your Plume or Atomizer time can wait.
• And if someone does call out one of those times during a hot period, they've already made their decision on where they'd rather be, so don't respond by telling them to get to Giant.
• Why is it that people who, in person can't shut up, on the radios think that saying nothing during a Giant hot period is being descriptive?

Actually, the general behavior is a lot better than my last times here, without all the yakking between the same two or three people asking their friends to "switch to five." If anything, the yakking there is comes from the NPS, not gazers.

Why can't they just leave it just this way as a sort of monument to the NPS?