Notes and Observations on Geysers in Yellowstone and Elsewhere
Another day at Norris. The activity was pretty much the same as the previous two days, if not a little worse. Kept expecting some sort of change as the day wore on, but nothing. It was cold (upper 30s) and windy, and we finally gave up at 17:30. Turns out we didn't miss anything.
Arrived at Norris at sunrise. The last big of boardwalk, from the blatform junctions on down, was a bit slick, but otherwise the day seemed nicer than expected.
The New Crater/Steamboat activity seemed better than yesterday when we left. About an hour and a half after arrival, we got a camera worthy surge out of it. The only problem, other than not leading into an eruption, was that it just didn't last long. We got several more of these about an hour apart, with the last one at 11:23. Then it just reverted to the type of activity we'd seen the day before. That lasted until 18:30, when we did get another surge that ended too soon. That was followed by an hour of practically nothing from either vent.
We left at 19:30 as the weather finally got nasty. For the past couple of hours, the sky to the north and west was an ominous gray, but not getting anything wet. All afternoon it was windy. But when we left, the lightning was starting, and we were the last vehicle to leave the Norris parking lot.
The rain stopped before Madison Jct., but unfortunately, the bison are now on the move. We encountered a small herd heading south just before the Firehole picnic area, and saw another, larger heard at the Mallard Creek trailhead.
Eleven hours at Norris, and no real change during the day. It was a nice, dry day but a bit windy. Activity was better than the earlier visit, but not by a lot. There was a continous flow of water down the runoff, and occasionally it looked like the vents wanted to do something interesting, but that activity immediately died down. I could read a book's whole chapter without the sound of the activity changing enough to get me to look up. So at this point expect to go back tomorrow, or wake up to find out the eruption took place a few hours earlier.
The day started with having to dismount the bikes near the curve on the bikepath. It was blocked by icy snow drifts one to two feet high with narrow paths over them. Then the trail past the Round Spring group was a minefield of bison deposits.
Arrived at Grotto, and it was obvious that the Pressure Pool was full, as was Grotto Fountain. Almost immediately, Grotto started erupting. Spa was full and overflowing heavily, but I didn't see any convection or boiling in the minute or so I was there.
Went on to check out Fan & Mortar. Nothing exciting, so off to Giant. Looked like last year, with the platform dry and Bijou on strong for about half an hour.
It was time for Daisy, so went over to take a look at the Group. Splendid doesn't seem to have changed, either. The duration of the Daisy eruption, however, was only 2m54s, which is much shorter than I'd like it to be.
Finally it was time to head to Grand. Got over there and after a one Turban eruption interval, got a nice, short One Burst Grand eruption. Joked that I expected 8-3/4 minutes and got 9m06s, and no attempt to refill as far as I could tell.
What had to be the strangest part of the day occurred just after the Grand eruption. As we were leaving, we saw Bulger start. So of course we had to wait to see what would happen in Bulger's Hole. (Nothing). While standing there, I thought I heard someone singing over behind the trees at the Grand benches. I turned to look, and there were two people walking past the tree toward me approaching the Rift bridge. Behind them, on a bike was a man with a guitar slung across his front trying to pass them. He didn't make it, sliding on that slippery plastic walkway, with the guitar and him at least staying on the boardwalk. He took his time getting put back together, then proceeded to slowly ride the bike past us while being informed that he was supposed to park his bike. He got over to Spasmodic, blocked the walkway while flipping over his bike and starting to investigate the front wheel, like it was no longer straight.
Finally, Bulger ended and I went over toward Oval to get some photos of Oval. He started running toward me, asking if I had sunscreen. I told him I wouldn't provide it too him. He went back to the bike repairs. Got my pictures of Oval, and Sawmill, and left the area. From Crested, it appeared he was still working on the bike.
As for Oval, it has heated up. There is now only a band of orange and black around the high water mark. Sawmill is also showing signs of heating up down in the vent.
If it was just Oval heating up, I'd be concerned that it means Spasmodic is asserting even more control over the Sawmill Group. But Sawmill is also showing signs of recovery, so this may be good.
By then the Beehive eruption interval was getting pretty long, so we knew we needed to head over that way. Did a quick trip around Geyser Hill to find Aurum in between eruptions. Got back to Beehive and it wasn't long before the Indicator started. The wind cooperated, pushing the spray over Plume, allowing a nice close view of the water column.
Plume itself is interesting. The water level and the splashing seems higher than what I saw after the first Giantess eruption last year. The water level was visible most of the time, and some of the droplets were going as much as 1/2 meter above the rim.
Farther down, it appears Bronze Spring has changed from what I remember. It is now a large, cool pool, much larger than the old sinter rim, with heavy overflow down a couple of channels in the still green grass. I haven't paid much attention to it, so it could have been this way for a while, but the runoff channels seem new.
Later it was time for Castle. It turned out it ended up having an interval of over 14 hours. So I saw the start from Sawmill, which seems typical for me. And because of this, I walked up onto first West Triplet in eruption, and then Grand starting as I was taking notes on West Triplet. This One Burst Grand eruption was less than nine minutes long. West Triplet quit shortly after Grand, and other than Percolator, I didn't seen any activity in the sputs at the base of the hill.
Since it was a nice day, it seemed like a good idea to check out Fan & Mortar again. First we saw an nondescript cycle lasting just under an hour. Near the end we saw a start from Riverside, and were about to leave when we noticed heavy steam from the Main Vent. Then there was splashing, so now had to stay.
Over the next hour and a half we saw Bottom Vent slowly put water down its runoff channel. But it never had an eruption, instead surging at the same time Lower Mortar surged. The splashing in Main Vent continued through a couple of long, River Vent pauses. That activity finally ended as the Fan Vents took over about an hour into the cycle. They started out slow, but with high, visible water levels. But they never looked too good. For good measure, the Frying Pan and the steamvent inside Mortars amphitheater were active too. Then the whole system just sort of died down.
At around 5-1/2 days, I didn't expect New Crater/Steamboat to look promising, and it wasn't. Spent about 20 minutes in the area. The activity was mostly steamy North Vent, but there was some South splashing with joining in with it. There was runoff, but the South Vent splashzone was dry. At the bridge there was a trickle of water flowing out into the debris fan.
Cistern appeared to be overflowing heavily in all directions not obscured by the steam.
There wasn't as much change it damaged area as I expected. There may have been more trees behind the vents missing their tops, but that was about it. Last year there was debris all over the bridge at the bottom, and nothing like that this year. The North Vent runoff channel didn't seem changed much, either. The steaming tree trunk is still standing.
There were some large glaciers, as high as 1/2 meter, in the shaded areas between Dr. Allan's Paint Pots and the bench, and down below beyond Cistern. there it was higher than the bench, and made getting through interesting. The bottom of these ice blocks were solid, not just compressed snow.
I don't expect anything to happen there for a couple of days, so let's see how wrong I am.
Found a feature that really does erupt "every hour on the hour."
This is the CO2 geyser in Soda Springs, Idaho. It's located in a small city park off the main street, behind the businesses, and about the same distance from the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.
The eruption we saw started about 54 seconds after noon, and lasted almost exactly eight minutes. There appears to be a perpetual spouter erupting to about a meter when the upper vent is quiet. It wasn't as tall during the eruption, but after the eruption seemed to be perhaps twice as high.
The eruption comes from a nozzle above the spouter. I didn't try to measure a height, but estimated it to be around 15-20 meters. Both the start and the end of the eruption are abrupt. At the end the water was still falling well after the stop.
The travertine mound it has built up is an impressive, a dark orange lump that wouldn't look too out of place at Mammoth. It seems to grow pretty fast, as over on the side it's been removed because it was starting to encroach onto the nearby cemetery. The boardwalk near it is heavily encrusted with mineral deposits, and there was even a mineral encrusted snowbank off to one side.
Mickey Hot Springs isn't on the edge of nowhere, it's right in the middle. It was about 150 miles from Winnemucca, and the last 30 miles or so was on gravel road.
It was windy the whole drive, but fortunately we arrived mid-day on a cloudless day, so it wasn't too bad. Had never been there before, so discovering new features was fun.
The "Morning Glory Pool" was overflowing slightly into the bathtub dug into the runoff channel. Below that, down slope we could hear the activity before we could see it. There are two noisy fumaroles at the north end of the active area. South of them were a number of erupting and overflowing features.
There were two small pools separated by a meter or two which were intermittently erupting to about a half meter. The one of the east (#28?) had a large splash zone, implying stronger activity, while the one on the wet was overflowing nicely, and probably the primary contributor of much of the runoff to the south along a well defined channel. In addition, above it was another smaller, unconnected pool which occasionally burst a few centimeters high. That, it appears, is the "Mickey Geyser", #23.
The other splashing vent appears to be the southern end of #26.
The fumaroles were #27 and #30, the latter appears to be larger and more active than what I saw in photos taken earlier.
We saw evidence of dead mudpots, but nothing recent. Large areas between the northern area and the active features were covered in a fine, white power which seemed like something produced by mudpots.
Perhaps it's due to the isolation, but the area was free of the usual trash and casual vandalism I've seen in most other thermal areas. There are some obviously engineered catch basins for bathing, but they are at least not modifications to existing features or runoff channels as far as I could tell.
Also, it's worth noting that we had excellent cell phone data connection (Verizon) in the area.
Steamboat Springs is long gone. There's now a fence right along the property line, restricting access to the BLM portion of the terrace. This means that only those features on private land are accessible without crossing the fence, which separates #10 from #42, for example.
Not that it matters. All the vents are dry, and there's no evidence of any activity anywhere. A few of the cracks have plants growing in them. Perhaps on a cold day there might be whiffs of fog coming from hole.
The vents themselves are mostly recognizable, although I didn't do a full inventory. For some reason there is a long, capped pipe sticking out of #42w, perhaps there's a thermal probe of some kind down there.
Passing through Long Valley, Calif., so Suzanne and I had to visit Hot Creek. My last visit there was thirty-five years ago, so things have changed. We spent a bit more than an hour there.
The walkways and access is now completely different. Back then, there were trails down near the creek next to the erupting features, and a bridge across the creek. Swimming was also permitted back then. This time the area is fenced off, and signs on the road announced that the area was closed at night.
The previous visit, all the activity was on the south bank of the creek. One of the craters was erupting as much as seven or eight meters high, and there were several other hot pools near it. Those craters are now all dead, with the geyser showing greenish water well below the rim.
In line with those craters, on the north bank was where there was activity, There are three pools that were not there during the previous visit, two of them hot and blue. They appear to be on a linear trend line from the old activity. The water levels of the blue pools were different, with the higher pool, about a quarter to half meter higher. It was continuously pouring water into the lower pool, and all three were pouring that water into the creek. We saw no change in the flow during our visit, although one time, due to the way the runoff can be hidden by the surrounding ground, I thought it had quit because I couldn't hear the runoff.
There were also at least two areas that appeared to be convection in the creek itself. Again, didn't notice any change in the brief time of our visit.
On the way out, stopped at the Casa Diablo powerplant. It too is changed, not surprisingly. The old US-395 road is now blocked off, and where the old hot ground and steam vents were on the northeast side of the road is now occupied by a generator complex. There's no good views of the area. Within the fenced in area, near where the old Casa Diablo Geyser used to be was something steaming heavily. This activity seemed to vary, but again, fences prevented any good views. There is still one area of thermally altered ground open to the west of the complex.
Since the start of the latest period of activity of New Crater/Steamboat, I've managed to see fourteen of the eruptions, all from the start, and all from my chosen viewpoint (platforms or the bridge). The amount of time waiting for each has varied considerably. I've seen enough eruptions that some statistics on the waits can be gathered.
First, there are two ways to determine how long is a wait. It can either be the amount of time waiting for an eruption since the previous eruption, or the amount of time waiting since the last observed eruption. Going by the first, I've waited 24 times, and didn't see anything ten of those waits. Only three times did I see an eruption on the first day of waiting after seeing the previous eruption.
Since I have seen eruptions from the start, I don't feel the need to wait in the cold and dark to experience a lot of noise with not much of a view. So I'm not going to arrive much before dawn, and will clear out around dark. (That I'd rather drive as little in the dark as possible, especially in the evening, is another factor. I have no desire to encounter a bison on the road.)
The amount of daylight varies depending on the season, but even in October there can be as much as nine hours of daylight. In June I have put in close to fifteen hour days.
The shortest waits were less than a day. In October of the first year of activity I actually had a wait of 2h20m, and in several other cases I got the eruption in the middle of the day or early evening.
On the other hand, I've had long waits. The most for a particular eruption, without seeing it, was early in 2020, when I waited almost 55 hours without success. I've also had other waits well over 30 hours with nothing to show for it.
When looking at just the amount of time put in since the previous eruption, things get worse. I had to put in 154 hours, going back to the start of September last year, for the first eruption I saw in 2020. In the middle of the summer of 2019, there was another 62 hour stretch.
| Date | Seen? | Days | Wait Time | Total Wait |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 May 27 | Seen | 2 | 19h05m | 19h05m |
| 2018 Jul 20 | 1 | 9h45m | ||
| 2018 Aug 04 | Seen | 3 | 22h50m | 32h35m |
| 2018 Sep 07 | Seen | 2 | 12h50m | 12h50m |
| 2018 Sep 17 | Seen | 1 | 5h35m | 5h35m |
| 2018 Oct 08 | Seen | 1 | 2h20m | 2h20m |
| 2018 Oct 15 | Seen | 3 | 16h40m | 16h40m |
| 2019 May 20 | Seen | 2 | 12h05m | 12h05m |
| 2019 May 27 | 3 | 34h45m | ||
| 2019 Jul 24 | 1 | 12h20m | ||
| 2019 Jul 30 | Seen | 2 | 15h40m | 62h55m |
| 2019 Aug 27 | Seen | 2 | 17h10m | 17h10m |
| 2019 Sep 03 | 2 | 27h25m | ||
| 2019 Sep 11 | 3 | 37h35m | ||
| 2020 May 31 | 4 | 54h40m | ||
| 2020 Jun 29 | 2 | 26h00m | ||
| 2020 Jul 03 | Seen | 1 | 8h30m | 154h10m |
| 2020 Aug 03 | Seen | 1 | 3h40m | 3h40m |
| 2020 Aug 09 | 3 | 30h50m | ||
| 2020 Aug 14 | Seen | 1 | 9h30m | 40h20m |
| 2020 Aug 20 | 1 | 9h35m | ||
| 2020 Aug 26 | Seen | 3 | 40h10m | 49h45m |
| 2020 Sep 01 | 1 | 13h05m | ||
| 2020 Sep 09 | Seen | 3 | 30h15m | 43h20m |
| Totals | 14 (24) | 48 | 471h30m | Ave: 33h40m |
That's a total of over 471 hours, not quite ten hours per day, spread over 48 days. Or 33h40m per eruption seen, or 19h40m for each wait.
The whole point of this is that there is no "luck" involved in when a person sees sees so many eruption. I wasn't the only person who spent a lot of time on that platform, and ended up seeing as many or more eruptions. We all put in a lot of time out there.
The wait time for the first eruption I saw also doesn't include the time I spent in 1982 and didn't see anything. It was late August/early September, and I was in Yellowstone for a two week vacation, before going back to work in Oregon. At the time there weren't that many gazers, so Fred Hirschmann, the head naturalist at Norris, let us sleep out on the old middle platform, as long as our gear wasn't visible when visitors were around. His rationale was that it was better to have us out where our locations would be known, rather than our skulking around in the woods and becoming bear bait. (Despite this, at least one person still insisted on skulking about during the night.) I ended up spending about 100 hours, straight, on that platform waiting for nothing to happen. Occasionally would wander over for Echinus, but didn't want to be out of sight any more than necessary.
That was the year some those of us waiting got so tired of the constant repetition of the same questions that we started pinning cards with answers to those common questions on the railing. (A FAQ before the term was invented.)
I finally gave up when I had just a couple of days left in my visit, just so I could see something else erupt. As it turned out, the eruption finally took place about two days after I left. Other than stopping by while visiting Norris for other reasons, I never did wait again until 2018.
So in some sense, I put in about 120 hours for that first eruption, in two sessions spaning 36 years.
While preparing for another attempt at visiting the thermal areas of New Zealand and Iceland, as well as the western U.S., it occurred to me that it shouldn't be too difficult to compare the sizes of the various area. In The Transactions Vol. 7, T.Scott Bryan does a comparison of the size of some thermal areas. He just presents some basic line drawings, while I figured I could download satellite maps set to the same scale, which would give a lot more details.
The two areas I couldn't include completely are the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins. They are huge compared to everywhere else. Instead I limited them to Geyser Hill/Old Faithful areas and the Fountain Paint Pots. The only other thermal area presented here that doesn't quite fit is Waimangu, where I wasn't able to include the lakeside thermal area.
Update: Added Mickey H.S., and Steamboat Springs.