Tag: Rotomahana

Today we visited Waimangu.

Along the shore of the Frying Pan Lake were a number of little noisy spouters. The noisiest, unfortunately, was out sight just below the walkway. Near the outlet at the northeast were a number of areas of convection and bubbling. One would occasionally splash water into the air to a few centimeters high.

Inferno Crater was down at least three meters. The runoff channel still had some brown, stagnant pools in it, but I have no idea how long ago was the previous overflow. The pool was calm and its normal, milky blue color. On the far shore, in a gray debris fan was a small but noisy and wet fumarole, maybe a couple of meters below the high water mark. The debris fans all had many wave cut terraces on them, each maybe a centimeter or two higher than the previous terrace.

The only geyser we saw along the trail was Iodine Spring. It is across the stream and bus road, so not easily visible. But there is a gap between a couple of roadcuts where we could watch the activity. For the five intervals we saw, it was erupting at almost exactly eight minute intervals, with durations just over 1m50s. The spring starts splashing a minute or so before the eruption starts. The eruption height is around three meters, with a jet distinctly angled to the right.

The afternoon was taken up by one of our adventures we scheduled for the trip. We took a two hour kayak tour of the Steaming Cliffs/Donne Cliffs along the shore of Rotomahana. This was our first kayak experience, and we got wet. I mostly figured out how to control the kayak and get it to generally go in the direction intended. I didn't take much video, and no notes, because the kayak had my full attention. We were also fortunate in the the lake was calm, with only a slight breeze, and the sky was clear and mostly cloudless.

The reason for the trip was to have more time with the thermal features along the shoreline, and that was extremely successful. We got within a few feet of the "Angel Wings" feature, and I've seen nothing like that anywhere else.

After that we got to see four eruptions of the Pink Terrace/Otukapuarangi Geyser. Like Iodine Spring, it has an interval of around eight minutes. The eruptions are preceeded by about a minute of overflow, which can be seen coming down a short channel into the lake. The eruption lasted about a minute of so, and jets were easily well over 12 meters high, and noisy.

This was a much better experience for observing geysers than the boat trip we took the previous visit. I'd recommend it as long as you don't mind getting wet, or know what you are doing.

Update: 2023-April 19 — Minor correction to names of features at Steaming Cliffs/Donne Cliffs. Also added another photo of Pink Terrace/Otukapuarangi Geyser.