I was doing some research to see if a book listed on eBay was worth a bid (it wasn't), when I came across some interesting photos of Steamboat Springs, Nev. The first three were taken by Don Hudson in 1986, a year before testing began on the powerplants that eventually destroyed the geysers there. I met him on the terrace one day during the the activity of 1986-1987, maybe even the day these photos were made. Note also that I might have some of the feature number wrong, as it has been a couple of decades since I last saw these geysers. I did check my maps, so I got at least the names of what I think they are correct.\n<\/p>\n
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In the foreground is #41, while in the background the center of steaming is most likely #39. Both were quite active during that time. As you can see, much of the runoff of #41 went down into a nearby fissure. Many of these fissures were filled with rubble and debris, but when cleared, they were several meters deep. The previous year the Strassers and I visited the terraces around the end of June when #41 was dormant. Because of the high angle of the sun, one could catch a glimpse of a reflection of water about 3 meters down in the vent.\n<\/p>\n
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I believe this is a close-up of #102 in eruption. Its vent was not marked on the 1950s Don White maps we used, so I gave it a new, three digit number. It was the only geyser along the top of the terrace which had any sort of pool. The other geysers were often just wide spots in a fissure, or a void in rubble filled fissure. Like nearby #39, which was a a long fissure, this feature appeared to erupt continuously during the several hours of several different visit.s But since the activity here only lasted about a month, I believe it qualifies as a geyser, just one with a very long duration.\n<\/p>\n
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Here we have minor activity from the fissure vents of Geyser #42. Over to the left, and not visible, is the vent of #42w, the tallest geyser we observed in all our visits. The main vent of #42 is in the large, wide southern end. Both #42 and #42w could be induced to erupt, both together and separately. On most visits, the first activity we'd get would be a simultaneous eruption of #42, with solo eruptions of #42w afterwards. But on at lest one occasion we did get a series of eruptions of #42, but nothing from #42w. Even during a major eruption, the little sputs you see here didn't get much taller, although they did turn into little columns of suds about a foot high.<\/p>\n
\nIn the background you can see the white fresh sinter and dark runoff that surrounded a string of geysers and springs, #12, #13, and the various vents of #14, #15 and #16. Back in the 1950 White reported geyser activity from the first two, while we observed sputtering from a number of vents from #15 and #16.\n<\/p>\n
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Finally, here are a couple of 1867 photos which show how little the look of the surface features had changed over a century. That road now appears to be bordered to the left by Steamboat Ditch, a channel that diverts water from the Truckee River to Steamboat Creek, with the features of the first two photographs located in the vicinity of the middle of the leftmost fissure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was doing some research to see if a book listed on eBay was worth a bid (it wasn't), when I came across some interesting photos of Steamboat Springs, Nev. The first three were taken by Don Hudson in 1986, a year before testing began on the powerplants that eventually destroyed the geysers there. I … Continue reading \"Photos from Steamboat Springs\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geysers.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}