15 Nov Geyser Gazing at Yellowstone
I see crowds gathering in front of Old Faithful Inn’s namesake geyser as I pull up to Yellowstone National Park’s famed historic lodge. I contemplate checking-in and catching the next eruption, but then I see it – a bison meandering across the basin. How could I miss this opportunity to capture two of the park’s most iconic images in one frame? I grab my camera and rush toward the boardwalk, situating myself at the perfect angle, the only angle really, to get the image I’m looking for. Steam begins to bellow from the geyser as I arrange my gear, but the bison is less cooperative. Dark eyes fix on my location and the 2,000-or-so-pound beast begins to amble in my direction. Reluctantly, I take a few steps to my left. The bison keeps coming. A couple more steps? The bison isn’t satisfied; it raises its tail in warning and picks up its pace. News of a recent goring fresh on my mind, I abandon my post to watch Old Faithful’s display from alongside the crowd as the bison stubbornly claims the spot I’d just evacuated. It seemed unfair given that the bison didn’t even glance at Old Faithful’s show, but you don’t exactly negotiate with a bison.
I assumed, like the bison, most geysers other than Old Faithful were unpredictable and possibly stubborn, but that was before I met my first geyser gazer. He sat alongside the Fountain Geyser complex, ignoring the 40-foot shoots of water steaming from neighboring Clepsydra to instead stare at something through his binoculars. He wore a floppy hat, sat in a portable camp chair, and scribbled notes into a pocket-sized notebook. He seemed to know something I didn’t, so I decide to wait. Minutes passed with Clepsydra continuing its enthusiastic display as this man instead watched seemingly nothing in his binoculars. My friend finally asks and he explains that he was watching the water level inside Fountain Geyser and that current levels indicated it was about to blow. Sure enough, several minutes later, sulphuric steam surrounds me as the man announces a Fountain eruption on his walkie-talkie radio. Fountain’s spout shoots 75-feet or so into the air, dwarfing Clepsydra’s ongoing display but encompassing us in the magnificence of a complex as several other connected geysers also spray scorching steam and water into the air. We’re surrounded. It’s an incredible experience to be sure, but had this man actually sat there all-day waiting for it? It turns out, he might’ve. But there’s also an entire community of geyser gazers that pool their knowledge through the Geyser Times website and app. With this valuable tool at my fingertips, I decide to play geyser gazer for a day.
Rising early the next morning, I check the geyser time predictions in the hotel lobby, though I now understand that this list is just a few of the most reliable erupters nearby. It’s a start nonetheless and since bad weather is meant to arrive early in the afternoon, I head out to seek my quarry along the neighboring trails of the Upper Geyser Basin, the world’s largest geyser basin. I stumble upon eruptions at Sawmill and Spasmodic Geysers, but most geysers I pass with posted predictions list 2-hour windows in the afternoon and the weather isn’t holding. I abandon my track toward further away morning erupters amid a storm of rain, wind, hail, and far too close lightening. Safely back in the hotel, I watch one of the Lion complex geysers erupt out my window, but wait to re-emerge until after the hail lets up.
Vowing to be more efficient in the afternoon, my friends and I grab bikes and pedal straight to the Riverside Geyser where, according to the schedule, an eruption is to occur in the next 30-minutes or so. We join an already waiting crowd just in time to watch this beauty blow from the bank of the Firehole River, sending plumes of steam across blue skies and gushing water into the molten current. As the last droplets from the geyser drift downstream, I hear a rush of water behind me. Could it be Grotto Geyser? Its oddly-shaped siliceous cone had appeared to me like a gnome and I desperately wanted to see it blow, but no time prediction signs existed. I pedaled quickly, pleased to turn the corner and find shooting water transforming my gnome into a multi-funneled display.
A quick check of the Geyser Times App indicated Grand Geyser, half a mile down the boardwalk, would be next. We lock up our bikes and scurry down the trail to join another waiting crowd. This is a longer wait but for a worthwhile show as Grand Geyser’s 200-foot plumes are joined by Turban and another smaller geyser. The crowd cheers at the end and Grand responds with one last, unexpected jet that inspires another round of applause.
Back to the bikes, Daisy Geyser is next, then Castle. We rush to the car, stow the bikes and head to Biscuit Basin for shows from Jewel, Shell and Avoca, a spring with geyser aspirations. On to Black Sand Basin to see Cliff Geyser spray from the side of a pastel-mottled bank, colored by bacterial mats that glow according to their temperatures. As darkness approaches, we return to Old Faithful for a reliable grand finale to our geyser gazing day.
I was feeling pretty good about my fourteen named geysers that one day. Surely that was a decent record for a first-time geyser gazer, but I did have one regret – I’d not gotten my bison in geyser mist shot. I’d seen plenty of bison, I was even engulfed by a herd on the road, once protected in my car and once rather more vulnerable on bike. I’d seen their tracks across plenty of geyser basins, but despite many verbalized pleadings, no bison joined my geyser gazing. Perhaps they had no equivalent of the Geyser Times App, or perhaps they’re just stubborn beasts.
Bags already packed in the car, I decide to watch one last Old Faithful eruption before leaving Yellowstone. I join a crowd on the second floor balcony of the Old Faithful Inn, listening to unanimous oohs and aahs as pressurized water and steam shoot across the sky but before the display fizzles to a stop, the tenor of the chorus changes. I look down to where fingers are pointing and out walks a large bison, likely the very one that taunted me on my first day. It scatters pedestrians as it strolls across the sidewalk. It pauses in front of Old Faithful’s final fumes, lifting its head in a perfect pose while I, of course, gaze on from the second floor wishing I had my camera.
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