Going East….to West-10

Old Faithful

Yellowstone National Park abounds with geothermal features (hot springs, cone and fountain geysers, mud pots and mud volcanoes etc) and although visiting them takes a large chunk of visitors’ time, one feels happy at the end for having seen such an unimaginable variety. Each thermal feature is uniquely different. Besides these thermal features, Yellowstone river has its own Grand Canyon and of course its wildlife.

(Extracted from Wikipedia)

Old Faithful is a cone geyser (see illustration above). Old Faithful was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone and was the first geyser in the park to receive a name. (This expedition was a follow-up of the first expedition in 1869 that we had mentioned earlier). The geyser, as well as the nearby Old Faithful Inn, is part the Old Faithful Historic District.

You can see the Old Faithful Inn in the background

Waiting for the eruption…

Eruption begins…

Eruptions can throw up 14–32.000 litres of boiling water to a height of 106–185 feet lasting from 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet and the highest recorded eruption was 185 feet high. Eruptions often occur about 90 minutes apart, but this interval can range from 45 to 125 minutes on occasion. Over the years, the length of the interval has increased, which may be the result of earthquakes affecting subterranean water levels. These disruptions have rendered the earlier mathematical relationship (made in 1938) inaccurate, but have in fact made Old Faithful more predictable. With a margin of error of 10 minutes, Old Faithful will erupt 65 minutes after an eruption lasting less than 2.5 minutes or 91 minutes after an eruption lasting more than 2.5 minutes. The reliability of Old Faithful can be attributed to the fact that it is not connected to any other thermal features of the Upper Geyser Basin within which it is located. (see sketch from Wikipedia below)

Eruption gathers momentum

Probably the mid-point

On the wane…

Old Faithful is not the tallest or largest geyser in the park; that title belongs to the less predictable Steamboat Geyser which has not erupted during last 40 years.It would be interesting to know that Old Faithful was often used as laundry in the early days of the park. Garments placed in the crater during quiescence were found to be thoroughly washed as they were ejected by the eruption. We shall view pictures of other geothermal features in Going East ..to West –11 and I hope you would find each of them as unique as we had found them.