This article was published in the Steamboat Pilot & Today. By Tom Ross.
Steamboat Springs — Colorado Mountain College biology professor Shawn Sigstedt was thrilled this week to witness the roar of a towering plume of steam issuing from the Steamboat Geyser. But residents of Steamboat Springs needn’t leap up from their desks to rush out and see it. The Steamboat Geyser is in Yellowstone National Park.
“It was emotionally overwhelming because there’s so much power, and the steam can go on for hours and days,” Sigstedt said. “It goes up 1,000 feet, and it sounds like a jet engine. It’s very, very powerful.”
Sigstedt was visiting Yellowstone in the midst of a year-long sabbatical with encouragement from CMC to work on a book about his concept of “World Park.” It’s an effort to protect ecosystems and biodiversity by looking at Earth as one big park.
However, Sigstedt also is a bit of a geyser groupie and a member of the group, Geyser Gazers. Steamboat Geyser is recognized as the biggest in the world, and, unlike nearby Old Faithful, very unpredictable. The geyser, which spouts water as high as 30 feet in the air, can go many years without an event, or it can erupt multiple times in a year.
When it last blew its stack in August 2013, it was the first event in eight years. So, while it was exciting for Sigstedt that he could make it to the geyser in Norris Basin in time to feel the power of the steam plume, it also was a near miss. The geyser erupted for two to three hours in the middle of the night, and Sigstedt wasn’t there when it was shooting water 200 to 300 feet in the air.
“I have been waiting all my life to see that geyser and hoping against improbable odds. One woman got permission from the park to sleep by Steamboat Geyser every night for a year and never saw it” erupt, he said.
The people who were fortunate enough to be on the scene when Steamboat Geyser suddenly came to life this week were hugging and singing, Sigstedt was told. Their clothing also was covered with geyser crystals, or geyserite, a form of opaline silica.
“Their jackets were coated with silica crystals — geyserite — and looked like they were covered in diamonds,” he said.
So what makes Old Faithful so regular and Steamboat Geyser so irregular?
Yellowstone is known to be sitting on top of a giant lake of magma — really a super volcano that was last active between 70,000 and 170,000 years ago. That explains its many hot pools and geysers.
Sigstedt said there are several hundred geysers in the world, and the majority of them are in Yellowstone. Geysers erupt when cold water collects into a volcanic hot spot. Old Faithful has a large, consistent supply of fresh water while Steamboat Geyser has a smaller, less consistent supply, he said.
Scientists, within the last five years, have had access to new instruments that give them a heads up when geysers are about to vent by detecting the rising temperature of the soil. However, Sigstedt said they still don’t have the X-ray vision to see into the earth and truly understand the plumbing of geysers.
So, if you want to witness the Steamboat Geyser, you’ll have to leave Steamboat Springs and roll the dice. Or, you could just settle for Old Faithful.