Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Mr. Bolhuis

Chris Bolhuis: Hey, Dr. Reimink, how are you?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Norris, Norris, Norris Norris Geyser Basin. This is, I don't know. It's the capstone. You know? It is a beautiful spot. Is this your favorite place in the park, Chris? It could be for me, I think. Is it yours?

Chris Bolhuis: I believe that you've asked me this every chapter, and I think I've said yes to [00:00:30] every one. Um, my favorite place is where I happen to be.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Okay, fair enough.

Chris Bolhuis: Uh, and so if if I'm at Norris, that I don't wanna be anywhere else when I'm at Norris, um,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let me re-ask the question. Is it the most underrated place in the park maybe?

Chris Bolhuis: Whew. That's a tough call. The parking lot is almost always busy, and that's something that you do need to consider. Like if you go there and it's around noon o'clock, one o'clock, something like that.

Good luck trying to find a spot. It's gonna be packed. [00:01:00] It is though. It's underrated. I don't know. I, and I don't really get it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So here, here's my thought is that like, it doesn't have one of the marquee things, it's doesn't have the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It doesn't have Grand Prismatic, it doesn't have Old Faithful. It has a ton of stuff though, which we're gonna talk about in this chapter. So that's my, that's my, where my question comes from is like, maybe people don't go there cuz it's not the postcard, you know, basin.

Chris Bolhuis: Uh, yeah, but it does have the biggest geyser in the world - the biggest active geyser. I mean, this thing is amazing. Uh, so Steamboat, but [00:01:30] we'll talk about that later. But here's the thing that gets me about Norris is this is an outlier. Norris is an anomaly for a few different reasons. Look, we spent a lot of time in previous chapters talking about the three kinds of hydrothermal features you get in Yellowstone - the alkaline chloride, the carbonate waters, the calcium carbonate waters, and the acid sulfate waters. Norris breaks the mold here because here the water is highly acidic and so [00:02:00] it deviates from the upper geyser basin. We're Old Faithful as it deviates from Midway and Lower. Um, gonna talk about why.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, and that also kind of relates to, it's extremely hot as well. This is the hottest. It is also one of the oldest and arguably the most dynamic thermal areas in the park. A research well has been

drilled to 1087 feet beneath the surface and recorded temperatures, like crazy temperatures. Chris, 459 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean,

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, [00:02:30] let me interrupt you a second. That's amazing. 459 degrees at depth. Okay. But there are two basins here that we're gonna talk about. There is the Back basin, and we're gonna talk about that first. And then there's what's called the Porcelain basin. And if you go to image number one in your stack, you can see exactly where Norris is located. Norris is different though than any other guys are basing that we've talked about prior to this. It's hot. It's boiling actually. You know, that's the thing is that, when people [00:03:00] look at these other thermal areas in the park and they see gas coming out and it's bubbling water, right? That's actually not boiling water. It's just gas that's escaping. This actually is boiling and so that makes it really cool and it's acidic and those, those are two different things. But that has to do with its geography as well. Norris is connected to the north. We talked about this in chapter 10 when we talked about Mammoth and there these series of faults, and it's also connected to the hotspot, but yet it [00:03:30] lies outside of it. And so we need to get into like some Geology here. Let's get small with this and let's talk about why Norris is so unique. So let's, what do you say? Let's get into some of these questions.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, and let's start out with Norris being really active and dynamic and, and it is one of these places that it's known to be an active dynamic place. And so it's been monitored with scientific. We are, we, the term we use is instrumented, meaning we have scientific instruments in place around Norris [00:04:00] frequently, right? So it's been instrumented. And one of those instruments is something that's just measuring ground uplift, what we call a ground deformation uplift, or subsidence and image number two in your stack shows a time series of this, and we're gonna tell kind of a little bit of a cool story about Norris and some of the features are shown in this time series. And what that time series is showing is just the vertical elevation change in meters from 2004 to 2020. All those little dots are individual measurements of basically the elevation, really [00:04:30] fine scale resolution elevation here. And Chris, you nailed this, like it's on a couple really interesting and very important faults that allow groundwater to go down through Norris, and some of that ends up coming up through Mammoth, but also it's on the Ring Caldera fault, which is like a 630,000 year old feature. So it's really related to a lot of other, geologic environments.

Chris Bolhuis: Oh, oh, hold on. Let me interrupt you too. There is another fault that it's related to, which is the Hebgen Lake fault. And this, this was an earthquake that happened in [00:05:00] 1959 and this was a big deal in the country at this time. This happened just outside the park northwest of Yellowstone in Montana, and at 11:37 at night, a massive 7.5 earthquake happened and just dislodged a massive part of a mountain. Came down - it damned up the Madison River, which comes outta Yellowstone there. The rescue operations that were involved. It's quite a story. It's, it's something that's worth like investigating in and of itself is the Hebgen [00:05:30] Lake earthquake. It's really a cool thing. So you have these three Series of faults that kind of intersect here below Norris, which is, why, I mean, what we're really answering, Jesse, is why is Norris so unbelievably hot? Right? And these play a role.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and hot, active and dynamic. And this uplift is kind of dynamism of this place. And so let's just work through, simple story here from 96 to 2004, a huge [00:06:00] area began to uplift or really was uplifting really actively, right? A, a total of 12 centimeters, which doesn't sound like a lot, but geologically, that's a massive amount in less than a decade. I mean,

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, but hold on, let me interject here a second, Jesse. a total uplift of 12 centimeters. But that doesn't take into account the huffing and puffing. So it swells and then sinks and it keeps on doing this. And so we're talking about an accumulated uplift of 12 cm.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: and it also doesn't take into [00:06:30] account how big of an area this is - 30 kilometers across. I mean, this is a very large area that's sort of huffing and puffing.

Chris Bolhuis: It is. Well, hold on. So what's causing the uplift? Like what's making this do that?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, so it, it's thought to be sort of the intrusion of magma beneath it. So it's this movement of magma and we're gonna kind of build to the theory of what's going on at Norris here. So that takes us to 2004. Image number two in our stack picks up a 2004 and shows that this thing was deflating for a long time. Deflated for a [00:07:00] while, kind of slowly, a little bit more gradually, and it deflated again, huffing and puffing but it deflated by about seven centimeters and then gets to 2013, 2014 where Norris started to inflate incredibly fast, some of the fastest rates of ground inflation that have been measured ever. And there's like gas underneath, right? And, and fluids underneath that are getting trapped by what we call impermeable rock layers. And so think of like a plastic lining [00:07:30] underneath of, uh, a pool that you put in the ground - that's an impermeable layer, holds the water in. It can also hold gases and volatiles and fluid down below. And so you might have a rock layer like shale that's very impermeable. So this really. Rose at a rate of 15 centimeters per year, which is just incredible. Chris, I mean, we talk about plate tectonic movements at a scale that are like fingernail growth rates. This is a, a factor of 10 faster than that.

Chris Bolhuis: Like you said in 2014, this was going on. Right? And you again, look at image [00:08:00] number two, and you can see this inflation beginning in 2013, going into 2014.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's a really cool little blip that you see this little peak, right? It's a really fun little peak that you, you can just look at and say, oh, something happened there. Something interesting happened right there.

Chris Bolhuis: But, and this, again, this is all related to gas that's escaping from rising magma, right? As the magma goes up. Pressure lowers. When pressure lowers, the magma begins to fizz. It begins to degas, and that gas gets trapped. That's what causes the inflation. But in late 2014, [00:08:30] a 4.9 earthquake below Norris fractured the rock and that fractured through that impermeable layer and provided an escape avenue for the gas. And so the area began to immediately deflate. So, Basically we have this huffing and puffing going on beneath Norris that is all related to this injection of magma and earthquakes. But is all of this really, really high activity is this cause for alarm? so [00:09:00] Jesse, I'm asking you, is Norris a cause for an alarm?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, you're putting me on the spot here, Chris, but, and I know that the wrong answer will get me slapped by you here because I know this is a hot button one for you. Um, the answer is no, this is not concerning. And actually we kind of summarize the current thinking of how this process worked. This whole story we just told, how this played out in image number three in our stack here and the important parts of this graphic are kind of right in the middle where there's a [00:09:30] star that pops onto the screen and you can see this fluid fractures its way out and makes it through this ductile, brittle transition here. That's the earthquake in 2014. That's the ground breaking fracturing, letting these gases escape. So one thing we don't have on this graphic is the inflation and deflation. And the reason is because of the scale, the scale of that graphic is 15 kilometers in the vertical. So from the top to the bottom is 15 kilometers. We can't show 12 centimeters of inflation at the top of [00:10:00] that image,

Chris Bolhuis: It is vertically exaggerated, just a bit.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Just a bit. but it brings us back to is this a concerning thing? And the answer is no, because first of all, we're like really far from the magma body. This doesn't. Indicate an impending eruption. All this is, is it's a derivative of the magma body, meaning that the gases are getting their way up, but the gases are cracking and causing this inflation. So it's all the actions happening up high and none of that is like an indication really of the deep, deep, deep movement or the really, the stuff that would cause be a [00:10:30] cause for concern.

Chris Bolhuis: So I think we've answered why so hot. It's all related to this magma that's intruding, pretty much right below Norris Geyser Basin. Which leads us to the next part of why is Norris this outlier? Why is it anomaly? Why is this so acidic? Well,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's intimately related to why it's hot, right? It's kind of a similar, similar thing, but what is it, Chris? Why acidic? We, we've covered hot. Why acidic?

Chris Bolhuis: Because this gas that's in magma - this [00:11:00] abundant gas in magma H2S, once again, we've talked about this again and again and again. It's the rotten egg smell. There is an abundance of H2S.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: the stuff Chris Bolhuis just loves, loves it.

Chris Bolhuis: it doesn't make me a bad person. Like

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, but it doesn't prevent me from giving you a hard time about it either stepping off the

Chris Bolhuis: But

I have a reason.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I just have this image every time I see, you know what, this is actually kind of funny whenever I'm talking about this in class or when I'm working with the grad students and stuff, we're [00:11:30] talking about sulfuric acid in whatever context. Every time I see H2S somewhere sulfuric acid, I think of Chris Bolhuis stepping off the bus going. Ah, I just, you live in my frontal cortex because of this, because I know you love this so much. Anytime I think about sulfuric acid, I think of you.

Chris Bolhuis: I still do it. I make a big production of it when I pull into Mud Volcano. I do.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: great. It's great.

Chris Bolhuis: And some of the kids are like, wait a second, you told us about this [00:12:00] in class that this is what you do. And I'm like, yeah, You were paying attention.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: were paying attention. Good job. You're, you're tying the classroom to the field setting. Way to go, Mr. Bolhuis.

Chris Bolhuis: Are representing the younger generation. Very well. Way to go. All right, so back on task. Jesse Reimink. There is an abundance of this gas. Okay. That's deep gassing from this magma intrusion. So, We also have these extremophiles, organisms that love these [00:12:30] very strange extreme environments, they use the H2S and convert it into sulfuric acid, which makes this water then, much more acidic than normal water. And if you look at image number four in your stack, you can see where Porcelain basin shows up on this. So this shows the pH of one of the two basins in Norris Geyser Basin - Porcelain, and it's very, very, very acidic, [00:13:00] which makes it really unique from the other, you know, hydrothermal features that we have in Yellowstone National Park. Especially, like, why is this not like the alkaline chloride? Well, we just talked about it. It's this perfect storm, this combination of the gases that are involved, the organisms that are involved. they, they all just kind of meet up and, and make this really special circumstance.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. And it fundamentally has to do with, the magma chamber, magma chamber gases are hot and acidic by default. And then all of that stuff kind of gets permeated up [00:13:30] throughout the, the rest of the system as it's making its way to the surface.

Chris Bolhuis: but there's also something else that's unique and, and it's actually very similar to the calcium carbonate terraces that we talked about in Mammoth. The sinter terraces here really resemble the carbonate terraces in Mammoth, but they're made up of completely different material. And the reason is, the water, because it's so hot and so acidic is absolutely loaded with silica. It's loaded with this [00:14:00] dissolved quartz, and then on the surface it degases because of the lower pressure which deposits the sinter into these terraces. They're the most spectacular in the park. In my humble opinion, Norris has these very spectacular terraces. And then the other thing is too, the colors right of these pools - the clear blue like sapphire pools that you see here, these are from this colloidal suspension of microscopic silica, little SiO2 [00:14:30] molecules that are suspended in the water. They're very, very, very tiny. But then you also see, especially like in the porcelain basin, you see these cloudy blue pools. And that happens when you have this larger particles of silica that are suspended in the water so they're not microscopic anymore. And it just lends then to these kind of murky, cloudy looking, but still absolutely spectacular looking pools.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think that's a great, great, great point Chris. And uh, you know, it all [00:15:00] has to do with the acidity dissolving different rocks on the way to the surface. And, so, you know, this is one thing we're gonna end the discussion of Norris with kind of a, a survey of the variability that you get to see in Norris, which is just crazy cool, crazy cool color variations, hydrothermal feature variations. Just amazing. But I just wanna make one more point here, Chris, about Norris before we get to that variation. Like many of these hydrothermal features we've been talking about, the sort of seasonal sensitivity that these things have, you know, and there's more water in the [00:15:30] system, it changes how the hydrothermal features behave. Norris is particularly interesting in this regard and, has what is called the annual disturbance, or what is known as the annual disturbance, and this is happens every year. And when the water table is low, late in the season, late summer fall, the whole area becomes even more energetic. We've talked about how it's a little bit more dynamic than otherwhere. Super duper active, right? It's already very active. It becomes super active, and the idea here is that there's less [00:16:00] water in the system. And if you go back to that beautiful analogy, the one you do on the boardwalk every year where you, you take a hot plate and you've got this water flask with this big long spout up the top, and you show how a geyser works, right? That water pressure, what's that?

Chris Bolhuis: I do that here by the way.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You do it here. I, I remember it, I remember you doing it in Norris. And so if we go back to that, uh, idea, that analogy, the water on top, the water going all the way up, that straw really high up. That pressure keeps [00:16:30] the hydrothermal fluid down below in the water phase, so it keeps it kind of subdued. If you remove that, the pressure drops and basically you get more eruptions, more activity, because there's less pressure holding that stuff that that stuff that wants to be steam, but under pressure is water. Now suddenly it can become steam a lot easier. So that's the kind of idea that. That goes into this annual disturbance that you'll read about and you'll hear about at Norris. It's just a really cool, I I think that's a really cool example of a, sort of a broad [00:17:00] scale effect. We talked about that analogy with just geysers, but this is like a big, version of that.

Chris Bolhuis: And what this leads to then is this can stir up these hydrothermal explosions that we've talked about numerous times before with like Indian pond and so on and so on. Right. and we're gonna talk about two hydrothermal explosions that have happened here that are very important in terms of what we see here at Norris Geyser Basin.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So let me intro the, let me interrupt you, Chris, real quick and just say that this last part, this discussion of Norris is really, [00:17:30] it's a great place to see kind of everything we've talked about. All the variation we've talked about throughout these chapters. It is a great place to see that. And we're gonna give, maybe four or five different locations that you can go look at and you can see the geological repercussions of this variation in a really constricted place because again, Norris is so active, so dynamic, so unique. You get to see, you get to experience all of this stuff all in one spot. So where are we starting? Where do you wanna start with this?

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, I want to just tack onto what you [00:18:00] just said there, is that this, because this place is so special, I feel like I have to give recommendations here. Like I, I'm obligated to do this, right? At least that's how I feel. So anyway, uh, I wanna start with Emerald Spring, image number five in your stack. This is absolutely beautiful. This green color, green is my favorite color. Anyway, emeralds are my favorite gemstone.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You're predisposed to love this spring. Then

Chris Bolhuis: I am,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You [00:18:30] had no choice in the matter.

Chris Bolhuis: But let's get small, like what's going on with the Geology here? Why all of a sudden do we have this green pool? Well, the green is because we have this kind of combination. We have the colloidal suspension of the silica. We talked about this before, which makes the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me interrupt here. Where do we get the silica from? Well, all the Rhyolite that's all over the place and all the acid that's dissolving that Rhyolite, right? And this is the same kind of bluegreen that we talked about with grand charismatic. The center of that thing has [00:19:00] dissolved silica in it. It's kinda the same process going on here.

Chris Bolhuis: Ah. But what else do we have here at Norris? We have an abundance of H2S. So what happens then? That hydrogen sulfide gas - it precipitates these beautiful yellow sulfur crystals. And they line the pool and so you get the, blue from the colloidal suspension, the yellow from the sulfur crystals, which results then in this green colored water, which is amazing. So image number five, emerald [00:19:30] spring. It's got some pretty cool Geology that really is explained by just understanding a little bit about Norris.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: The other one, which you referenced earlier, Chris, is, one of, uh, it's just a great geyser. If you're lucky enough to see it erupt, you're just super duper lucky. But it's Steamboat Geyser. Image number six shows a gif of this thing. It's the tallest geyser in the world. I've never seen it erupt. Have you seen it, Chris? Have you seen it erupt, Steamboat.

Chris Bolhuis: I have not

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Now. So that tells you something about how rare this is at the moment, cuz you've spent many, many days and you're also National park [00:20:00] and uh, you haven't seen it erupt. And so there's a little bit of a story to this thing on August 11th, 1878, a hydrothermal explosion…

Chris Bolhuis: No, I was not alive at that time.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Close. You were born in 1883, I think, is when you were born. Uh, so, but there was a, a hydrothermal explosion that birthed this geyser. Originally just a couple vents on the hillside, and they were just kind of fumaroles and mud splatter areas, but they eventually became Steamboat Geyser. And this thing [00:20:30] is becoming more frequent, I would say, right, Chris? Like when it goes dormant, it goes dormant for a long time. But in the last. Few decades. We've …

Chris Bolhuis: So let me, let me hit you, let me, let me interrupt you here. The, so 2019, it had 48 eruptions. It became very active again in 2018. Alright. It began the cycle of activity. So 2019, 2020 each year had 48 eruptions. 2021 - 20 eruptions. 2022, it had 11 and it just continues to diminish. So we think [00:21:00] that Steamboat is going back into a slumber, if you will, where it's, it's just gonna go back to this probably longer period of inactivity. But again, image number six shows beautifully from a distance Steamboat guys are going nuts.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, Chris, before, we get to the eruption thing, I wanna drive home two points about Steamboat here, or two sort of broader points within Steamboat. The first is the interconnectedness of these hydrothermal systems. So there is a spring nearby called Cistern [00:21:30] Spring. Right at the base of this, when Steamboat erupts, Cistern also drains. So that's like a clear indication. The plumbing system is very deeply connected between these things. It's just so cool. Right. Amazing. The other thing I wanna drive home, and we've talked about this a lot before, but is this, Uh, the, fact that these things change so much, right? The fact that we can have 48 eruptions, then 20, then 11 in three consecutive years, that these things kind of turn on and off slowly. They're kind of ephemeral features, which makes Old [00:22:00] Faithful like that much more spectacular, like how faithful, Old Faithful is. But I just, I wanna make that point there. So what happens when Steamboat does go off? I mean, it's a spectacular phenomenon. So what, what happens with it? How can you experience the people who do get to experience it, which you and I are not part of that population, but what happens?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, the cars in the parking lot, which is a significant distance away, all get coated with debris, you know, with like finer debris. They get coated with, with [00:22:30] water in this, it's very acidic, you know, so it's not a good. Right. And you know, people that are standing along the boardwalk there at the base of this kind of down slope from Steamboat - they're getting, knocked with debris that got thrown up in the air as well. Hard to hold a conversation. If you're in the campground you're gonna be probably jolted awake if this happens at night by Steamboat, which the campground is a mile away. Okay? So this thing is impressive. It really is. And if you Google Steamboat Geyser, there are people that have [00:23:00] captured this thing just absolutely going nuts. It's pretty cool stuff. I highly recommend that you do that.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, the next stop on our little tour here is a Echinus Geyser, and this is image number seven.

Chris Bolhuis: let's let's spell that for everybody.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah, good idea. Echinus. This is E C H I N U S - Echinus Geyser. And I just wa nna look at image number seven, and then compare that to image number four. [00:23:30] Compare that to Emerald Spring and. Oh. what is the difference? Well, first of all, one's this beautiful green that Chris loves, and one of them is kind of this very strange sort of reddish brown. Well, the reddish brown geologically is a very, very common mineral. It's hematite, it's rust. That is just rust. And so we have very different chemistry going on in these different geysers or hot spring areas, right within the same Norris Geyser Basin. It is kind of crazy. The [00:24:00] local variation that you get here.

Chris Bolhuis: so Echinus used to be a regular predictable geyser. And it's spectacular. It was my favorite until it went mostly dormant. Jesse, you were a student. My young sage were a student in my class, and we sat there and watched and waited for Echinus to go. And it did, It

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It did, it was back in the day when it was still erupting pretty quickly when it wasn't, uh, when it wasn't dormant. But Chris, this is, if I [00:24:30] remember correctly, this is where you did, at least at the time, you did your, um, your little geyser demonstration, right? Is that right?

Chris Bolhuis: It is. It absolutely is. Yeah. And I, I like Echinus.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, question que quick question for you. Where do you do the demonstration now, if Echinus has gone dormant, do you still do it there?

Chris Bolhuis: I still do it there because we get to still see the pool that sits above, Echinus. So we get to see the water level kind of fluctuate in there. And usually, now it's away from people too. And then, on the way back we walk past Steamboat, and, and [00:25:00] they've seen geysers at this point. And so it's still a really good place. And what I loved about Echinus was that we were able to have this view from above. The boardwalk is built up above it. That you were able to watch the process, you know, watch the plumbing system would fill up and then it would spurt and, you know, it was really, really cool

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And there's this great boardwalk, platform that you're looking down on the geyser. And we could all sit around all 25 of us students, plus the 10 hangers on of people who randomly just say, oh, there's somebody who knows what he's talking about. I'm gonna follow that [00:25:30] guy and all of his students and it would kind of tag along the boardwalk. Uh, so there's plenty of room for us, plus all of the people who joined us, and you to do this demonstration. I mean, that's something that's quite funny. An image that I always have in my head is, you setting up your display analogy on the boardwalk. And a lot of people are just very curious and thinking, what is going on over there? I gotta hang out and watch this.

Chris Bolhuis: Well, they're very curious when we walk out there, because I have this, you know, it's like three and a half feet tall. This, this glass rod sticking outta my [00:26:00] backpack. You know, it sticks way above my head. They're like, what's this guy doing? You know? And so they follow and it happens a lot. But, all right. Jesse, I want to transition to, this is an awesome name, Pork Chop Geyser. Okay. Now

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let me interrupt Chris real quick and say Image number 8, Porkchop geyser that’s what we are looking at, go.

Chris Bolhuis: but if you look at pork chop geer right now, and you walk up to that, you're gonna look at it and be like, that does not look like a pork chop. Okay? [00:26:30] But it used to, and this gif does a great job of showing this. You have pre 1989 and you have post 1989, which is just utter destruction. So let's get into a little bit about Pork Chop cuz it's a cool story. And you know the reason is, and I had to sell you on this, right, we're gonna talk about like pitching in the idea of what are we gonna do with Norris? Pork Chop was one of those things that I thought was really important to discuss, even though like pork chop is not something that you would go up to today and just notice and be like, wow, [00:27:00] this is really cool.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's no grand Prismatic, let's put it that way. But, but you're right, you're right Chris. And the story's great and it shows how these features kind of change with time, right? It it, it sort of shows that if you look at this stuff when you walk around the Yellowstone, look at 'em today and they're gonna be different tomorrow or a year from now, or a decade from now. Those features are gonna be different and gonna be changing. And so..

Chris Bolhuis: can I tell the story? Can I please do this? All right. All right. Okay. So look at the date of this. This happened in September 5 [00:27:30] 1989,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And let me just interrupt real quick, Chris, the first image in the gif where it looks like a pork chop that has a date on it, it's 1984. So that's the, before, and then it goes to the, what it looked like after. So you're talking about the event in between here. Sorry. Go.

Chris Bolhuis: pre devastation and post devastation is what we got going on. And so this is September 5. It's a fall. This is right in the middle of this annual disturbance that you talked about before. Where we have lower water and higher activity, all that. Well, on this [00:28:00] day, pork chop geyser erupts. Spews water about a hundred feet into the air, and that's pretty spectacular for pork chop. What that did then is that further lowered the pressure down in the, this basin below pork chop geyser, and that caused this massive explosion to happen. This hydrothermal explosion, which really just shattered all the sinter and geyserite around the vent and it threw it, I mean, Jesse fragments, big fragments were thrown up [00:28:30] to 220 feet away from the vent of this thing.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's, amazing, and you can see this stuff geyserite. We probably haven't really hammered that before, but it's just the rock around the geyser, right? And you can see it in this gif. It's just chucked over the place. And some of those blocks, really big blocks were thrown substantially far away. Like you wouldn't have wanted to be near this thing when this happened. That's a violent explosion. And I think this gift really just shows how violent some of these things that, that kind of throat clearing you describe it so well, Chris, as sort of that throat [00:29:00] clearing that happens when you have some phlegm in your throat, that can be very violent and you don't want to be around when that's going off. Sometimes.

Chris Bolhuis:No, you would not wanna be in the vicinity when this happened, but if you go to Port Chop and you look at it now and you, know what it looked like before, that's a really powerful story. That is intimately tied to Norris Geyser Basin. And I think it's cool that you can look at pork chop and be like, whoa, that is real devastation right there. And that's just, I think, awesome. So anyway, I'm done.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. That [00:29:30] well done. Well done, well done. I mean, it is really kind of an impressive, uh, it's an impressive story, how violent these things can be. I love it. Porcelain Basin, this is what we're gonna end on. Porcelain Basin is a, again, a very dynamic and changing area and I just wanna think about, compare the name. Between Porcelain, Echinus, and Emerald Spring; like very different names. Very different images. Image number nine is Porcelain Spring. It has this porcelain color to it, right? It has this kind of bluish, orangeish, opally kind of color. And the [00:30:00] name comes from really this sort of milky color, which is dramatically different from Emerald Spring and dramatically different from the hematite that's in Echinus. And so this is the place I think, Chris, where we can see these beautiful sinter mats, what you were talking about how we can see really nice sinter deposits here. And image number nine really, really shows this quite well. And just beautiful colors. It's different chemistry.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. I want to interject a second, Jesse, because this is Porcelain Springs inside of Porcelain Basin, so,[00:30:30] When you go into the parking lot and you first enter Norris Geyser Basin, the Boardwalk system, the first thing you do, you take the path immediately to your right and you will come to this overlook right here. This is where this picture is taken. And you look at this, it's stunningly beautiful. So, just at the very least, go to Porcelain Springs and look at this overlook, and then go check out the other stuff in the Back Basin. But I just, [00:31:00] please don't miss this part of Norris Geyser Basin, which is an often missed section of it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Uh, and it shows this variation. I just, I'm always blown away and putting these images together, I was blown away again by the, just the variation in the color that you can get between all of these things. And, and the really, it's all the, the chemistry difference is what the, the root driver of all of this variation that we're seeing is. So, Chris, is that a wrap on Norris then?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, we have to do the FAQ. Jesse,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: of course. I can't forget that. [00:31:30] What, what's our FAQ? What, what's going on with Norris? What's the, what questions do you get, for instance, from students? Do they, uh, you know, what do they struggle with? What's their…

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, this is actually easy when you frame it that way. Norris is the most active geyser basin in the park. It's the hottest, it's the most acidic. So is Norris Geyser Basin inside of the Yellowstone called era.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That is a great one, And I can see why this is a frequently asked question, right? Because you think, oh wait, it's acidic, it's hot. We've been talking about the magma chamber. We showed in one of those [00:32:00] images how these gases are coming off the magma. You'd think, oh yeah, it's gotta be like sitting right on top of the magma chamber right inside the Caldera. It's actually not. It's not actually in Yellowstone Caldera. It's close to the Caldera rim. And because of that, that's the reason, which is a little bit counterintuitive. It's not right on top of the magma chamber. It's off to the side where all of the fractures are. We had talked about in chapter two, I believe these ring fractures and faults that kind of rimmed the Caldera. As the Caldera collapsed back down in on itself after an [00:32:30] eruption. It's sitting right near one of those. So that's why we have access to all of these magmatic gases. Really hot, really acidic gases. and so to the north, you are off the Caldera, to the south,you enter into the Caldera and Norris is kind of sitting right on the margin between them.

Chris Bolhuis: That's good. Good job, Jesse. You answered it correctly.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I got it right. Well, I think Norris is a great place to see the variation we're talking about, but also like hold that image in your head when you're there. Think about how you're sitting right on the edge of this [00:33:00] Caldera and the cracks that allow this water to seep up are kind of reaching down in the plumbing system, is reaching down into the south. To the magma, the gases coming off the magma chamber, deep down in the crust, but then again to the north, the water is also getting down into Norris in those cracks, and it's migrating up towards Mammoth and picking up all the calcium carbonate. So I think Norris is a great one to have as chapter 12 here, because it kind of brings together a lot of the stuff we've talked about all in one spot, Chris, so

Chris Bolhuis: [00:33:30] I agree.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well organized here on that one.

Chris Bolhuis: That was our thought process. Anyway,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey,

Chris Bolhuis: Jesse, that is a wrap.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Go to Yellowstone. Check it out. It's amazing.

Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. Cheers.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: peace.