Ask a first-time visitor on her way into to Yellowstone National Park what she's looking most forward to seeing, and I guarantee Old Faithful will be up there at or near the top of the list.

It's not the flashiest of the big geysers in the park - its eruptions aren't the tallest, nor are they the longest lasting - yet it's easily the most famous. Not only that, Old Faithful is probably Yellowstone's single most popular attraction.

The massive parking areas outside it are your first clue. Despite their size, they are packed during peak tourist season. Show up between noon and 6pm and you might find it difficult to get a good view of an eruption.

The Upper Geyser Basin, where Old Faithful is located, features the densest concentration of geysers on the planet. You'll find more than 150 of them in a single square mile. Still, the vast majority of the people who come to this basin don't care much about those 149 other thermal features: they want to witness Old Faithful doing its thing.

Obviously being the biggest and flashiest is not a prerequisite to being the most celebrated.

They don't call it Old Faithful for nothing: it's predictable and erupts roughly 20 times a day, a schedule it has maintained since a huge earthquake rocked the park in 1959; prior to that it averaged 21 daily eruptions.

The average height of an eruption is around 130 feet and the duration is anywhere from 90 seconds to five minutes: a quick show, but fun to see. Like any thermal feature, it'll look more impressive if the air temperature is cold (the colder the better).

Once you've checked Old Faithful off the list, I highly recommend lacing up your hiking shoes and exploring the rest of the basin. If you're lucky, you will witness one of the other major geysers erupting. My two favorites in the Upper Geyser Basin are Castle and Grand.

Castle's major eruptions are fascinating and very long-lasting. First, it shoots water straight up about 90 feet into the air for 15-20 minutes, and then it transitions into a noisy almost tornadic steam phase which lasts another 30-40 minutes. When I first began watching Castle, it was on a (roughly) 12-hour schedule. Currently it's less predictable and also now throws an occasional minor eruption into the mix - so you don't know what you're going to get or when it's going to happen.

When Grand erupts it's a beautiful sight; with bursts of up to 200 feet, it is the tallest predictable geyser in the world. The show will continue for anywhere from nine to 12 minutes. While it's predictable, intervals between eruptions can vary wildly. Grand might wait six hours between shows, or it could be as long as 15 hours.

Eruption cycles can and often do change over time. Geysers can become more erratic. Some shift between major and minor eruptions. Others go dormant for decades and then suddenly spring back into action.

Intervals between eruptions are driven by a variety of factors, including weather, seismic activity, movement of water underground, and even seasonal changes. Don't forget: the Yellowstone caldera is a supervolcano. There's a lot going on in the plumbing underneath the park.

Steamboat Geyser, located in Norris Geyser Basin, is a great example of eruption cycles swinging from one side to the other: decades of dormancy to active phases. It "woke up" in 2018 and since then has had well over 150 major eruptions. In Steamboat's case, major really does mean MAJOR. It sends water as high as 380 feet into the air.

Clearly, there are a few major geysers within Yellowstone National Park that, when they decide to put on a show - can far outshine Old Faithful. But the Old Girl reliably performs many times each day. That's why it's such a popular geyser.

I made the photograph of Old Faithful posted above last week. Storms moving through the area late in the day convinced me to spend some time shooting a subject I typically avoid because it's such an iconic feature. The ingredients to create something more interesting than a snapshot were there: it was a question of how the clouds would shift, how low the sun would sink, and whether any light would be able to break through by the time the geyser decided to erupt. Fortunately, the conditions held up as the sun began to set, and the eruption lasted for quite a few minutes.

In Local News

Since it made the national news, you might be aware of the catastrophic failure of the Teton Pass (Highway 22) last weekend due to a landslide which occurred on the west side, not too far from the Idaho state line. Fortunately, no one was injured; the road had already closed due to a mudslide.

It being a heavily traveled, important route between Teton Valley, Idaho and Teton County, Wyoming, the closure of the pass has serious consequences. There is one alternate route, but it adds a significant amount of time and mileage.

A sizeable percentage of Jackson, Wyoming's workforce lives in or near Victor, Idaho. Their daily round trip commute is now at least four hours longer.

On Monday WYDOT released a statement indicating that geologists and engineers are "confident they can build a safe, temporary detour around the slide area using local fill materials and paving two temporary lanes." I'm no geologist but the section of roadway that failed was built on fill, so the fact that they're talking about using "local fill materials" to construct the detour seems...interesting.

Anyway, they say they're hoping to re-open the road - albeit with strict weight and width restrictions - within a few weeks. However, they're still working to contain the mudslide a few miles downhill of the landslide so this is a tall order. Crews are working around the clock.

Once again having access to the pass in a few weeks would be great, but I'll believe that timetable when I see it.

For the time being it's tough going for those who need to travel between Eastern Idaho and Jackson, or from Eastern Idaho to Grand Teton National Park on a regular basis.

That said, if you're planning on visiting, you can navigate between the two states. Rather than hopping on Highway 22 (the pass), you'll drive through the Snake River Canyon. If you're starting in Jackson, this route will take you to Alpine, on through the Palisades, and then to Swan Valley, Idaho. From Swan Valley you can get to either the Teton Valley or Idaho Falls.