Geysers and their common companions, hot springs, are most often found in regions of volcanic activity. They arise when groundwater seeps deep underground, is heated by hot gases and lava and remains there until it breaks to the surface of the earth. When the water seeks a way out, the pressure rises.
Ultimately, it reaches such a value that steam breaks through the cracks outward in the form of water columns and fountains.
The geysers got their name from a hot spring in the south-west of Iceland, called by the first Norwegian colonists "Geyzir", which means "fountain" in Icelandic.
VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKE
In 1916, four years after the eruption of Katmai volcano, three American scientists, led by the famous volcanologist Griggs, climbed the rocky taiga pass of the Alaska Range. From its two-kilometer height, they saw a wide, flat valley going north, along the entire length of which white fountains of smoke roared out from under the ground.
Griggs called this unusual area the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
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On an old map, created half a century before by Russian topographers, a wooded narrow and deep valley of the Ukak River was shown at this place. Now, in the place of the valley, was a smooth, lifeless plain twenty kilometers long and five kilometers wide, dotted with many white fountains. Upon closer examination, it turned out that it was not smoke, but steam. But this circumstance did not in any way clarify the riddle of the appearance of ten thousand "smoke".
Only subsequent expeditions by Griggs to this volcanic region helped uncover the mystery of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. It turned out that shortly before the explosion from the lateral crater of Katmay, and perhaps from the cracks on its slopes, an eruption began, but not lava, but fine volcanic sand. A cloud of incandescent grains of sand, each shrouded in hot compressed gas, behaved like a liquid and flowed freely along the slope of the volcano into the valley.
At the edges of the future Valley of a Thousand Smokes, the layer of sand reached thirty meters, and in the middle it exceeded two hundred. The trees on the slopes were dumped and charred by the scorching sandy river. When the flow of volcanic dust stopped and the gases evaporated, the hot grains of sand welded together, forming a solid stone armor of volcanic tuff.
But in some places cracks formed in it, and the waters of the Ukak River and numerous springs on its banks, evaporating under the hot "armor", burst upward in the form of white jets of steam.
Over the years, the tuff cover began to gradually cool down, and already the expedition of the French volcanologist Taziev, who visited the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes after half a century, found in it only five thousand fountains of steam, and even in those, the height and temperature of the jets became much lower.
In less than forty years, the venerable volcanologist noted with sadness, the lower layers of the tuffs will cool down completely, and then this wonderful natural monument will lose its most spectacular decoration.
Alas, Taziev was right. There is no more haze in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes!
YELLOWSTON GEYS
In the heart of the Rocky Mountains, at the junction of the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, there is the "pearl of America" - Yellowstone National Park. The amazing nature of this unique corner of the Cordillera is its geysers and waterfalls, petrified forest and sediments of hot springs frozen in white cascades.
The park covers an area of almost 900 thousand hectares on a high-mountainous (up to 2500 meters) plateau between the Gallatin and Absarot ranges, reaching 3800 meters in height. Both the plateau and the ridges are composed of volcanic rocks. Lava flows can be seen throughout the park, and in the Obsidian River Valley rises a huge cliff made entirely of volcanic glass. But traces of recent volcanic activity are not only left in the form of lava flows.
Here and there in the valley of the Yellowstone River, which cuts through the plateau, there are hot springs, geysers, and even whole "cauldrons" of hot gurgling mud. Hydrothermal phenomena reach the greatest scales on the banks of the Fiery River. Here, in two areas - the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins - there are more than 40 geysers and thousands of hot springs.
The geyser pools of Yellowstone National Park are by far the grandest of all geyser fields in the world, although similar gushing hot springs are also found in Kamchatka, Iceland and New Zealand.
Some of the Yellowstone geysers spout over 100 meters, and the tallest fountain is over 115 meters. The most powerful geyser throws out almost 4000 tons of water at the time of the eruption about 10 meters!
The frequency of these natural fountains is striking. Some of them erupt at intervals of 2-3 years, others fire at intervals of several days, and many small, two- or three-meter high, beat every 3-4 minutes.
The most popular among tourists is the Old Faithful geyser. It erupts with consistent precision every 65 minutes. A jet of boiling water with a diameter of half a meter takes off at the same time 50 meters. The eruption lasts 4-5 minutes, and then there is a break. But exactly an hour and five minutes later, a new outburst occurs, followed by another calm after 5 minutes.
Giant Geyser is called a “water volcano”. With an interval of four days, he throws a mighty column of boiling water to a height of 90 meters.
The "Big Flower Pot" mud geyser is original: in an oval stone bowl, in clouds of steam, the smallest particles of white and pink porcelain clay boil and bubble; moreover, particles of different shades do not mix with each other.
The geyser "Minute Man" once a minute throws into the air a bouquet of many bluish streams, vaguely reminiscent of the figure of a man in a hoodie.
The Divine of Yellowstone is called the Excelsior geyser - one of the largest in the world. Its stream gushes from a lake with rocky shores. Before the eruption, the surface of the lake begins to agitate, is enveloped in clouds of steam, and then a giant column of boiling water 10 meters in diameter and almost 100 meters in height bursts out from the center of the reservoir with a formidable roar!
The clouds of steam rise even higher - up to 300 meters. The surroundings are filled with whistles, roars and crashes, explosions are heard underground, stones fly high into the air, and the ground trembles underfoot. But gradually the rumble dies down, the water column becomes lower and suddenly disappears as suddenly as it appeared.
Around the springs and geysers, a layer of yellowish-white loose rock - geyserite is deposited on the surface of the earth. It is formed from silica dissolved in hot water, which precipitates as it cools. Often the mouth of a geyser or source is a rather high geyserite cone with a crater hole at the top, and then it really resembles a volcano, only erupting not lava, but boiling water.
Another unique object is located near the northern border of the reserve - the Mamontovy Hot Springs. Here, plentifully pouring out hot waters deposited, while cooling, calcium salts dissolved in them, forming picturesque terraces on the slopes, reminiscent of frozen waterfalls. The terraces have their own names: the terrace of Jupiter, Minerva, Main and others.
The terrace of Jupiter is especially striking with its fabulous beauty. This is a hill over 100 meters high, on a steep slope of which rows of white, blue, green and yellow vases and bowls of lime tuff - travertine descend in multicolored cascades. Among them are matte and sparkling like crystal, smooth and ribbed, dry and filled with hot water.
Water, flowing down the walls of the cascades, gives them the appearance of icy frozen waterfalls. The sizes of the bowls range from a few centimeters to 30 meters. The deposition of travertine occurs with astonishing rapidity. A knife, a key or a stone lowered into the water in the evening becomes covered with a shiny crust of crystals by the morning, and after a week the layer of travertine reaches a centimeter or more.
It is not easy to find a place on our planet where so many amazing wonders of nature would be brought together.
ROTORUA VALLEY
New Zealand has so many amazing, exotic and one-of-a-kind natural phenomena and objects that no other region of the Earth can compare with it in this respect.
But undoubtedly New Zealand's main wonder is the famed Rotorua Valley. It is located in the center of the North Island on the Volcanic Plateau. The Maori, the longtime inhabitants of this island, named the valley Takiva-Vaiariki, which means "Land of Hot Water".
Even on the streets of the town of Rotorua, you can see jets of white steam pouring from the cracks in the sidewalks. Hundreds of hot and cold springs are found in the vicinity of the town and on the shores of the lake of the same name.
Naturally, the main attraction of Rotorua is its famous geysers. There are dozens of them here, and the streams, beating four to five meters in height, envelop in clouds of steam both the coast of Lake Rotorua and the outskirts of the village.
The most powerful geyser - Pohutu - throws a stream of boiling water thirty meters up. The water eruption lasts for an hour or even longer. Sometimes several geysers hit at the same time, and sometimes they "work" alternately, as if trying to surpass each other with the power of jets and the unusual shape of the fountain.
White siliceous incrustations adorning the openings of natural fountains have yellow tints formed from hydrogen sulfide dissolved in water. Unfortunately, not all of this not too fragrant gas is deposited in the form of sulfur emissions, and in the air of Rotorua you can feel its specific "aroma" even on the way to the lake.
In 1900, a gigantic hot water fountain hit Waimangu from underground, the likes of which had never been seen in New Zealand. At that time, the Waimangu geyser was the most powerful in the world and threw out a powerful jet of water mixed with steam, stones and sand to a height of four hundred and fifty meters!
He raged and roared for hours, then fell silent, but after thirty hours he again threw out a fountain of boiling water. It was not easy to calculate the time when the next water eruption would begin, and several amorous onlookers paid with their lives for trying to study the quieted giant.
For four years, a giant geyser raged in the valley, shaking eyewitnesses with the fantastic size of its fountain. Then the Waimangu jet began to weaken, and in 1908 the geyser ceased to exist.
Another thermal region lies fifty kilometers south of Rotorua, near the largest New Zealand lake, Taupo. Here, in the Wairakei Valley, there is the famous "steam cave" Karapiti, from which clouds of steam erupt with great force, filling the surroundings with a frightening roar. The world's first geothermal power plant using groundwater was built here in 1958.
GEYS OF KAMCHATKA
Nature reliably hid the Kamchatka miracle from people. Only in April 1941, the geologist Ustinova, examining the non-freezing river Shumnaya, flowing from the Uzon volcanic caldera, accidentally noticed a fountain of soaring water rushing up on one of its tributaries.
Further study of the tributary showed that in its valley there are 21 more large geysers and many pulsating hot springs, boiling multi-colored lakes, steam-water jets and gurgling mud pots. This tributary was named the Geysernaya River.
It is difficult to convey the impression that this amazing place makes on the traveler! The whole valley seems to be smoking, emitting clouds of white steam and jets of boiling water, around there is an incessant roar, whistle, hiss, gurgling and splashes, which make you involuntarily recall the picture of hell described by the great Dante.
The largest of the geysers, the Giant, erupts every five hours. At the same time, a meter thick jet of boiling water takes off to a height of forty meters, and clouds of steam rise three hundred meters! A kind of "scale" of mineral salts that precipitates when the water cools has formed a cone thirty meters in diameter at the base of the geyser. Other geysers and pulsating springs have the same geyserite cones.
Geyserite is yellow, brownish, pink and even greenish, depending on the composition of the precipitating salts. One of the geysers was even called Sugar - its geyserite cone looks so much like a pile of burnt sugar. Geyser Fountain is the most active: every 17 minutes it throws its powerful jet to the height of a seven-story building.
And the Crying Geyser is distinguished by the peculiar character of the gurgling produced: it looks like a dull sobbing. The Vodopadny geyser is very impressive, below which a stream of boiling water breaks down from the cliff as a 27-meter waterfall.
Siberian miracle
In the newspaper "Irkutsk vedomosti" for 1913, a note was published about a strange phenomenon that happened in the month of February. And this event was really unique. The fact is that in the middle of a fierce winter, the peasants once saw a strange bluish glow over the snow that covered the fields with winter crops, hanging for several days in a row.
And when the glow disappeared, the snow melted during one night, and the exposed earth suddenly turned green, like in spring.
And a little later, hot springs were poured into the fields, the jets of which reached several meters. This phenomenon continued for nine months, until the next winter.
GEYS OF ICELAND
In no other European country do ice fields take up so much space: an eighth of the entire territory! The largest glacier, Vatnajökull (translated as "water-giving glacier"), is located in the southeast of the island. This is a vast ice plateau pierced in eight places by the tips of extinct and active volcanoes.
In addition to the huge amount of ice, the island also has its own valley of geysers - Haukadalur. It is located a hundred kilometers east of Reykjavik, at the foot of the Lungjökull glacier. It is here that the famous Big Geyser is located, which once struck the first settlers of Iceland. This was the first natural hot fountain seen by Europeans. Subsequently, all gushing hot springs were named after him.
The three-meter mouth of the Big Geyser opens in the middle of a bowl-shaped pool of white lime tuff. It is filled with boiling water of turquoise color, which then spills out to the bottom of the bowl, then goes back into the hole. Finally, the geyser gathers strength and three times in a row throws a powerful jet 40-60 meters high into the sky.
This "fireworks" lasts for ten minutes, and then water and steam seem to be drawn back into the vent. The Big Geyser has been erupting less and less lately. But its neighbor - the Shtokkr geyser - is still full of energy and punctually pleases tourists with its jets flying up 30-40 meters.
Another geyser valley is located at the northern edge of the already mentioned large Vatnajökull glacier, next to the Kverkfjell volcano. In total, there are 250 thermal spring groups in Iceland, including 7,000 hot springs - more than anywhere else in the world.
This is not surprising as the temperature of the interior of the island is very high. In some places, it increases by half a degree with every meter of depth. (For comparison: in Moscow this figure is one hundredth of a degree per meter).