Norris Geyser Basin Steamboat Geyser
— — the tallest column of water on earth.
Not only on a wall.
“Steamboat is the tallest active geyser in the world, capable of throwing water more than three hundred feet into the air. Between major eruptions it mutters and steams in its own quiet rhythm, sometimes for years. Since 2018 it has woken up and entered an active phase with dozens of full eruptions a year. The boardwalk at Back Basin holds a small crowd most days, watching, never sure. from the studio
Norris Geyser Basin Steamboat Geyser, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Steamboat Geyser sits in the Back Basin section of Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest and most acidic of Yellowstone's thermal areas. The basin lies at the intersection of three regional fault zones, which feed it with superheated water from a shallow magma chamber. A major eruption can throw water more than three hundred feet up, taller than any other active geyser on earth, and is followed by a long steam phase that can last a day or more. The viewing boardwalk is reached from the Norris Museum trailhead on the Grand Loop Road.
Steamboat is famously irregular. Between 1991 and 2000 it produced no major eruptions at all, then a handful through the 2000s and early 2010s. In March 2018 it woke into a sustained active phase and recorded forty-eight major eruptions in 2019, the most ever observed in a calendar year. The intervals between eruptions in active phases range from about three days to several weeks. Scientists at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory monitor the geyser with a seismograph and a temperature logger on the runoff channel.
The Norris Geyser Basin parking area sits about twenty miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs on the Grand Loop Road. From the museum a short walk leads into the Back Basin loop and to the Steamboat viewing deck. The full Back Basin loop is roughly one and a half miles. Boardwalks are open roughly mid-April through early November, depending on snow. Predicting a major eruption is not possible, though minor splashes from Steamboat's two main vents are visible most of the time. Bring water and sun protection; the basin offers almost no shade.