WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:13.410 --> 00:00:15.870 Interviewer: Tell me about your early work at USGS 00:00:15.870 --> 00:00:24.250 Robert Fournier: I came to work for the Geological Survey in 1958, working with George W. Morey 00:00:24.250 --> 00:00:30.060 who was one of the icons of early experimental work on water-rock interactions at high pressures 00:00:30.060 --> 00:00:32.020 and high temperatures. 00:00:32.020 --> 00:00:35.410 Where did you attend college and what did you study? 00:00:35.410 --> 00:00:39.390 Ah, graduate school, I went to Berkeley. 00:00:39.390 --> 00:00:47.340 I did a thesis on porphyry copper deposits How did you wind up working at Yellowstone? 00:00:47.340 --> 00:00:55.000 Uhm, in 1957, Julian Hendley and I were both graduate students at Berkeley and we were 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:00.390 driving from there to Butte, Montana to look at the copper deposits there and we stopped 00:01:00.390 --> 00:01:03.370 in Yellowstone on the way. 00:01:03.370 --> 00:01:06.681 And I fell in love with Yellowstone and hydrothermal system immediately. 00:01:06.681 --> 00:01:13.640 In fact I remember very distinctly talking to Julian and saying, I couldn't think of 00:01:13.640 --> 00:01:21.099 a better job than to be paid to come and actually study the hot spring deposits here in Yellowstone. 00:01:21.099 --> 00:01:26.651 And I was very interested in looking at what the silica might be in a higher temperature 00:01:26.651 --> 00:01:28.710 system of Yellowstone. 00:01:28.710 --> 00:01:35.459 And Don had also done some work in Yellowstone so we talked a bit and he very graciously 00:01:35.459 --> 00:01:43.530 volunteered to take me and a few of my associates in Washington to Yellowstone to show us around 00:01:43.530 --> 00:01:45.179 and to get started. 00:01:45.179 --> 00:01:54.459 My intent was to bring a photometer to Yellowstone that actually measure the chemical speciation 00:01:54.459 --> 00:01:58.060 of silica in the water just as they came out of the springs. 00:01:58.060 --> 00:02:02.110 And this was very important for giving the information about how silica might behave 00:02:02.110 --> 00:02:03.140 underground. 00:02:03.140 --> 00:02:11.510 And so it was silica that got me to Yellowstone and I had working with me Jack Rowe, a chemist. 00:02:11.510 --> 00:02:14.920 So I had chemical facilities available. 00:02:14.920 --> 00:02:20.480 And we decided, well we didn't want to do just silica -- let's collect waters and measure 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:25.180 everything we could and in the way of major, major elements in the waters, which we did. 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:29.860 So that got me to Yellowstone in 1960. 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:31.250 What was the focus of your work there? 00:02:31.250 --> 00:02:35.350 Well, there were a lot of questions we had. 00:02:35.350 --> 00:02:40.440 We wanted to know where the waters came from, whether there's a magnetic contribution to 00:02:40.440 --> 00:02:42.930 the waters and gases or not. 00:02:42.930 --> 00:02:47.710 We wanted to know how much water was coming up and above all, we wanted to know what the 00:02:47.710 --> 00:02:54.360 temperatures were of the source areas for specific Geyser basins and hot springs and 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:56.770 geysers in those basins. 00:02:56.770 --> 00:03:05.420 So the silica turned out to be the first pathway to this, which was through the silica solubility 00:03:05.420 --> 00:03:10.760 work I came up with what's called the silica geothermometer, which later had a lot of application 00:03:10.760 --> 00:03:11.760 elsewhere. 00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:20.930 So then we started in looking at other types of geothermometers involving alkaline minerals 00:03:20.930 --> 00:03:25.070 and then mixing models involving mixing of high temperature waters and low temperature 00:03:25.070 --> 00:03:28.319 waters to estimate underground temperatures. 00:03:28.319 --> 00:03:32.810 And when the growing, possibility for drilling came up, this was a golden opportunity to 00:03:32.810 --> 00:03:39.480 verify some of our estimates of what the underground temperatures really were and to see if indeed 00:03:39.480 --> 00:03:48.250 at depth quartz was determining the amount of silica in solution, which had been the 00:03:48.250 --> 00:03:49.260 direction we would take. 00:03:49.260 --> 00:03:54.460 But we felt that yes, quartz should be and it turned out it was. 00:03:54.460 --> 00:03:59.100 To what degree was that work contributing to the larger understanding of Yellowstone 00:03:59.100 --> 00:04:01.310 geology? 00:04:01.310 --> 00:04:07.140 We had a lot of information when we started working there about chemical compositions 00:04:07.140 --> 00:04:13.320 going all the way back to the first paper published in 1888 about the USGS looking at 00:04:13.320 --> 00:04:15.670 the compositions in Yellowstone. 00:04:15.670 --> 00:04:20.810 There was a major study done in the 1920s by Allen and Day. 00:04:20.810 --> 00:04:26.340 They tried to sample each one of the springs that they could get to in the park and so 00:04:26.340 --> 00:04:33.620 when I came on I wanted to know whether the water compositions were changing in time from 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:38.410 year to year or even from season to season in the park. 00:04:38.410 --> 00:04:50.771 And so, I also through the silica work, had published the solubility of quartz and I was 00:04:50.771 --> 00:04:56.910 very interested in then applying this as a chemical geothermometer. 00:04:56.910 --> 00:05:05.820 About then, I attended a meeting in 1965 in New Zealand and when I got there I found that 00:05:05.820 --> 00:05:14.660 New Zealanders had taken my published solubility work and were using it to estimate the changes 00:05:14.660 --> 00:05:19.139 in temperature of the Wairakei Field. 00:05:19.139 --> 00:05:23.181 At that time, in order to monitor how temperatures are changing with production, they had to 00:05:23.181 --> 00:05:29.699 shut down a well, go through and send a temperature measuring device down, get it out, and this 00:05:29.699 --> 00:05:32.700 was costing money because they weren't giving the production. 00:05:32.700 --> 00:05:35.510 And it would take a month or two to do the whole field. 00:05:35.510 --> 00:05:40.330 And then they found that they could use my calibrated quartz geothermometer and in one 00:05:40.330 --> 00:05:45.790 day collect sample from other wells and within two degrees Celsius determine the underground 00:05:45.790 --> 00:05:47.780 temperatures of the field. 00:05:47.780 --> 00:05:53.150 So uhm, I was very, this was for down whole samples. 00:05:53.150 --> 00:05:58.580 I was dealing with hot springs and so I really wanted to find out how much change in silica 00:05:58.580 --> 00:06:03.360 concentration there was in the waters coming up from depth to the spring waters. 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:08.389 And the drilling was a marvelous way of getting at what was going on because the drilling 00:06:08.389 --> 00:06:13.699 allowed me to collect underground temperatures. 00:06:13.699 --> 00:06:22.550 I was also very much interested in looking at basin to basin and see how hot water compositions 00:06:22.550 --> 00:06:25.450 in those basins related to one another. 00:06:25.450 --> 00:06:35.280 And so I was very much trying to find if there were any unifying factors, and by that time, 00:06:35.280 --> 00:06:41.900 we, I and my associates began to have a pretty good idea, particularly Alfred Truesdell, 00:06:41.900 --> 00:06:48.580 who was working with me, of what the temperatures were in the individual basins and we were 00:06:48.580 --> 00:06:49.949 expanding on this work. 00:06:49.949 --> 00:06:56.070 So we were still groping around for a major unifying model. 00:06:56.070 --> 00:07:01.050 And when drilling started we didn't have that model yet, but we were on the way. 00:07:01.050 --> 00:07:06.260 Did your drilling work overlap with Bob Christensen’s mapping work? 00:07:06.260 --> 00:07:12.650 When I first starting working in the park, we knew that it was a volcano. 00:07:12.650 --> 00:07:16.389 We didn't have that much more information except from Joe Boyd’s thesis. 00:07:16.389 --> 00:07:24.259 And so about then Chris started working there and we had a lot of very close contact with 00:07:24.259 --> 00:07:29.600 Chris and others because during a part of this work, we actually shared field camps, 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:33.919 in which we shared eating facilities and that sort of thing. 00:07:33.919 --> 00:07:40.180 And we, --- I was really interested in the volcanic aspect even though it wasn't --- volcanoes 00:07:40.180 --> 00:07:42.330 weren't my thing. 00:07:42.330 --> 00:07:49.020 Because I knew that the porphyry coppers were sub-volcanic and Yellowstone was giving me 00:07:49.020 --> 00:07:56.310 a bridge between my thesis and what was going on in Yellowstone. 00:07:56.310 --> 00:07:58.900 So I was really interested in talking to Chris a lot. 00:07:58.900 --> 00:08:06.280 I went on an expedition with Chris to the Mirror Plateau so I had a couple of weeks 00:08:06.280 --> 00:08:12.830 with Chris doing fieldwork with horses and great communication. 00:08:12.830 --> 00:08:14.600 By then I'd moved out here. 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:19.560 And so we've walked down the hall and talked to each other. 00:08:19.560 --> 00:08:23.690 Tell us about unusual spring activity in the park? 00:08:23.690 --> 00:08:32.579 I had worked for parts of two -- of either spring or fall seasons in the park starting 00:08:32.579 --> 00:08:36.339 1960, '61, '62. 00:08:36.339 --> 00:08:42.759 In 1962, this was three years after the Hebgen Lake earthquake. 00:08:42.759 --> 00:08:48.220 One of the major springs in the park, Beryl Spring, had stopped overflowing. 00:08:48.220 --> 00:08:57.129 It was right in the canyon that's the road goes through from the southern part of the 00:08:57.129 --> 00:09:03.439 park to Mammoth, the northern part of the park, the only way to get through except going 00:09:03.439 --> 00:09:08.309 out of the way by many, many, many, many miles. 00:09:08.309 --> 00:09:17.629 The Bureau of Public Roads was supposed to come in at that time and strip away all of 00:09:17.629 --> 00:09:23.660 the previously laid down roadbed that went past that spring. 00:09:23.660 --> 00:09:28.970 Their geologist had determined that the reason that this spring had stopped overflowing was 00:09:28.970 --> 00:09:32.170 that a crack had formed after the earthquake. 00:09:32.170 --> 00:09:37.700 And as a result the water was flowing out from under the road, and which was --- they 00:09:37.700 --> 00:09:40.779 had hot spring water coming out from under the road. 00:09:40.779 --> 00:09:48.970 And they, --- the superintendent of the park at that time, Mr. Garrison, really liked that 00:09:48.970 --> 00:09:49.970 spring. 00:09:49.970 --> 00:09:53.629 He wanted the spring put back to the point where it would overflow again. 00:09:53.629 --> 00:09:59.429 So he also wanted all the road materials stripped away from by the spring, and they were going 00:09:59.429 --> 00:10:07.029 to put a, --- did put a bridge over that area where the water could then flow from the spring 00:10:07.029 --> 00:10:10.589 underneath this bridge rather than over the bridge. 00:10:10.589 --> 00:10:13.950 I was called in. 00:10:13.950 --> 00:10:18.971 --- They went to the Geological Survey and called me in as the expert -- because I was 00:10:18.971 --> 00:10:23.939 the only person who had any experience at that time in the park --- to be their safety 00:10:23.939 --> 00:10:29.360 engineer and also to tell them when they stripped away all of the fill material to get back 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:32.180 down to the original slope. 00:10:32.180 --> 00:10:40.249 I came in and I assessed the situation and I determined that they were having a new spring 00:10:40.249 --> 00:10:42.000 right under the road. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:44.620 I did this in various ways. 00:10:44.620 --> 00:10:51.819 I had a thermistor with me and I did a, I got a little spike and I pounded some holes 00:10:51.819 --> 00:10:57.869 into the ground and I had a temperature survey determine that the temperatures did not fall 00:10:57.869 --> 00:11:02.579 off from the spring to that new one, from Beryl Spring to the new one, but that they 00:11:02.579 --> 00:11:03.579 had a new spring. 00:11:03.579 --> 00:11:12.050 I also took an old bit of rock salt like a cowlick and broke it up and put it into Beryl 00:11:12.050 --> 00:11:17.399 Spring and then with a conductivity measure determine how long it took the water to get 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:23.629 from Beryl Spring out to this new discharge and found that it took something like an hour. 00:11:23.629 --> 00:11:27.559 So I knew they were connected, but the connection was deep. 00:11:27.559 --> 00:11:33.709 The Bureau of Public Roads also wanted to dig a 10-foot deep trench between the spring 00:11:33.709 --> 00:11:38.379 and the road -- and fill it with impervious material, which was going to be montmorillonite 00:11:38.379 --> 00:11:44.959 clay and therefore stop up the leak --- where I knew that this would absolutely destroy 00:11:44.959 --> 00:11:49.369 the silica scinter that was coming out there, and if they did that they were to get nothing 00:11:49.369 --> 00:11:55.759 but new springs and possibly destroy all possibility of even repairing a road or putting in a new 00:11:55.759 --> 00:11:56.759 road. 00:11:56.759 --> 00:11:58.660 In fact it might take the road out forever. 00:11:58.660 --> 00:12:04.360 So the park service wasn't on, for some reason, too good terms with the Bureau of Public Roads 00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:05.850 at that time. 00:12:05.850 --> 00:12:10.559 And so I was with the Park Service, the Bureau of Public Roads was on the other side, and 00:12:10.559 --> 00:12:16.360 so when we actually got around to digging up the old road, lo and behold there was a 00:12:16.360 --> 00:12:18.220 new spring. 00:12:18.220 --> 00:12:24.730 Furthermore, when we did this we found that there were at least three or four different 00:12:24.730 --> 00:12:28.930 roads had been put in, one layer upon the other. 00:12:28.930 --> 00:12:33.509 Each road was repaired at that same spot where a new spring had come up. 00:12:33.509 --> 00:12:38.410 And each repair job was by putting in more cement, and each time new spring would work 00:12:38.410 --> 00:12:42.230 up its way around the cement and eventually come out again. 00:12:42.230 --> 00:12:49.699 So I, ---- the engineers were going to do the same thing with this new spring. 00:12:49.699 --> 00:12:52.999 They were going to dump it full of cement. 00:12:52.999 --> 00:12:57.899 One of the problems was that they had prefabricated the bridge and one of the bridge abutments 00:12:57.899 --> 00:13:02.119 was going to be where the new spring was and they could only move the bridge a few feet 00:13:02.119 --> 00:13:03.850 one way or the other. 00:13:03.850 --> 00:13:09.259 So they were going to have this bridge abutment on this cement fill that plugged, ---- that 00:13:09.259 --> 00:13:11.189 hadn't worked in the past. 00:13:11.189 --> 00:13:15.550 So I said, no we're not going to do that and furthermore we're not going to dig that trench, 00:13:15.550 --> 00:13:17.999 which was another major problem. 00:13:17.999 --> 00:13:25.819 So I designed a cement vault that would raise the level of the water inside the vault to 00:13:25.819 --> 00:13:29.699 the point where its water level would be higher than that of the spring, reasoning that the 00:13:29.699 --> 00:13:33.970 new spring would then come out Barrel Spring, the shortest way instead of there. 00:13:33.970 --> 00:13:39.060 And we then kept it open so that the pressure wouldn't build up in that vault and we vented 00:13:39.060 --> 00:13:44.179 the steam to one side and I guaranteed that it would work for at least 10 years, and so 00:13:44.179 --> 00:13:48.970 now they're finally getting around to doing something about it. 00:13:48.970 --> 00:13:52.389 The vault is going to be left but the bridge is going to be replaced. 00:13:52.389 --> 00:14:01.100 Furthermore, we got them to not dig the trench but the contract called for the contractor 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:11.149 to, ah, dig all this clay out of a pit over near 00:14:11.149 --> 00:14:15.529 Yellowstone Canyon and truck it, which was going to be a very expensive operation to 00:14:15.529 --> 00:14:17.810 fill in this trench. 00:14:17.810 --> 00:14:22.179 So they still insisted on trucking in all of this clay materials and spreading it around, 00:14:22.179 --> 00:14:26.949 which I couldn't get them to stop and it turned out to be just exactly the wrong to do because 00:14:26.949 --> 00:14:31.459 I think it has led to a lot of demise in the timbers that they put in place because it 00:14:31.459 --> 00:14:35.019 allowed conditions to go acid sulfate there. 00:14:35.019 --> 00:14:45.559 Anyway, as a result of this, the --- John Good, the chief naturalist and the superintendent 00:14:45.559 --> 00:14:53.029 were fairly high on the USGS, and they felt that we knew what we were doing and that we 00:14:53.029 --> 00:14:56.029 could handle hydrothermal situations. 00:14:56.029 --> 00:15:01.279 And this quite possibly could have smoothed the way when we came back to them and said 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:05.689 we would like to do some drilling to really understand what's going on underground. 00:15:05.689 --> 00:15:13.949 So at that time, the personnel, in positions of authority in the park were very favorably 00:15:13.949 --> 00:15:16.690 disposed to the USGS. 00:15:16.690 --> 00:15:21.049 They at that time could essentially do whatever they wanted and even though there was some 00:15:21.049 --> 00:15:25.529 internal decent within the park service about whether we should do the drilling or not. 00:15:25.529 --> 00:15:29.609 What the superintendent said was law and we did it. 00:15:29.609 --> 00:15:34.269 How was the drilling plan developed? 00:15:34.269 --> 00:15:41.279 This evolved because in anything like this you want to learn from your past experience. 00:15:41.279 --> 00:15:46.250 We had an idea of the kinds of environments that we wanted to look at. 00:15:46.250 --> 00:15:52.220 We had made some decisions about the particular basins. 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:57.139 We had to stay away from old faithful and any of the major features in the park but 00:15:57.139 --> 00:16:00.179 other than that we were given pretty much free reign. 00:16:00.179 --> 00:16:07.499 We wanted to do our drilling where we could be seen by the public only in the wintertime 00:16:07.499 --> 00:16:11.629 or at least in the fall or early spring. 00:16:11.629 --> 00:16:16.670 During the summer, except for one well, we tried to stay out of the public sight. 00:16:16.670 --> 00:16:21.660 The one well where we were in real public sight was the Y-5 drill hole, which was right 00:16:21.660 --> 00:16:26.269 next to pocket basin, which was a hydrothermal explosion area. 00:16:26.269 --> 00:16:32.449 But then we would drill a well, see what we were getting and then decided the next one. 00:16:32.449 --> 00:16:38.880 And so we were pretty much making up our specific drill sites as we went along. 00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:46.850 In some cases, the Park Service gave us better drill sites than we dared ask for because 00:16:46.850 --> 00:16:52.050 our sites would have required cutting down three or four trees and the park service would 00:16:52.050 --> 00:16:56.670 rather have us closer to some of the drill or some of the hot springs and not cut down 00:16:56.670 --> 00:16:59.279 on these trees. 00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:02.669 What was learned from the drilling work? 00:17:02.669 --> 00:17:06.689 One of the things I was really interested in was getting down hole pressures. 00:17:06.689 --> 00:17:12.870 At that time, we didn't have electronic equipment to do pressures and so I came at it from an 00:17:12.870 --> 00:17:18.260 experimentalist, in which I had been using flexible stainless steel tubing to get my 00:17:18.260 --> 00:17:25.750 pressures to my vessels in the uhm, furnaces and so on. 00:17:25.750 --> 00:17:31.670 So I thought I could measure down hole pressures by putting a tube to the bottom of the well 00:17:31.670 --> 00:17:37.050 and measuring a gas pressure against the --- what was down there. 00:17:37.050 --> 00:17:38.560 This was really effective. 00:17:38.560 --> 00:17:41.270 So we got real temperature measurements. 00:17:41.270 --> 00:17:45.060 We got good down hole pressure measurements, and down hole pressure measurements were the 00:17:45.060 --> 00:17:49.170 key to understanding what was going for the geysers and that sort of thing. 00:17:49.170 --> 00:17:54.310 We got down hole waters and gas samples so that we got real information about what was 00:17:54.310 --> 00:17:56.000 going on down there. 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:03.510 Another thing is that Pat and co-workers, Alfred and Don had just figured out that these 00:18:03.510 --> 00:18:08.440 hydrothermal explosions, massive hydrothermal explosions were taking place there and that 00:18:08.440 --> 00:18:11.750 they were controlled by increase in pressure of this water. 00:18:11.750 --> 00:18:17.820 I was interested in knowing what happened to the underground pressures and temperatures 00:18:17.820 --> 00:18:20.640 during glaciation. 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:27.870 So the drill core provided access to fluid inclusions so I had Keith Barger put on to 00:18:27.870 --> 00:18:34.370 my project for a while, part time to look at the fluid inclusions in the core and we 00:18:34.370 --> 00:18:43.400 determined that the inclusions showed major increases in temperatures at various depths. 00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:51.480 Some temperatures were as much as 280 degrees Celsius in the past where present temperatures 00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:54.450 were only 160 degrees Celsius. 00:18:54.450 --> 00:19:02.310 This showed that the weight of the glacial ice created a higher underground water pressure 00:19:02.310 --> 00:19:07.890 and that underground temperatures were able to increase accordingly much, much, much higher. 00:19:07.890 --> 00:19:13.430 And so actually during the glacial period, at the place called Porcupine Hills in Lower 00:19:13.430 --> 00:19:20.010 Geyser basin, waters were flowing out at the then ground surface underneath the ice at 00:19:20.010 --> 00:19:26.720 temperatures as high as 160-180 degrees Celsius compared to 92 degrees now. 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:33.970 So toward the end of the Ice Age, there was a lot of excess thermal energy stored in the 00:19:33.970 --> 00:19:40.800 rocks, which could then be converted to energy to these hydrothermal explosions. 00:19:40.800 --> 00:19:46.120 To what degree was drilling the way to get geologic information? 00:19:46.120 --> 00:19:49.670 Well of course it was, it gave us core. 00:19:49.670 --> 00:19:55.140 And what the core gave us was not only geologic information stratigraphy, how deep the glacial 00:19:55.140 --> 00:19:56.140 fill was. 00:19:56.140 --> 00:19:59.100 What the different types of rocks were. 00:19:59.100 --> 00:20:02.010 It also gave us history. 00:20:02.010 --> 00:20:06.230 Because we could look at the veins and see crosscutting relationships of veins. 00:20:06.230 --> 00:20:11.270 We could look at the nature of the alteration around the veins, whether it remained the 00:20:11.270 --> 00:20:12.420 same or not. 00:20:12.420 --> 00:20:15.680 We could look at the minerals and the fluid inclusions. 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:22.560 So we got history of what had gone on since the materials are deposited -- that we were 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:24.320 looking at. 00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:26.290 Was it exciting to work in Yellowstone? 00:20:26.290 --> 00:20:30.900 Oh, it's absolutely exciting and fun, yes. 00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:31.900 Yes. 00:20:31.900 --> 00:20:34.870 I'm accused of never having worked a day in my life. 00:20:34.870 --> 00:20:41.540 Ah, the, and as we did this we were learning things about it. 00:20:41.540 --> 00:20:46.110 The questions that we had at the start -- with --- we were answering and the other really 00:20:46.110 --> 00:20:51.100 exciting thing was that what we were doing did have application elsewhere. 00:20:51.100 --> 00:20:56.730 Uhm, at the time I was working in Yellowstone, this wasn't my only job, I was doing experimental 00:20:56.730 --> 00:21:04.070 work first in Washington and then here and at the same time I was greatly involved with 00:21:04.070 --> 00:21:12.810 developing methods to do exploration for geothermal energy resources elsewhere and also ways of 00:21:12.810 --> 00:21:19.380 helping produce geothermal resources so that they knew what was going on. 00:21:19.380 --> 00:21:26.690 So I was going back and forth from what I could learn from drilling in geothermal systems 00:21:26.690 --> 00:21:33.220 around the world to Yellowstone and, so this was exciting to do. 00:21:33.220 --> 00:21:37.950 What was unusual about the frilling operation in Yellowstone? 00:21:37.950 --> 00:21:43.360 Well ah, that was not considered that interesting. 00:21:43.360 --> 00:21:45.550 The economics are at greater depths. 00:21:45.550 --> 00:21:49.480 You would, at that time, --- you wanted to have at least 200 degrees Celsius. 00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:52.320 Today, they're working at much lower temperatures. 00:21:52.320 --> 00:21:57.020 But then 200 degrees to 240 were kind of optimum. 00:21:57.020 --> 00:22:02.130 They were going deep enough to get much higher temperatures, but when you drill the well, 00:22:02.130 --> 00:22:06.040 it was very expensive and to stop and do any kind of measurements in the shallow part of 00:22:06.040 --> 00:22:08.910 the system wasn't considered economic at that time. 00:22:08.910 --> 00:22:13.080 And they were also using very big drills and lots of water. 00:22:13.080 --> 00:22:16.710 So they were cooling things down, you couldn't get good temperatures in the near surface. 00:22:16.710 --> 00:22:18.870 You certainly couldn't measure pressures. 00:22:18.870 --> 00:22:23.490 So they would punch right through the shallow zone that we were interested in and go for 00:22:23.490 --> 00:22:26.780 the deep stuff and then case it off. 00:22:26.780 --> 00:22:34.400 Describe capping the well that was shown years ago on CNN, I was key to that. 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:35.450 OK. 00:22:35.450 --> 00:22:39.970 Ah, we put in the wells. 00:22:39.970 --> 00:22:48.280 We finished them such that the valve at the top was at below ground surface. 00:22:48.280 --> 00:22:55.900 There was a cement cellar put around it with a steel door on the top. 00:22:55.900 --> 00:23:03.770 The idea was and the actuality was we kept going back to these wells over time and measuring 00:23:03.770 --> 00:23:09.200 temperatures and pressures and sampling fluids and gases from them because with time our 00:23:09.200 --> 00:23:12.610 ability to analyze things got better and better. 00:23:12.610 --> 00:23:18.000 And people from other parts of the world came and they had other interests and different 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.460 constituents and so we could give them samples. 00:23:21.460 --> 00:23:31.750 Uhm, but with time, there were a certain amount of leakages of gases containing hydrogen sulfide 00:23:31.750 --> 00:23:36.110 and some of these wells began to be attacked a little bit. 00:23:36.110 --> 00:23:39.600 And one by one we cemented them up. 00:23:39.600 --> 00:23:54.690 The Y-8 well was still open and the amount of alteration increased there and it failed. 00:23:54.690 --> 00:23:59.460 Actually the valve at the top was blown off. 00:23:59.460 --> 00:24:07.620 This was within this locked cement cellar. 00:24:07.620 --> 00:24:13.010 So in late November it happened. 00:24:13.010 --> 00:24:14.610 And so we got ah... 00:24:14.610 --> 00:24:17.310 Speaker 2: What year are we in? 00:24:17.310 --> 00:24:18.310 Robert Fournier: We were in '80... 00:24:18.310 --> 00:24:19.310 Speaker 2: '90. 00:24:19.310 --> 00:24:21.550 Robert Fournier: '90, 92, 90 somewhere in there. 00:24:21.550 --> 00:24:23.430 Speaker 2: '92 I think. 00:24:23.430 --> 00:24:36.680 Robert Fournier: Ah, so uhm, I got a call that, well that morning, from Rick Hutchinson, 00:24:36.680 --> 00:24:39.780 and said we have a problem I need you up here. 00:24:39.780 --> 00:24:44.590 And so I was up there that night. 00:24:44.590 --> 00:24:48.360 And ah, yeah it obviously failed so uhm... 00:24:48.360 --> 00:24:50.560 Speaker 2: What did you see when you got there? 00:24:50.560 --> 00:24:56.350 Robert Fournier: Well I saw a huge amount of water and steam blasting out like a jet 00:24:56.350 --> 00:25:00.520 engine from underneath this lock thing. 00:25:00.520 --> 00:25:08.721 So I met with the superintendent of the park and I assured them that the USGS will fix 00:25:08.721 --> 00:25:13.110 it and we would pay for it. 00:25:13.110 --> 00:25:18.310 I did get a commitment from the park service that they would do the, put up the, ah, do 00:25:18.310 --> 00:25:21.950 it without bids, essentially. 00:25:21.950 --> 00:25:28.820 So I went back to Menlo Park through my contacts at the Geothermal Energy Industry. 00:25:28.820 --> 00:25:37.430 I knew that there had been a problem with a slim hole like we had in Honduras, and so 00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:41.090 it was a hole drilled by a United Nations exploration. 00:25:41.090 --> 00:25:46.480 So I found out what driller had taken care of that problem. 00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:49.650 And he was actually operating out of Salt Lake City. 00:25:49.650 --> 00:25:55.180 I contacted that driller and told him the situation and asked if he would be interested 00:25:55.180 --> 00:25:59.180 in participating and whether that he had drill rig available. 00:25:59.180 --> 00:26:06.020 He was, and they did, and he also had a drill foreman that was in Idaho at that time. 00:26:06.020 --> 00:26:10.440 So the very next day, he had his foreman into Yellowstone. 00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:18.100 They used a forklift to hold the pressure -- the lid down on this pressurized cellar, 00:26:18.100 --> 00:26:26.300 undid the lock, backed off the forklift and the steam blew out like a geyser, and they 00:26:26.300 --> 00:26:31.760 were able to see that the valve had blown off. 00:26:31.760 --> 00:26:39.700 Measurements were made of exactly where the pipe was within the cellar, then with the 00:26:39.700 --> 00:26:43.220 forklift closed it up again put the lock on. 00:26:43.220 --> 00:26:53.190 So with that information, that week over the phone with the driller, we designed a piece 00:26:53.190 --> 00:26:58.600 of equipment that we thought we could force down over this erupting column, actually it 00:26:58.600 --> 00:27:05.930 was a pipe with a couple of valves on it and we wanted to lower this onto the erupting 00:27:05.930 --> 00:27:06.980 column. 00:27:06.980 --> 00:27:13.510 My peculiar major contribution was calculating what the thrust was of the fluid coming out 00:27:13.510 --> 00:27:16.790 of that well because I knew how deep the well was. 00:27:16.790 --> 00:27:22.880 I'd made pressure measurements in it, so forth, so I knew how much weight we needed on this 00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:24.580 equipment. 00:27:24.580 --> 00:27:28.520 So it was designed within a few days. 00:27:28.520 --> 00:27:34.630 We started fabrication before we even had a contract to do it. 00:27:34.630 --> 00:27:40.810 Just went ahead with it and above then I contacted the director of the survey and said, we've 00:27:40.810 --> 00:27:43.460 got to pay for this. 00:27:43.460 --> 00:27:45.170 So he decided, yes we had to do it. 00:27:45.170 --> 00:27:47.340 So anyway we went forward with it. 00:27:47.340 --> 00:27:54.800 Two weeks later, the equipment arrived on site ready to go with the CNN; well actually 00:27:54.800 --> 00:27:59.430 it was another local TV organization that sold footage to CNN. 00:27:59.430 --> 00:28:06.780 Anyway we were being put on TV as we put this thing together. 00:28:06.780 --> 00:28:11.130 So we had the drill rig there, we had the new material there. 00:28:11.130 --> 00:28:14.380 We opened up the top, the thing erupted. 00:28:14.380 --> 00:28:18.610 We moved the new wellhead equipment over it. 00:28:18.610 --> 00:28:23.940 It came down through this erupting column, -- stopped the thing up. 00:28:23.940 --> 00:28:29.110 Then we had to go into the well with drill rods, cleaned it out because some silica deposited 00:28:29.110 --> 00:28:32.000 in there; come in with the packer. 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.290 Everything worked exactly as planned. 00:28:34.290 --> 00:28:35.290 We filled it up. 00:28:35.290 --> 00:28:40.390 Also, and another thing, we had to do this so as not to interfere with the small geyser 00:28:40.390 --> 00:28:43.190 that was a few yards away. 00:28:43.190 --> 00:28:50.180 We had intersected the channel bringing the water to the geyser during the drilling so 00:28:50.180 --> 00:28:55.670 that we knew that we were in that channel of up-flow for the geyser and we dare not 00:28:55.670 --> 00:28:59.040 stop that geyser by cementing up its tube or Channel. 00:28:59.040 --> 00:29:08.630 So we pumped in just enough concrete to fill up the hole without effecting the geyser and 00:29:08.630 --> 00:29:11.720 it's ah, doing fine. 00:29:11.720 --> 00:29:17.260 Go ahead and add to what you were saying It was very important that we get this well 00:29:17.260 --> 00:29:24.570 Y-8 under control very quickly because the park service was closed temporarily while 00:29:24.570 --> 00:29:27.972 there was a transition between the summer period and the winter period. 00:29:27.972 --> 00:29:33.100 In the winder period they had to bring snow coaches in over snow with people. 00:29:33.100 --> 00:29:37.740 And so after certain point the park service could no longer plow the roads. 00:29:37.740 --> 00:29:39.670 They had to let snow accumulate. 00:29:39.670 --> 00:29:42.240 And that point was very rapidly approaching. 00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:47.850 So we had to get this thing capped before the winter season came on because if the roads 00:29:47.850 --> 00:29:50.540 got covered with snow, we couldn't bring in the rig and so on. 00:29:50.540 --> 00:29:55.610 So we had a very small period of time to do this, which we did. 00:29:55.610 --> 00:30:00.440 We got it done about two or three days before a major snowstorm was to come through. 00:30:00.440 --> 00:30:07.440 The second thing is that we had budgeted $25000 to do this repair, which was a princely sum 00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:08.440 then. 00:30:08.440 --> 00:30:10.310 We did it for $22000. 00:30:10.310 --> 00:30:13.980 So we came through on time under budget. 00:30:13.980 --> 00:30:17.050 What about concerns about down hole pressure? 00:30:17.050 --> 00:30:21.780 When we first started into the park, our background was the pioneering work that Don White had 00:30:21.780 --> 00:30:24.010 done at Steamboat Springs. 00:30:24.010 --> 00:30:28.530 And at Steamboat he'd found that by putting cold water into the well he could more than 00:30:28.530 --> 00:30:33.870 balance the pressures that the, was heavier than the weight of the hot water and so he 00:30:33.870 --> 00:30:39.180 could control the wells very easily by just putting in cold water. 00:30:39.180 --> 00:30:41.720 Came the first well that was drilled in Yellowstone. 00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:45.370 I wasn't on that well but I heard an awful lot of it and I was very interested because 00:30:45.370 --> 00:30:49.710 I was going to have to go and sit on some of the wells afterwards. 00:30:49.710 --> 00:30:56.350 Well they were down a certain depth and when you drill the, --- when you pull the drill 00:30:56.350 --> 00:31:00.370 rods, you're open to the pressures underneath there. 00:31:00.370 --> 00:31:06.520 Well they had filled water, ---- the well with cold water and were pulling the rods 00:31:06.520 --> 00:31:12.400 and suddenly the well went into eruption, unexpectedly. 00:31:12.400 --> 00:31:18.030 Well the drillers departed the drill rig very quickly, and so there it was the erupting 00:31:18.030 --> 00:31:21.850 well, Patrick Muffler, Don White. 00:31:21.850 --> 00:31:31.460 ---- Patrick climbed back up on this well that was erupting and began to maneuver the 00:31:31.460 --> 00:31:36.679 machinery around to such a point that he could get cold water coming back into the system 00:31:36.679 --> 00:31:38.980 and get the well back under control. 00:31:38.980 --> 00:31:43.080 At which point the drillers rather sheepishly I'm told came back on to the drill rig and 00:31:43.080 --> 00:31:47.590 took it from there. 00:31:47.590 --> 00:31:53.590 After that, the drillers I believe had a lot more respect for the geologists involved. 00:31:53.590 --> 00:32:02.740 Now, because we found that the underground pressures, fluid pressures underground ---- were 00:32:02.740 --> 00:32:08.950 controlled not by the weight of the overlying column of hot water but were controlled by 00:32:08.950 --> 00:32:12.350 the weight of the cold water going into the system. 00:32:12.350 --> 00:32:23.940 We found that all of the hot spring basins were very much, uhm, subject to erupting very 00:32:23.940 --> 00:32:28.240 easily, hydrothermal eruptions and others because there were, there were here, you know, 00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:30.890 really ready to go. 00:32:30.890 --> 00:32:37.470 So this also, --- our drilling showed us that the conditions in the Upper Geyser basin and 00:32:37.470 --> 00:32:43.710 parts of the Lower Basin were optimum for sustaining long lived hot spring activity 00:32:43.710 --> 00:32:45.770 and Geyser activity. 00:32:45.770 --> 00:32:52.840 My silica information showed that the temperature at upper basin was optimum for not depositing 00:32:52.840 --> 00:32:58.640 amorphous silica as the natural waters flowed from depth to the surface. 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:03.870 That the silica would not deposit as amorphous silica until after it reached the surface. 00:33:03.870 --> 00:33:08.150 This meant that the system was to remain relatively open. 00:33:08.150 --> 00:33:11.550 Other minerals might deposit but it wasn't silica, which was the main mineral. 00:33:11.550 --> 00:33:16.890 So we had one, the temperatures are appropriate for not stopping up the system. 00:33:16.890 --> 00:33:22.840 And two they had enough energy to give the big Geyser eruptions that we see right now. 00:33:22.840 --> 00:33:30.030 So it really explains why Yellowstone is, why we see it as a premiere place in the world 00:33:30.030 --> 00:33:32.730 for Geyser activity. 00:33:32.730 --> 00:33:34.390 How does it compare to New Zealand? 00:33:34.390 --> 00:33:39.580 Uhm, New Zealand, it, it compares --- the situation as quite similar to New Zealand. 00:33:39.580 --> 00:33:43.830 We don't know as much about the deep part of this --- at least I don't know as much 00:33:43.830 --> 00:33:48.500 about the deep part of the system in New Zealand as they have a series of calderas. 00:33:48.500 --> 00:33:53.080 They have a series of hot spring systems. 00:33:53.080 --> 00:34:00.100 Many of them are producing from reservoirs, --- source areas for the springs that are 00:34:00.100 --> 00:34:06.480 about 200 to 240.The geothermal energy production mostly is coming from around 240, now it's 00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:11.149 going up to around 300 degrees and so, ah, yeah. 00:34:11.149 --> 00:34:17.700 But the Yellowstone system was much bigger and what you need to keep the hot spring system 00:34:17.700 --> 00:34:24.369 going at Yellowstone are one, a very, very large heat source. 00:34:24.369 --> 00:34:31.739 You need a source of recharged water, which is a big snowfall that we get at Yellowstone, 00:34:31.739 --> 00:34:33.269 which we don't get at New Zealand. 00:34:33.269 --> 00:34:38.349 So we have a continuous source of water going on there as the snow melts during the season. 00:34:38.349 --> 00:34:42.830 And we have a lot of seismic activity, which keeps the system open. 00:34:42.830 --> 00:34:48.359 So that if it gets stopped up by mineral deposition, which it does at deeper parts, this seismic 00:34:48.359 --> 00:34:50.609 activity opens it up again. 00:34:50.609 --> 00:34:57.339 New Zealand has seismic activity but it wasn't as seismically active to my knowledge as Yellowstone. 00:34:57.339 --> 00:35:02.720 I still go to the web to look at how much seismic activity there is in New Zealand and 00:35:02.720 --> 00:35:07.099 elsewhere and it just doesn't have as much and it certainly doesn't have the year-round 00:35:07.099 --> 00:35:11.809 source of recharge water, and a huge amount of recharge water that Yellowstone has. 00:35:11.809 --> 00:35:17.720 And it may or may not have as high a temperature underground as Yellowstone has. 00:35:17.720 --> 00:35:21.750 How has the concept of the heat source changed over time? 00:35:21.750 --> 00:35:24.460 It’s evolving. 00:35:24.460 --> 00:35:29.489 And different people have different thoughts about what the heat source is and how it's 00:35:29.489 --> 00:35:30.489 evolving. 00:35:30.489 --> 00:35:36.049 When I first started working at the Yellowstone, we knew that it was volcanic. 00:35:36.049 --> 00:35:41.239 Ah, even though I had met Joe Boyd as a grad, he was a grad student. 00:35:41.239 --> 00:35:42.339 I was an undergrad student. 00:35:42.339 --> 00:35:43.750 I had met him there. 00:35:43.750 --> 00:35:47.790 He was working at the Geophysical Laboratory when I went to Washington DC. 00:35:47.790 --> 00:35:50.829 I knew him mostly as an experimentalist. 00:35:50.829 --> 00:35:54.220 I didn't really appreciate what he'd done in Yellowstone. 00:35:54.220 --> 00:35:58.309 So when I got to Yellowstone, we knew it was volcanic, we knew that there was heat down 00:35:58.309 --> 00:36:03.549 there but we weren't even sure whether or not there was any magma left down there. 00:36:03.549 --> 00:36:08.519 And so then it was through association with Chris that suddenly the whole concept of what 00:36:08.519 --> 00:36:12.239 was going on came into focus. 00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:19.980 Very early on, the thought was that we had magma underlying the Yellowstone caldera at 00:36:19.980 --> 00:36:22.510 fairly shallow depth. 00:36:22.510 --> 00:36:24.569 Underneath the whole darned caldera. 00:36:24.569 --> 00:36:28.359 And that was the working model he had going for. 00:36:28.359 --> 00:36:33.619 Then I got interested in how deep the water might be going and so I teamed up with Mitch 00:36:33.619 --> 00:36:40.060 Pitt here, seismologist, and we began to look at how deep the earthquakes were. 00:36:40.060 --> 00:36:45.000 At the same time, Bob Smith at Utah was doing very similar work. 00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:52.029 And so, anyway, uhm, looking at very precise locations, Mitch and I determined that seismicity 00:36:52.029 --> 00:36:58.599 was only occurring within the caldera to a depth of about four to five kilometers with 00:36:58.599 --> 00:37:01.280 then best data we had available. 00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:07.079 So I reasoned that the water could not be going into the ground any deeper from the 00:37:07.079 --> 00:37:10.859 recharge then there's where there’s seismic activity to keep things open. 00:37:10.859 --> 00:37:14.819 So this put a depth of circulation on the hydrothermal system of about four to five 00:37:14.819 --> 00:37:15.930 kilometers. 00:37:15.930 --> 00:37:23.849 So this then gave us a baseline to a look at a hydrothermal system with mostly pretty 00:37:23.849 --> 00:37:30.410 much shallow recharged by meteoric water, and it was kept open by seismic activity that 00:37:30.410 --> 00:37:33.400 only extended down to about four to five kilometers. 00:37:33.400 --> 00:37:36.829 Could you just continue on that topic? 00:37:36.829 --> 00:37:44.500 We were, we were concerned about why there was a difference between what Don White had 00:37:44.500 --> 00:37:49.499 found at Steamboat Springs Nevada and what we had found in Yellowstone. 00:37:49.499 --> 00:37:54.309 I can only speculate about Steamboat because I have not worked there. 00:37:54.309 --> 00:37:59.160 Steamboat was coming out pretty much of a granitic system. 00:37:59.160 --> 00:38:07.540 Ah, it was not experiencing a great amount of seismic activity to keep things open. 00:38:07.540 --> 00:38:17.720 It was also close to some major faults between the basin and range and the block of rock, 00:38:17.720 --> 00:38:19.920 which shows us here in Nevada Mountains. 00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:27.440 I can only speculate that the early seismicity that opened up the hydrothermal system at 00:38:27.440 --> 00:38:32.920 Yellowstone or rather at Steamboat Springs had opened up fractures in the rock but the 00:38:32.920 --> 00:38:40.059 system was not so hot that there was a lot of movement of really hot waters from underground 00:38:40.059 --> 00:38:42.039 to the shallow part of the system. 00:38:42.039 --> 00:38:48.130 So that hot water wasn't getting much hotter than about 200 to 210-20 degrees Celsius at 00:38:48.130 --> 00:38:52.319 Steamboat so it wasn't picking up enough silica to stop things up. 00:38:52.319 --> 00:38:58.039 So even though the seismicity may have occurred a long time previously, it was remaining open. 00:38:58.039 --> 00:39:05.880 And so for that reason, the water was able to get out of the system fairly readily without 00:39:05.880 --> 00:39:07.819 depositing a lot of silica. 00:39:07.819 --> 00:39:11.980 200 degrees, very little silica is going to come out on the way up. 00:39:11.980 --> 00:39:21.549 So the pressures in the up flow zones were controlled by the weight of the overlying 00:39:21.549 --> 00:39:25.690 hot boiling water not by the weight of the recharge water. 00:39:25.690 --> 00:39:31.670 And this is saying that the permeability of the recharge water was relatively restricted 00:39:31.670 --> 00:39:37.109 whereas the permeability along the flow path of the discharge water was really wide open. 00:39:37.109 --> 00:39:40.000 At Yellowstone it was just the reverse. 00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:45.150 The permeability and the recharge path would be kept open by deep seismicity, which was 00:39:45.150 --> 00:39:51.200 opening up things and the large amount of silica in the water was stopping up flow out 00:39:51.200 --> 00:39:56.529 of the system so that we had the reverse going on. 00:39:56.529 --> 00:39:59.730 What was the difference between steamboat and Yellowstone? 00:39:59.730 --> 00:40:06.309 Ah, a major difference between the hot spring system at Steamboat Springs, Nevada and Yellowstone 00:40:06.309 --> 00:40:10.779 is that Yellowstone is a much hotter system at depth. 00:40:10.779 --> 00:40:16.269 The drilling that has gone on at Steamboat Springs, the water that is being produced 00:40:16.269 --> 00:40:23.339 for geothermal energy is coming from source areas, which are only around 200-210 degrees, 00:40:23.339 --> 00:40:25.109 something like that. 00:40:25.109 --> 00:40:29.519 And at these relatively low temperatures, there's very little material that is deposited 00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:32.500 on the discharge part of the system. 00:40:32.500 --> 00:40:39.210 At Yellowstone, we had much, much higher temperatures the water is deep, deep flowing waters there 00:40:39.210 --> 00:40:43.619 dissolve a lot more material and they begin to deposit that material as the water flows 00:40:43.619 --> 00:40:44.980 toward the surface. 00:40:44.980 --> 00:40:47.249 So things get very much stopped up. 00:40:47.249 --> 00:40:53.980 You're kind of putting a stopper or at least you're putting a, like a faucet on your water 00:40:53.980 --> 00:40:56.229 system. 00:40:56.229 --> 00:41:00.410 You have high pressures in your household water system because people have valves to 00:41:00.410 --> 00:41:05.809 close it off and so at some point you have the source area for your water, which is way 00:41:05.809 --> 00:41:09.700 off in some kind of a holding area and it flows underground and water pressures are 00:41:09.700 --> 00:41:13.170 kept high because the source area pressure is high. 00:41:13.170 --> 00:41:18.040 At Steamboat it's as if everybody opened up their valve at the same time at the surface 00:41:18.040 --> 00:41:21.220 and so water pressures are dropped. 00:41:21.220 --> 00:41:32.220 Don White ah, as Patrick noted was one of the great icons. 00:41:32.220 --> 00:41:34.200 He had studied Steamboat Springs. 00:41:34.200 --> 00:41:40.559 He had studied what was going on at the shallow part of the system. 00:41:40.559 --> 00:41:48.210 He was very, very generous with his time and his comments and so on. 00:41:48.210 --> 00:41:55.599 Uhm, he was very, very generous in coming with me to Yellowstone. 00:41:55.599 --> 00:42:00.690 And then when we were in Yellowstone working most of the time, Don would be on a well and 00:42:00.690 --> 00:42:04.319 I'd be back in Menlo Park and we'd switch places. 00:42:04.319 --> 00:42:07.170 So I wasn't with him in the field very much. 00:42:07.170 --> 00:42:10.650 But we argued a lot about what was going on. 00:42:10.650 --> 00:42:18.720 And Don most of the time was right. 00:42:18.720 --> 00:42:25.630 And uhm, Don would stick to his beliefs until he was convinced that your arguments were 00:42:25.630 --> 00:42:26.809 sound. 00:42:26.809 --> 00:42:33.550 And as soon as he determined that your arguments were sound, he was very good about saying, 00:42:33.550 --> 00:42:39.119 OK you are right and very graciously, he would say, go ahead with what you're doing. 00:42:39.119 --> 00:42:41.410 And so he was great to work with. 00:42:41.410 --> 00:42:50.180 He made you really be clear about your ideas and then if you are right, he'd say fine. 00:42:50.180 --> 00:42:54.039 If you weren't right, go back to the drawing boards. 00:42:54.039 --> 00:43:01.210 Don was just a really good scientist and a great scholar and a marvelous gentleman. 00:43:01.210 --> 00:43:03.150 Marvelous to work with. 00:43:03.150 --> 00:43:10.529 Describe collaborating during fieldwork Before Chris started to work in the park, 00:43:10.529 --> 00:43:18.130 Chris looked at all the maps, looked at the topography and drew out what he thought was 00:43:18.130 --> 00:43:19.529 going to happen. 00:43:19.529 --> 00:43:23.910 And so then talking with him in the park, we would sit down and he would sort of turn 00:43:23.910 --> 00:43:24.910 page and say, hey it is. 00:43:24.910 --> 00:43:27.022 You know this is the way it is. 00:43:27.022 --> 00:43:30.200 This is the way we thought it should be and it is the way it should be. 00:43:30.200 --> 00:43:35.160 And uhm, of course I was working in a field entirely different than Chris. 00:43:35.160 --> 00:43:42.390 Chris was doing the geology and I was working on, on the waters and so, but we had a very 00:43:42.390 --> 00:43:44.700 diverse group of people working in the park. 00:43:44.700 --> 00:43:47.609 Chris was doing the geology, which was marvelous. 00:43:47.609 --> 00:43:50.960 Don was sort of an overseer of things. 00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:54.809 Eventually working in the park, we had geophysicists come in. 00:43:54.809 --> 00:44:02.660 We had people working on the glacial picture. 00:44:02.660 --> 00:44:05.809 So Jerry Richmond was with I'm most had. 00:44:05.809 --> 00:44:10.029 And so it was just every day, we were learning something new and we're talking to each other 00:44:10.029 --> 00:44:12.109 at night about what we'd found. 00:44:12.109 --> 00:44:21.849 And it was just very marvelous to have all of this enthusiasm going on at the same time. 00:44:21.849 --> 00:44:25.380 Did you work with Ken Pierce? 00:44:25.380 --> 00:44:26.690 I know Ken. 00:44:26.690 --> 00:44:31.660 Ken didn't have any direct contact in the park during those early years. 00:44:31.660 --> 00:44:37.869 I've had more contact with Ken since then and I'm very, very impressed with what Ken 00:44:37.869 --> 00:44:43.820 was doing and then of course when I was interested in what the fluid inclusion data were telling 00:44:43.820 --> 00:44:48.910 us about hot temperatures, about seeing how well my estimates of how deep or how thick 00:44:48.910 --> 00:44:54.200 the ice would be according to what Ken would have to say and, and, ah, yes this was fine. 00:44:54.200 --> 00:45:02.710 And then also Ken became more interested in the caldera moving up and down, inflation-deflation 00:45:02.710 --> 00:45:08.470 and I became very, very interested in the deflation-inflation, ah, deflation-inflation 00:45:08.470 --> 00:45:12.190 part of the story and related that to hydrothermal activity. 00:45:12.190 --> 00:45:17.680 But that all was in the later years so not in the earlier years and so most of my activity 00:45:17.680 --> 00:45:25.039 with Ken had to do with ideas about movements of caldera up and down. 00:45:25.039 --> 00:45:29.690 What do you think of the previous portrayal of the Yellowstone story? 00:45:29.690 --> 00:45:38.130 When the people from the television group, it was an English group, that wanted to do 00:45:38.130 --> 00:45:44.029 the initial one, they approached the Park Service and asked somebody from the park Service 00:45:44.029 --> 00:45:46.470 to show them around the park when they're first writing the script. 00:45:46.470 --> 00:45:49.849 Ah, the park service suggested that they talk to me. 00:45:49.849 --> 00:45:55.859 I was going to be in the park about the same time they were at another meeting. 00:45:55.859 --> 00:46:03.009 And so I ended up showing the group, the producer and the writer, around Yellowstone to come 00:46:03.009 --> 00:46:04.809 up with the first storyline. 00:46:04.809 --> 00:46:09.220 I spent most of that time trying to talk them out of it but it was obvious they weren't 00:46:09.220 --> 00:46:12.170 going to talk, be talked out of it. 00:46:12.170 --> 00:46:17.910 So, yeah, I was involved with them there. 00:46:17.910 --> 00:46:26.509 I thought, in general, they did a pretty good job of saying, what would happen if you are 00:46:26.509 --> 00:46:31.359 willing to take their assumptions as being true. 00:46:31.359 --> 00:46:33.039 This I do not do. 00:46:33.039 --> 00:46:38.099 I disagree with their assumptions but for their assumptions, are pretty good. 00:46:38.099 --> 00:46:40.700 Any epiphanies during your career? 00:46:40.700 --> 00:46:49.890 In terms of whether I've made great discoveries while I was on a drill rig, uhm, the really 00:46:49.890 --> 00:46:53.029 great discoveries came with the first two wells that were drilled. 00:46:53.029 --> 00:46:55.500 And those were Don's and Patrick’s. 00:46:55.500 --> 00:47:03.920 And so, there were lots of moments where things happen but it isn't that I was in the field 00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:06.509 and suddenly realized that that something was there. 00:47:06.509 --> 00:47:14.640 A lot of my major feelings of breakthroughs actually didn't come in the field they came 00:47:14.640 --> 00:47:19.780 when I had time to reflect on what I've been doing in the field and so they came at other 00:47:19.780 --> 00:47:25.099 times but, I had a lot of really interesting times on drill rigs. 00:47:25.099 --> 00:47:34.940 One discovery we made ah, we uhm, were trying to drill with, against this fluid pressure 00:47:34.940 --> 00:47:40.640 underground and so one thing that was tried on the Y-3 drill hole and I think I misspoke 00:47:40.640 --> 00:47:44.710 earlier about saying that we drilled where the public could look at us and saying it 00:47:44.710 --> 00:47:45.880 was Y-5, no it's Y-3. 00:47:45.880 --> 00:47:56.480 Y-3 drill hole we started to use some mud to maintain this pressure. 00:47:56.480 --> 00:48:02.039 And in spite of the mud ---- went into eruption and so instead of having water, which cools 00:48:02.039 --> 00:48:06.029 down pretty rapidly by evaporation, mud stays hot very long. 00:48:06.029 --> 00:48:11.039 And so we were getting very hot sticky mud thrown over everything, the drill rig, the 00:48:11.039 --> 00:48:12.130 drillers, everything. 00:48:12.130 --> 00:48:14.109 And so we learned very quickly. 00:48:14.109 --> 00:48:17.869 It was a real breakthrough then that we didn't want to drill with mud. 00:48:17.869 --> 00:48:20.859 We want to strictly stay with hot water. 00:48:20.859 --> 00:48:24.539 So that was kind of interesting to do. 00:48:24.539 --> 00:48:34.719 Actually we were in a situation where we were trying to set the first major drill string. 00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:44.989 What we would do, we would drill about 10-15 feet, enough pipe in the ground to set a four-inch 00:48:44.989 --> 00:48:51.530 valve at the surface and then we would drill through the valve to about 100 feet to the 00:48:51.530 --> 00:48:56.249 point where we found our first solid rock and then try to put 100 feet of casing in 00:48:56.249 --> 00:49:03.290 the ground and so we were only at about ten feet of pipe in the well and it went into 00:49:03.290 --> 00:49:04.290 eruption. 00:49:04.290 --> 00:49:06.180 It was throwing stuff all over the place. 00:49:06.180 --> 00:49:10.701 And we had to get back into it to get our casing in. 00:49:10.701 --> 00:49:18.819 So we had to lower the casing pipe with chain rather than the usual way of from the top 00:49:18.819 --> 00:49:19.819 of the drill rig. 00:49:19.819 --> 00:49:25.230 We had a chain around it and we're lowering it in through this four-inch pipe hoping that 00:49:25.230 --> 00:49:30.790 it wouldn't fail with the whole thing erupting the whole time we were putting this pipe into 00:49:30.790 --> 00:49:32.150 the ground. 00:49:32.150 --> 00:49:37.270 And so that was, --- by then the mud was all gone so it was just hot water coming out. 00:49:37.270 --> 00:49:43.779 So that was a rather exciting time to try to get that pipe into the ground at a place 00:49:43.779 --> 00:49:47.150 where the public could see what we're doing. 00:49:47.150 --> 00:49:50.310 Speaker 2: Well there was a public watching all that? 00:49:50.310 --> 00:49:54.150 Robert Fournier: The public came through every morning... 00:49:54.150 --> 00:49:55.150 Speaker 2: Uhuh. 00:49:55.150 --> 00:50:02.390 Robert Fournier: ...with a guided tour because by then Patrick and Don 00:50:02.390 --> 00:50:06.410 Had told the park service about what Pocket Basin really was and we were drilling right 00:50:06.410 --> 00:50:08.380 on the side of pocket basin. 00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:12.201 So the park service had decided that they were going to hold a tour in the Pocket Basin 00:50:12.201 --> 00:50:15.160 to show people a hydrothermal explosion crater. 00:50:15.160 --> 00:50:21.460 So we were also right on a road, which was a side road, Fountain Flat road, but people 00:50:21.460 --> 00:50:27.470 were going around there and it was also a road the people like to go on to see game 00:50:27.470 --> 00:50:31.240 at night and so on. 00:50:31.240 --> 00:50:37.569 So yeah, people were coming by and so we had a big sign out saying USGS Danger, Stay Away 00:50:37.569 --> 00:50:38.759 and so on. 00:50:38.759 --> 00:50:43.470 And I think you have a picture of that, -- that has been given to you. 00:50:43.470 --> 00:50:47.160 So when the tour came around and when people came around to stop through. 00:50:47.160 --> 00:50:51.380 One of my main things was to talk to them about what we were doing. 00:50:51.380 --> 00:50:56.339 And very commonly their initial response was very hostile, what are you doing drilling 00:50:56.339 --> 00:50:57.799 in this park and so on. 00:50:57.799 --> 00:51:02.400 And by the time they learned what we were doing and why we were doing it and what we 00:51:02.400 --> 00:51:08.170 were learning, the response turned right around and people went away supportive. 00:51:08.170 --> 00:51:12.109 What are your personal feelings about Yellowstone? 00:51:12.109 --> 00:51:15.880 Well, it's been a very, very important part of my life. 00:51:15.880 --> 00:51:21.480 It's been a very important part of my scientific growing up. 00:51:21.480 --> 00:51:26.289 It has been a cornerstone of reality that I can keep on going back to. 00:51:26.289 --> 00:51:31.290 I suppose in part though, it isn't all in reality because there's an awful lot of supposition 00:51:31.290 --> 00:51:37.390 going on and it's been really interesting to me to watch new techniques come on in which 00:51:37.390 --> 00:51:43.920 we can learn more and it has taught me that I really have to keep on evolving what I think 00:51:43.920 --> 00:51:49.969 about things that early thoughts are fine but you have to keep looking at and reevaluating 00:51:49.969 --> 00:51:51.890 your data. 00:51:51.890 --> 00:51:53.869 And Yellowstone was always one of the cornerstones. 00:51:53.869 --> 00:51:59.509 I kept on working back and forth from Yellowstone to natural systems, other natural systems 00:51:59.509 --> 00:52:02.329 elsewhere in the world that I was working on. 00:52:02.329 --> 00:52:05.950 And so, and then you come to Yellow- love Yellowstone. 00:52:05.950 --> 00:52:10.790 Yellowstone was valuable to us scientifically because it had not been exploited and it's 00:52:10.790 --> 00:52:12.469 still has not been exploited. 00:52:12.469 --> 00:52:16.529 And so we can really see a system in its natural state. 00:52:16.529 --> 00:52:22.559 And that being able to look and study a system in its natural state such as Yellowstone is, 00:52:22.559 --> 00:52:24.920 it's unique. 00:52:24.920 --> 00:52:29.660 And then, you know, so many good memories about Yellowstone. 00:52:29.660 --> 00:52:32.119 I love going back. 00:52:32.119 --> 00:52:35.729 Describe memorable moments with the drilling in Yellowstone 00:52:35.729 --> 00:52:41.960 After being involved with the Y-3 eruption, I went and sat on Y-4, which was relatively 00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:45.680 uneventful, had some interesting things happened in it. 00:52:45.680 --> 00:52:54.599 Then I started the Y-5 drill hole that had the finding of the tuff, ash-flow tuff. 00:52:54.599 --> 00:53:02.549 Actually I cited the hole there and it was at a grizzly dump. 00:53:02.549 --> 00:53:13.200 We had again about ten feet of casing in the well and we're trying to set the 100 feet 00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:14.289 of casing. 00:53:14.289 --> 00:53:19.410 We're also drilling again very close to a naturally flowing hot spring as we were at 00:53:19.410 --> 00:53:22.400 the Y-3 one. 00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:28.900 And as the drillers were trying to get, drop the 100 feet of four-inch casing into the 00:53:28.900 --> 00:53:30.420 well it got stuck on the way. 00:53:30.420 --> 00:53:32.329 It got crooked. 00:53:32.329 --> 00:53:36.579 And the, it was only the driller and his helper and they were trying to lift a hundred feet 00:53:36.579 --> 00:53:43.069 of 4-inch casing themselves and weren't having much luck so I grabbed a big wrench and hopped 00:53:43.069 --> 00:53:48.259 up in the drill rig with them and the three of us lifted the 100-feet casing up. 00:53:48.259 --> 00:53:53.950 I felt something kind of go on my back and felt that I'd pulled a muscle or or something. 00:53:53.950 --> 00:53:57.020 And so we got the casing in. 00:53:57.020 --> 00:53:59.969 I was very much afraid that the well was starting to heat up. 00:53:59.969 --> 00:54:01.450 Hot water was coming out. 00:54:01.450 --> 00:54:06.789 I was afraid it was going to go into a major eruption and I didn't want another major eruption 00:54:06.789 --> 00:54:12.670 on our hands and I was afraid that we might lose the well because I wasn't sure how well 00:54:12.670 --> 00:54:17.479 cemented that first ten feet of casing was. 00:54:17.479 --> 00:54:21.739 So we had to get that well under control and so we got up there. 00:54:21.739 --> 00:54:26.829 I helped lift it and we got it down there and I have this thing going on my back. 00:54:26.829 --> 00:54:33.479 Fortunately the next day Patrick arrived to take over sitting on that well for me. 00:54:33.479 --> 00:54:39.509 So I was able to give it off to Patrick and then drove home. 00:54:39.509 --> 00:54:41.119 And I had some other things going on. 00:54:41.119 --> 00:54:48.049 My mother had just sold her house and was moving into a retirement and I had helped 00:54:48.049 --> 00:54:54.529 her move and had to do some other things and so, that was then about six months later that 00:54:54.529 --> 00:54:58.720 I went into a physical check-up and then told my doctor that I had had a back ache for the 00:54:58.720 --> 00:55:01.170 last four or five months. 00:55:01.170 --> 00:55:02.539 And so he said then let's x-ray it. 00:55:02.539 --> 00:55:07.319 And he found that I had two-step faults in my third lumbar vertebra. 00:55:07.319 --> 00:55:09.920 Speaker 2: So was it a broken back? 00:55:09.920 --> 00:55:10.920 Robert Fournier: A broken back, right. 00:55:10.920 --> 00:55:12.219 A broken back with two offset faults. 00:55:12.219 --> 00:55:16.019 [Laughter] Speaker 2: Has government fixed that for you? 00:55:16.019 --> 00:55:23.029 Robert Fournier: Well by then I was congratulated by my doctor for having saved myself six months 00:55:23.029 --> 00:55:24.029 in traction. 00:55:24.029 --> 00:55:25.029 Speaker 2: Oh. 00:55:25.029 --> 00:55:26.029 Because... 00:55:26.029 --> 00:55:28.309 Robert Fournier: It already healed itself. 00:55:28.309 --> 00:55:34.849 And so I, I haven't had any real problems with that until the last 15 years. 00:55:34.849 --> 00:55:37.530 Any run-ins with wild life you want to tell us about? 00:55:37.530 --> 00:55:43.599 Uhm, my branch chief came out to visit while I was working in the park and he came out 00:55:43.599 --> 00:55:50.020 with his wife who is also a geologist and their infant child, who was being carried 00:55:50.020 --> 00:56:00.769 on my branch chief's back, Pete Tollman, who had a false arm and hand. 00:56:00.769 --> 00:56:06.819 Anyway I was taking them to a fairly remote area to see a hot spring geyser that was out 00:56:06.819 --> 00:56:07.819 there. 00:56:07.819 --> 00:56:12.109 We were walking through a lodge pole pine forest and the lodge poles weren't very tall 00:56:12.109 --> 00:56:13.920 in that area. 00:56:13.920 --> 00:56:18.890 And as we were going I suddenly heard what was --- seemed to be a large animal move in 00:56:18.890 --> 00:56:20.650 front of us. 00:56:20.650 --> 00:56:27.500 And so I suggested, -- well we change direction and started off in that direction, and the 00:56:27.500 --> 00:56:33.059 next thing I knew was I saw this very large grizzly loping toward us. 00:56:33.059 --> 00:56:35.599 Ah, what to do? 00:56:35.599 --> 00:56:42.970 The trees are too small to climb and so my branch chief hadn't seen the bear yet and 00:56:42.970 --> 00:56:48.499 I said, oh there's a bear approaching would you turn around and walk away. 00:56:48.499 --> 00:56:54.319 I knew that it was impossible to run because you run and the bear might think we're game, 00:56:54.319 --> 00:56:55.680 no trees to climb. 00:56:55.680 --> 00:56:58.599 And so I had my geologic pick and so I had my pick. 00:56:58.599 --> 00:57:03.921 And I'd I sort of stood sideways and crouch down so as not to look imposing to the bear 00:57:03.921 --> 00:57:08.440 and I started talking to it, you great big beautiful bear and so on and it kept coming 00:57:08.440 --> 00:57:17.670 closer and closer and so finally it stopped, about 40-50 feet away. 00:57:17.670 --> 00:57:25.049 And it squinted and determined who we were and it turned around and walked away. 00:57:25.049 --> 00:57:30.150 Describe the first time you were in Yellowstone The first time I was in Yellowstone, my introduction 00:57:30.150 --> 00:57:31.150 to Yellowstone. 00:57:31.150 --> 00:57:34.219 It was in the fall, it was very cold. 00:57:34.219 --> 00:57:44.459 Julian Hemley and I we stopped at the Tower Falls Camp ground, cold rainy night, we were 00:57:44.459 --> 00:57:45.529 the only ones there. 00:57:45.529 --> 00:57:49.019 Julian and his wife and child slept in the car. 00:57:49.019 --> 00:57:56.089 I had a sleeping bag and tarp and I put it out in the campground and I put my sleeping 00:57:56.089 --> 00:57:59.900 bag on the tarp, tarp over me then. 00:57:59.900 --> 00:58:02.780 And so I was there all alone. 00:58:02.780 --> 00:58:08.299 In the middle of the night I felt this scratching on the middle of myself. 00:58:08.299 --> 00:58:17.440 And so I had a flashlight in my sleeping bag and so I pulled the sleeping bag away from 00:58:17.440 --> 00:58:24.740 my face and I looked up and there was this open-mouthed bear about four or five inches 00:58:24.740 --> 00:58:27.700 from my face. 00:58:27.700 --> 00:58:30.380 I had no idea what the intentions of the bear were. 00:58:30.380 --> 00:58:34.819 He's probably just curious but anyway when you see an open-mouthed bear that close to 00:58:34.819 --> 00:58:39.400 when you're kind of confined in your sleeping bag, you have various thoughts come through 00:58:39.400 --> 00:58:40.680 your mind. 00:58:40.680 --> 00:58:45.960 So I remembered that if you have a crocodile that's after you and it's going to eat you, 00:58:45.960 --> 00:58:48.279 you put a stick in his mouth. 00:58:48.279 --> 00:58:53.759 So I stuck my flashlight in the bear's mouth and it couldn't close it's mouth and so the 00:58:53.759 --> 00:58:58.029 bear ran off with my flashlight trying to get it out of its mouth and then I got out 00:58:58.029 --> 00:59:02.829 of the sleeping bag and ran out after the bear and it finally got the flashlight out 00:59:02.829 --> 00:59:07.310 of its mouth and I got my flashlight back and went to sleep for the rest of the night, 00:59:07.310 --> 00:59:08.310 sort of. 00:59:08.310 --> 00:59:10.960 Speaker 2: Was it a black bear or a grizzly? 00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:11.989 Robert Fournier: It was a black bear. 00:59:11.989 --> 00:59:13.109 Speaker 2: My goodness. 00:59:13.109 --> 00:59:22.940 Robert Fournier: I didn't know that when it had its mouth open though. 00:59:22.940 --> 00:59:30.210 END