FEBRUARY, 2005
February 25, 2005
From town, it is about an hour to the Volcano, which you can summit in about 2 hours. The cool part of it is, you would never guess it would only take 2 hours. From the bottom it seems deceptively steep, like it would take 6-8 hours to climb. The distance looks similar to Mt St Helens from the base. The climb it intense, through a lot of very soft ash, but before you know it you´ve rounded the top to the cinder cone . . . which unbelievably was actually erupting huge quantities of ¨ hot liquid magma¨ 200 feet into the air no more than 60-70 feet from us. At first, we almost turned around and ran back down the volcano. However, you quickly realize that volcanos are by definition very predictable, and of course the flaming hot rocks would never deviate from their current trajectory. Plus, if other people are up there, it must be safe, right? Right . . . . . The descent was just as fun, but equally unsafe as our entire group of 30 people essentially ran/skiied down the ash. Once you got a rhythm going it felt like we were gliding down the mountain, or walking on the moon. A few people has some pretty funny wipe outs, but nothing major.
Anyhow, not sure how safe it all was, but to see a volcano erupt for 30 minutes straight from that close definitely felt like a once in a lifetime experience.
