Here we are, April, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, checking out the Tolbachik volcano erupting – on a long-weekend trip. It’s a long way to go for a long weekend, but for me and crew – it sure was worth it.
Straight to the (lava) chase…
Down fields of freshly cooled (black) lava here flow crackling (bright red) liquid lava streams around 10 meters (30 feet) in width. Sometimes the lava flows get blocked, forming red hot lava lakes. The lava is stodgy, viscous, cloggy, plodding and… awesome! Sometimes it comes up against large rocky growths and finds itself new channels to creep along. Other times it hides under an outer shell that has cooled, and then appears again out of its ‘tunnel’ on to the surface. The meandering red snakes of lava are really quite creepy (he, hey!) – how they form waterfalls here, form islands of black there… Then the red stuff rolls down further, where it thickens and congeals into freaky little hills, which themselves slowly continue to move down further, nudged on by new flows of lava.
The scene is just hypnotic; especially at night when the incandescent lava and red hot rocks are much brighter. Mostly black by day, at night the lava fields are crisscrossed with bright red rivers and studded with similarly bright red spots.