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Climbing Stromboli
Apr. 20th, 2014 06:38 pmOne of our main reason for coming to the Aeolian islands was to have a chance to climb one of Europe's three still-active volcanoes, Stromboli. (The other two are Aetna, which we hope to visit later in our trip, and Vesuvius, which will have to wait for another trip.) So we booked a tour well in advance to ensure that we wouldn't miss the chance. Stromboli has been continuously active in recent years, but with only one major eruption in 2007 that threw rocks as large as 20 kilos more than 2 km, reaching the town at the base of the volcano.
The tour started with a boat ride of a couple hours just to reach Stromboli. The seas were fairly rough in the morning, creating a risk that the trip would be canceled, but had calmed down enough by noon that we just had a nice, gently rolling ride rather than an all-out rollercoaster. Shoshanna took seasickness meds beforehand, just in case, and once it became apparent that others were suffering from male di mare, offered some to several other very grateful passengers. I've never suffered from seasickness, possibly because I grew up spending my summers on a sailboat, but this is not any particular mark of virtue or courage; it's simply a fortunate bit of physiology. So what may be just a pleasant roll for me can be a "wish I were dead" experience for someone else. The initially inauspicious weather turned sunny, so we had a thoroughly delightful trip.
We stopped by a few impressive rocks that erupted from the sea along the way for a closeup look, and paused by one spot called the "boiling sea" because there's an ocean-floor vent that releases fumes and heat. Although we could smell the sulfur and see aquamarine patches amidst the deep blue created by the streaming bubbles, it was not possible to see the surface boiling because there was too much chop from the waves.
Our main stop about halfway through the trip was in Panarea, for lunch and a stroll before continuing to Stromboli. Panarea is a small and pleasant town that occupies all of the flat land around the port, and then sprawls uphill into any habitable patch of land. That seems to be a common pattern in the Aeolians, and most times when you approach one of the islands, you see a horizontal patch of homes along the sea, then one or more vertical strips running up the steep slopes. Sort of like an inverted T.
We had a gentle stroll uphill until we found a pleasant sunlit patch behind someone's garden for a picnic lunch. We'd picked up three huge paninis at a place called Gilberto e Vera's, and had one now, while reserving the other two for dinner on the volcano. Later, while we waited to get back on the boat, we stopped at a local café for a beer.
Stromboli seemed a bit different from the usual pattern, since I don't remember many homes far from the water. Our hosts marched us up to Magma Treks, the company that would lead the tour. There were about 25 of us in the tour group, and the usual assortment of cluefulness. We and a few others had actually read the instructions at the company's Web site, and came with full expedition gear, namely good hiking boots, Goretex jackets and rain pants, and quick-drying clothing. Others hadn't thought things through quite so well; there were people in running shoes or sandals and even the equivalent of slippers. Not being fools, the local tour companies have set up rental subsidiaries that lease boots, flashlights, etc., so there was a delay while everyone got kitted out with the bare necessities.
The lower slopes are fairly gentle, but it rapidly gets quite steep (45 degrees and sometimes more). Our guide, Mario, led us between the safe places to stop, telling us bits and pieces about the local ecology and volcanic history. Nothing special that you can't get from Wikipedia, so I won't repeat it here. There were many places where it was too steep to be safe to stop, so the rest breaks came at intervals of 100 to 300 metres, depending on where it was safe rather than on our state of fatigue. Sometimes that was enough, but as we got higher and as the slopes got steeper and less safe, it often became a breathless climb between safe resting places. But there were stops roughly every half hour. The footing was generally good, but once we left the belts of vegetation on the lower slopes, you emphatically could not walk and rubberneck; there were simply too many awkward bits and places where tripping or losing your balance would lead to a bad fall and possibly worse. One of the guys I'd been walking with told me that Mario had badly broken his leg 6 months earlier; details were not clear, but the implication was that it might have happened on a climb. Thus, apart from those rest stops when we had a moment to stop and look around, we had to constantly keep our eyes on our next step, and stop walking if we wanted to see what was around us. Those stops had to be brief to avoid forcing those in line behind us to get progressively farther from the front of the line.
Mario was in constant radio contact with the base camp and with other guides farther up the mountain, so I had a sense that things were being carefully monitored, and that if there had been any danger other than our own mis-steps, we'd have plenty of warning. Not that it would necessarily help much, since the path was too steep and rocky to permit a safe and rapid descent. As we got higher up, I saw many small monitoring instruments, so presumably someone is keeping close watch on the air quality and "listening" for unusually strong rumblings that might be a sign of something serious.
We all put on helmets for the final ascent, as protection against falling rocks. I suspect these were mostly useful in case someone higher up the slope dislodged a small stone, since the helmets would be useless against large rocks or lava bombs from the caldera. For some time, we had been hearing the venting of the two caldera; every ten or fifteen minutes, we'd hear a roaring noise that was like a jet aircraft taking off. It leaves a deep impression, because it sounds as if the mountain is a living, breathing thing. Which it very much is, in a way.
Like several of the previous stretches, the final ascent was not somewhere you could really ask the group to stop if you wanted to take a picture or shake sand from your boots (a steep and unstable slope of fine black sand), so we had to tough out the last couple hundred meters until we reached the shelters at the top. "Shelter" is something of a glorification of the actuality; the shelters are little more than a vertical wall with a narrow overhang to provide protection against the wind and, presumably against falling rocks should Stromboli choose to cast things at us. Everyone took a few moments to gaze down before armoring up, which was not optional, as there was a strong and chilly wind; at 950 metres above sea level, it was also about 10 degrees cooler than when we'd started out, and grew cooler still as the sun disappeared. I sweat abominably at the best of times, but the rigors of the hike had left me soaked. Having learned an important lesson about the risks of hypothermia several years ago during a hike in Yorkshire, I'd brought a complete change of clothing plus several additional layers, so I had clean, dry, warm clothing to change into.
We all broke out our dinners, and ate them standing, watching the two calderas. You can't see down into the bottom from the ridge that is as close as we were allowed to approach, but for the smaller vent, you can see several metres down below the rim. Mostly you see jets of steam laden with sulfur dioxide (which smells pleasantly like burning matches), but every now and then some lava splashes up onto the rim, and you can see it glowing as it cools. No pictures, unfortunately, since it's impossible to guess when lava will appear or how long it will stay, and you want to see this kind of thing with your own eyes rather than through a camera lens. We did have a spectacular sunset, so I have several good pictures, and we caught occasional glimpses of the islands we'd left behind and even of Aetna, so I have pictures of that too.
Mostly we just got steam, plus the impressive and deafening blasts of noise that preceded eruptions when the steam would cover the peak In a thick cloud that limited visibility to a couple dozen metres. The densest blasts caused much coughing across the peak, but it was never dense enough to be dangerous (something Mario kept mentioning, as if to reassure us); the wind is strong enough that the air is constantly being refreshed. We saw little lava, but our patience was rewarded by two particularly intense blasts of steam, accompanied by fireworks: lava blobs flung hundreds of metres into the air, like sparks from a campfire. Awesome.
Alas, our time on the peak was limited, both to ensure that nobody would freeze and to give other, newly arrived groups access to the shelters. So everyone lit up their flashlights, and we began our descent. This was, on the one hand, very cleverly designed: the path descended a gentler slope that was mostly deep volcanic sand, so it was like cross-country skiing, with long graceful, swooping, sliding steps and few rocks to trip over. On the other hand, it was steep and unstable enough that there was nowhere to stop, no wind, and nowhere to pause to remove layers. So I overheated all the way to the first stopping point, far below the top. By the time we got to the bottom, I was dying: my legs were so wobbly I had to stop several times to rest. Fortunately, I'd been training for several months beforehand, or I'd never have made it.
The boat ride home was pleasant enough, but there wasn't much to see. My thighs are still aching two days later as I write this!
The tour started with a boat ride of a couple hours just to reach Stromboli. The seas were fairly rough in the morning, creating a risk that the trip would be canceled, but had calmed down enough by noon that we just had a nice, gently rolling ride rather than an all-out rollercoaster. Shoshanna took seasickness meds beforehand, just in case, and once it became apparent that others were suffering from male di mare, offered some to several other very grateful passengers. I've never suffered from seasickness, possibly because I grew up spending my summers on a sailboat, but this is not any particular mark of virtue or courage; it's simply a fortunate bit of physiology. So what may be just a pleasant roll for me can be a "wish I were dead" experience for someone else. The initially inauspicious weather turned sunny, so we had a thoroughly delightful trip.
We stopped by a few impressive rocks that erupted from the sea along the way for a closeup look, and paused by one spot called the "boiling sea" because there's an ocean-floor vent that releases fumes and heat. Although we could smell the sulfur and see aquamarine patches amidst the deep blue created by the streaming bubbles, it was not possible to see the surface boiling because there was too much chop from the waves.
Our main stop about halfway through the trip was in Panarea, for lunch and a stroll before continuing to Stromboli. Panarea is a small and pleasant town that occupies all of the flat land around the port, and then sprawls uphill into any habitable patch of land. That seems to be a common pattern in the Aeolians, and most times when you approach one of the islands, you see a horizontal patch of homes along the sea, then one or more vertical strips running up the steep slopes. Sort of like an inverted T.
We had a gentle stroll uphill until we found a pleasant sunlit patch behind someone's garden for a picnic lunch. We'd picked up three huge paninis at a place called Gilberto e Vera's, and had one now, while reserving the other two for dinner on the volcano. Later, while we waited to get back on the boat, we stopped at a local café for a beer.
Stromboli seemed a bit different from the usual pattern, since I don't remember many homes far from the water. Our hosts marched us up to Magma Treks, the company that would lead the tour. There were about 25 of us in the tour group, and the usual assortment of cluefulness. We and a few others had actually read the instructions at the company's Web site, and came with full expedition gear, namely good hiking boots, Goretex jackets and rain pants, and quick-drying clothing. Others hadn't thought things through quite so well; there were people in running shoes or sandals and even the equivalent of slippers. Not being fools, the local tour companies have set up rental subsidiaries that lease boots, flashlights, etc., so there was a delay while everyone got kitted out with the bare necessities.
The lower slopes are fairly gentle, but it rapidly gets quite steep (45 degrees and sometimes more). Our guide, Mario, led us between the safe places to stop, telling us bits and pieces about the local ecology and volcanic history. Nothing special that you can't get from Wikipedia, so I won't repeat it here. There were many places where it was too steep to be safe to stop, so the rest breaks came at intervals of 100 to 300 metres, depending on where it was safe rather than on our state of fatigue. Sometimes that was enough, but as we got higher and as the slopes got steeper and less safe, it often became a breathless climb between safe resting places. But there were stops roughly every half hour. The footing was generally good, but once we left the belts of vegetation on the lower slopes, you emphatically could not walk and rubberneck; there were simply too many awkward bits and places where tripping or losing your balance would lead to a bad fall and possibly worse. One of the guys I'd been walking with told me that Mario had badly broken his leg 6 months earlier; details were not clear, but the implication was that it might have happened on a climb. Thus, apart from those rest stops when we had a moment to stop and look around, we had to constantly keep our eyes on our next step, and stop walking if we wanted to see what was around us. Those stops had to be brief to avoid forcing those in line behind us to get progressively farther from the front of the line.
Mario was in constant radio contact with the base camp and with other guides farther up the mountain, so I had a sense that things were being carefully monitored, and that if there had been any danger other than our own mis-steps, we'd have plenty of warning. Not that it would necessarily help much, since the path was too steep and rocky to permit a safe and rapid descent. As we got higher up, I saw many small monitoring instruments, so presumably someone is keeping close watch on the air quality and "listening" for unusually strong rumblings that might be a sign of something serious.
We all put on helmets for the final ascent, as protection against falling rocks. I suspect these were mostly useful in case someone higher up the slope dislodged a small stone, since the helmets would be useless against large rocks or lava bombs from the caldera. For some time, we had been hearing the venting of the two caldera; every ten or fifteen minutes, we'd hear a roaring noise that was like a jet aircraft taking off. It leaves a deep impression, because it sounds as if the mountain is a living, breathing thing. Which it very much is, in a way.
Like several of the previous stretches, the final ascent was not somewhere you could really ask the group to stop if you wanted to take a picture or shake sand from your boots (a steep and unstable slope of fine black sand), so we had to tough out the last couple hundred meters until we reached the shelters at the top. "Shelter" is something of a glorification of the actuality; the shelters are little more than a vertical wall with a narrow overhang to provide protection against the wind and, presumably against falling rocks should Stromboli choose to cast things at us. Everyone took a few moments to gaze down before armoring up, which was not optional, as there was a strong and chilly wind; at 950 metres above sea level, it was also about 10 degrees cooler than when we'd started out, and grew cooler still as the sun disappeared. I sweat abominably at the best of times, but the rigors of the hike had left me soaked. Having learned an important lesson about the risks of hypothermia several years ago during a hike in Yorkshire, I'd brought a complete change of clothing plus several additional layers, so I had clean, dry, warm clothing to change into.
We all broke out our dinners, and ate them standing, watching the two calderas. You can't see down into the bottom from the ridge that is as close as we were allowed to approach, but for the smaller vent, you can see several metres down below the rim. Mostly you see jets of steam laden with sulfur dioxide (which smells pleasantly like burning matches), but every now and then some lava splashes up onto the rim, and you can see it glowing as it cools. No pictures, unfortunately, since it's impossible to guess when lava will appear or how long it will stay, and you want to see this kind of thing with your own eyes rather than through a camera lens. We did have a spectacular sunset, so I have several good pictures, and we caught occasional glimpses of the islands we'd left behind and even of Aetna, so I have pictures of that too.
Mostly we just got steam, plus the impressive and deafening blasts of noise that preceded eruptions when the steam would cover the peak In a thick cloud that limited visibility to a couple dozen metres. The densest blasts caused much coughing across the peak, but it was never dense enough to be dangerous (something Mario kept mentioning, as if to reassure us); the wind is strong enough that the air is constantly being refreshed. We saw little lava, but our patience was rewarded by two particularly intense blasts of steam, accompanied by fireworks: lava blobs flung hundreds of metres into the air, like sparks from a campfire. Awesome.
Alas, our time on the peak was limited, both to ensure that nobody would freeze and to give other, newly arrived groups access to the shelters. So everyone lit up their flashlights, and we began our descent. This was, on the one hand, very cleverly designed: the path descended a gentler slope that was mostly deep volcanic sand, so it was like cross-country skiing, with long graceful, swooping, sliding steps and few rocks to trip over. On the other hand, it was steep and unstable enough that there was nowhere to stop, no wind, and nowhere to pause to remove layers. So I overheated all the way to the first stopping point, far below the top. By the time we got to the bottom, I was dying: my legs were so wobbly I had to stop several times to rest. Fortunately, I'd been training for several months beforehand, or I'd never have made it.
The boat ride home was pleasant enough, but there wasn't much to see. My thighs are still aching two days later as I write this!