part II

6.8.03

By the way back I heard the noises and recognised that I had passed this collapse. In the night time there were stronger ejections of the now far opened cone . Beside Little Etna was again active.

Old88 shows the dripping fancy of water-soluble material which created this drop stones. This bizzare and form rich world you can find in caves of old hornitos.

5.8.03: day One day with changing activity, Little Etna grew again over-steeply on picture old125 In the dusk we decided not to go to our last observation cone which was distanced 25m. Unaffected Tom Pfeiffer climbed up with the words: "a collapse doesn't will take place directly in the next time." Marco Fulle and I followed. Only a few minutes later after our arrival Little Etna began with violent lava ejection and a collaps of  the top under ejection of large lava quantities. We ran in view of the very impressive and frightenend scene with soft knees for our life. Afterwards we noticed that nothing would have happened but these eruptions are not harmless, because the ejections due to the very liquid lava ran down with a high speed and an avoiding in emergency would had been not possible.

5.8.03: Nacht

After this event the strong activity held on over hours with the constant overflowing of the now open laying lava lake inside the cone. Fig

6.8.03

This day brought little activity and hardly no ejection. . So we stood a long time in the camp. Only the cooking lava lake inside the side cone was to hear continiously. Everybody claimed that it wouldn't be impossible to climb the walls to see this lake because of the unstable ejecta forming this over steeply cone. 

Videoauszug bestof2, bestof 3,bestof 4

By having plenty of  time I decided to reach the top of the cone. After reaching the top succesfully I prepared a method to fix the camera at the long tripod for filming over the edge by beeing protected relatively. All in all it was nearly safe action because only small lava pieces left constantly the opening. Thus some lava-sea films could be made with only a minimum of wounds (lava fire wounds heal with this sodium carbonate lava unfortunately very badly!).

Because of the lacking activity in the last evening no one of us was motivated to stand up in the night and to experience with me the dawn in the active crater. Therefore I saw alone, that the lava lake at the side cone in the first morning hours overflowed and broke thru the lateral O-formed cone wall at one place. For the small Pahoehoe lava streams resulting from this breake thru I came unfortunately alittle too late, but I could observe phases with violent activity in deeply impressive hours, whereby the ejected lava let the new side crater grow in an unbelievable speed. This side crater united itself later again with the original cone. About this it was possible to come close to the happening up to few meters in a protected angle. With daybreak the change of the low-red glowing   lava turned itself into the black color, which this lava has during the day time.

7.8.03

     

    

Already in the late morning the ejection stopped and the side cone became suddenly completely inactive, in the evening nearly complete quiet (old fissure from which much lava poured one year ago (Big Lion)).

8.8.03

Only Little Etna showed sporadically small ejection.

Notice: The sodium carbonate lava at night is shining more weakly as silicate lava, and so far my knowledge is, this colored video filmings of such outbreaks are the first known. Available videos of nocturnal activity are rarities and only possible by the quality of video cameras with the todays highly sensitive CCD's

Go to

part I 

or second expedition

©photo & text by Martin Rietze, translation & design by Th. Boeckel, last modification 3.10.2003

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