Changing Faces - an encounter with Mt. Etna

Deep blue sky flashed in and out of view between churning clouds, racing above the snow-clad crown of Mount Etna's summit craters. Whiteout one second, crystal clear the next, urging us on, daring us to brave the bitter wind and drifts. Patience is a virtue, so the saying goes, and never more true than on a mountain, and if that mountain should also be a volcano?

For some, the compulsion to see these 'fire mountains' close up, will always triumph over common sense, or blind terror, or both. Had I been a religious man, I might even have said a silent prayer. But in truth, I am a firm believer in luck pure and simple, and as luck would have it the clouds began to lift, revealing the sweeping curves of Etna's southeast crater and, beyond, Bocca Nuova trailing bluish steam away towards the eastern horizon.

An hour later and several hundred meters higher, the clouds had returned concealing us as we climbed across steep snow-covered cinders. I had come because Etna was erupting, and as volcanoes go it's not far—less than three hours flying—from Britain's green and geologically passive isles. My companions however, could scarcely have come further. John Seach had come here from Australia, enticed by the prospect of seeing Etna performing up close. Apart from his usual job as a dietitian, he also wrote articles for the Smithsonian Institute's Global Volcanism Program. Accompanying John was Geoff Mackley; a cameraman from New Zealand who had a reputation for achieving extreme footage whatever the risks. He's even been known to tie himself to a building in order to film within a category five hurricane. I felt a little tame in comparison.

In the north-east of Sicily, Etna stands in the heart of the Mediterranean, but despite this warm locality, at well over 3000 metres Etna is shrouded in snow during the winter months. Unlike its Alpine cousins though, Etna sometimes has not one, but two snowlines. Why? Because Etna has central heating. Near the top, where alpine peaks are at their most frigid, Etna can often be bare and hot.

Bocca Nuova—as its name suggests—is the youngest of Etna's craters, all of which are active, but in recent weeks Bocca Nuova had eclipsed the others with a spectacular show of power and heat. Etna's lava can be amongst the hottest, over 1100°C and it was still hot so that as we neared its rim, sure enough, the snow gave way to damp ice, cinders, and ash streaked with ribbons of steam that hugged the ground in the driving wind. Every few seconds a muffled explosion, like distant artillery, echoed through the air. Some of the explosions were loud enough to stop us in our tracks. We stared into the blankness above, listening for any hint of rocks falling towards us. Less than a month before, showers of glowing lava had blanketed the whole area, puffed out of Etna like froth from a Champagne bottle. Bombs the size of car wheels lay contorted and fractured in shallow craters as a testament to the power of this giant de-corking—a testament and a warning.

My anxiety was growing in parallel with the explosions, yet something kept drawing me inexorably up. Perhaps it is the need to be different, to feel something other than the mundane, to see something that most only see from the comfort of their living rooms, maybe it was Freud's 'death instinct'. But whatever it was it had driven me to be here now. I was elated and terrified in a single moment.

The sulphur-stained lip of Bocca Nuova was foreboding and alien, as though I had somehow crossed an invisible frontier and was suddenly faced by the view of another world. The sounds of erupting lava and surging gas resounded through the air heralding an extraordinary sight. Bocca Nuova scarcely seemed to be a crater at all. Instead of a deep bowl—the shape a crater ought to be—there was hard black lava up to the brim. The previous month's eruption had completely filled the crater and overflowed down Etna's western slopes. A pair of coursing vents pierced the level rock like giant pressure valves, which, in a sense, is exactly what they were. Showers of molten lava cannoned out of one vent, firing hundreds of metres into the sky, sketching parabolas that ended abruptly as the glowing pieces fell to the ground. To our left the second vent roared as shrieking waves of gas surged out again and again. It seemed as if someone had sunk a rocket-engine, nozzle-up, amongst the cinders creating the largest Roman Candle in history. I was shaking with fear, certain that the mountain was about to explode beneath our feet. The reality of standing in the crater of an erupting volcano was daunting and I was suddenly struck with an uncontrollable need to leave and get as far away as possible—staying was madness. Hurriedly I made my excuses and retreated over the rim, away from the direct line of fire, away from danger.

The contrast as I walked those first few steps down the loose slope was incredible—in a brief moment my surroundings had flipped from an approximation of a battle field to an almost silent, snow-swept mountainside fringed by the sparkling lights of Catania glinting below. I had never been so close to an eruption and was elated yet torn; disappointed that I had run away, but relieved to be in one piece.

As I descended away from one light towards another, from the natural to the unnatural, I spent as much time looking back towards the crater as I did looking forwards. Showers of orange bombs were shooting into the night and some were even making it out of the crater, splashing onto the outer rim tumbling down the flanks before fading into the blackness. I barely knew the others having only met them a few hours earlier at the Torre del Filosofo—the highest Rifugio on Etna. Joined by a common goal we had climbed the crater together, but now I was worried that I might not have a chance to get to know them better at all. The explosions were definitely getting bigger, but as yet there was no sign of them beating a sensible retreat. Eventually, much to my relief I spotted two diamond points of torchlight trickling slowly away from the crater, the others were safe, but only just. Later I was to learn that they had nearly been hit by a metre wide bomb while filming a few metres from a vent.

The next morning was full of promise, air and sky clear as crystal. I had arranged to meet Geoff and John halfway up the volcano from the Rifugio Sapienza, at the deserted Rifugio Piccolo. In 1985, a fissure had split apart beneath the fated building in one of Etna's many flank eruptions. Miniature cones—known as hornitos—had quickly formed just above the rifugio spitting and spluttering and pouring forth lava. Remarkably, the building had stood against this molten tide, but only just, buckled and shattered it was now a monument to humanity's helplessness against the will of a volcano.

I arrived to find John sunning himself on the remnants of a porch, writing notes and enjoying the view down towards Catania and the coast beyond. The area lay strewn with fragments of glass and masonry, weathered timbers and decaying fixtures. Obviously the rifugio had been abandoned in a hurry, yet the chaos of that day was still palpable in the autumn air—ghosts trapped in time and cold rock. Etna holds countless relics of bygone lives, farmers, artisans, families, ordinary people born of the mountain that eventually entombs them all. The volcano had enticed generations of inhabitants to settle amongst its fertile slopes, rich land indeed, but at a price. Images abound of vineyards, houses and roads being consumed by one lava flow after another. In fact nowadays it is this very aspect of Etna's personality that draws people here in their thousands.

Convoys of coaches ship tourist here, many going no further than the Rifugio Sapienza and the huddle of café-cum-souvenir shops that stand below the cable-car station—visitors here for the obligatory photo and tacky memento. Many do continue on up to the foot of the summit cones, using the cable-car and oversized four-by-fours that ply the cinder tracks. During eruptions, guides lead eclectic groups to one lava flow or another where locals can sometimes be seen hooking lumps of molten lava from a flow, moulding the red hot rock into ashtrays with oversized pliers and a simple mould. It was Etna—yes—but it was Etna sanitised with little risk. I was a spectator too, but for me, the real pleasure in seeing a volcano only comes by climbing it on foot and definitely not amongst large crowds.

Bocca Nuova seemed strangely quiet as we paced our way along the slushy track that wound steeply, back and forth towards the Torre del Filosofo. Only the distant puffs of blue-white smoke trailing from the summit gave any hint of activity at all.

Etna's white shoulders shone in the lowering sun, but the wind was strengthening so that by the time we reached the upper slopes of Bocca Nuova I was frozen. At one point I had thawed myself in some steaming cinders above a femoral, which was wonderful. I could have stayed there all night wrapped in warm, loose lava without any risk of hypothermia—but Etna beckoned and soon my toes and hands were lost amongst a general numbness.

The final ascent was very steep, through cinders so thick that we had to wade our way up. The air was thick with fumes, making my head spin even more than it already was from the effort. With every step, the 45° slope gave way beneath my boots releasing puffs of steam, it was gruelling work, but at least I could feel my feet again.

As soon as we reached the top John took out a digital thermometer and stuck it in a crack streaming with hot gases—the digits quickly climbed to 150°C, which was to be expected—but on removal the reading quickly collapsed to -20° which was not at all expected. I knew the temperature had been dropping with the setting sun, but none of us had realised just how cold it really was. It was an odd mix of environments and elements: fire and ice, hot and cold, co-existing in the buffeting wind.

Incandescent lava was still etching gothic lines through the air as it had the previous day - twisting ribbons of orange that hung, seemingly motionless, before falling to build Etna's newest summit ever higher. In 1971 Bocca Nuova had been little more than a glowing hole in the side of the Cratere Centrale. The young vent soon grew though, fed by Etna's prodigious pluming so that now, thirty years on, Bocca Nuova stands high amongst its three elder siblings.

Strangely, Bocca Nuova's west vent had become almost silent, but it was far from inactive. A glowing fountain of ash and gas coursed fifty metres or more into the sky. The freezing wind played against the fountain, chilling it jet-black, as though oil had been struck and was gushing, uncapped from the smoking rock. I watched mesmerised as surge after surge of ruby-ash burst from the darkened mass, glowing in swirls that in turn became blackened themselves.

Geoff had wasted no time, setting his camera in front of a small mound of lava in a vain attempt to ease the camera shake caused by the gale at our backs. He was used to this kind of thing, but it was one of the most forbidding places I had ever tried to photograph. As if the intense cold wasn't bad enough, the wind also came armed with abrasive ash that threatened to penetrate every nook and cranny of my trusty Nikon. The ground blazed before us, while we shivered uncontrollably from the arctic conditions. Sicily: island of sun, sand, sea and... snow!

I decided to lie down amongst the lava that barely a week ago had been molten and flowing. The new rock was streaming with eye-watering gases that left a painful, acrid taste in my mouth. In fact it was only because of the wind that I was able to breathe at all. It was not much of a choice really, either stand and freeze to death or lie down and be gassed. I had travelled light, leaving my heavy tripod at the rifugio, which made lying on the ground to steady the camera on the lava a necessity; breathing would simply have to wait.

John had put on his aluminium and nomex fire suit so he wasn't feeling the cold at all—far from it. Sweat dripped from his nose before that, too, disappeared under an oversized silvery helmet-cum-visor. He looked just like an astronaut from a fifties sci-fi movie, but the costume was not just for show, or to keep warm—quite the opposite. John had come a long way to see Etna erupting and was intent on getting as close as he could regardless of the risks. I, on the other hand, did not have a fire suit or a gas mask and was staying firmly put.

Bocca Nuova's crater had been much deeper before last month's eruption, yet it was a relatively level expanse of lava that John carefully picked his way across, as he headed off into the distance. For geologists who often view things in terms of millions, if not tens of millions of years, the saying; 'as solid as rock', has a transient meaning. But for those who study all things volcanic, matters can be positively fleeting, especially on a volcano as active as Etna. Our position was precarious to say the lest, perched as we were on new ground with fresh lava flowing through jagged openings just a few metres away. What if the rock split apart right now, right here, right where I was lying?I could see the headlines flashing before me: THREE CRAZY MEN DIE ON ETNA: apparently they'd gone into the crater to see it erupting. What was I doing?

What John was doing was extremely dangerous, of that there was no doubt, but we were all risking our lives. If John copped it now we'd at least have it on film, which would make one hell of a story. After all, no one was making him go so close. They say there's a showman in all of us, but maybe John was taking showmanship just a little too far. Either way, if anything was going to happen I wanted to get it on film—which sounds morbid I know, but thats human nature—so I kept taking photos and Geoff kept filming while John kept getting closer to the eruption.

Suddenly, part of the far crater wall crumbled releasing a cascade of watery lava. It was as if a furnace of molten steel had been tapped and was running into a giant mould. Little wonder that the Romans thought of Etna as the chimney to a giant forge where Vulcan toiled, fashioning weapons for the Gods. In reality the hidden mould was the vent that John was approaching. The ghostly knight stood dwarfed before the dragon, as it spat fire high above his head. Swelling torrents of lapilli and bombs rocketed skywards while John craned his neck in an almost sculpted pose that lasted about sixty seconds before he suddenly made a run for it, chased by a shower of smouldering debris.

Retracing his steps, John slowly walked back to the relative safety of our vantage point, apparently none the worse for his close encounter. But this had nothing to do with skill or experience; this was luck, pure and simple. If Etna had wanted to kill us all, it could have done so with a paltry pyrotechnic sneeze, and we would have been powerless to stop it. We all knew it and had even discussed the subject casually on the way up, but the fact was, we had all come up here because we wanted to, and that included me.

Fear can often be overcome by sheer will or even enough distraction. For me, I'm not sure if it was either, or if, as some may think, just plain stupidity. But as with people, every volcano has its own personality and to me Etna's was magnetic. I had to see it for myself, no matter what, and as we made the long descent that night, having got our pictures and film, I already planned to return.

Etna's strata is interlaced with myth and legend, stories created out of fear, and the need to control something that is utterly uncontrollable. It has been reborn ten thousand times on its long journey from the sea to the heavens, but in the last century Etna has also been reborn in people's perceptions too.

Today Etna is a geological text, viewed with more, though by no means complete, understanding. But for me and no doubt for others too, Etna the volcano is, and will always be, a living, breathing being, enigmatic and timeless: a friend and an enemy, a giver and taker of wealth and sometimes of life itself. It is as unquestionably in command, as we are not.