Mongibello, or “Beautiful Mountain”, dominates the sky in the southeast region of Sicily. The pic above is from our hotel room, about 14 miles from the main craters, rising 11,165 feet above the Mediterranean Sea.
She was being a bit modest this morning, as we paused halfway up the bus route. The elevation here is 4500 feet.
The road, and limit of our ride’s capability, ends at 6200 feet above sea level, here at I Crateri Silverstri. The summit is hidden from this vantage point. Since we are a) not trained vulcanologists, nor b) inclined to walk up the 5000 foot high slope to reach the mouth of Etna, this side vent was as close as we could get.
Etna has created many side vents to relieve the pressure of the magma below over its half million year life.
This vent… note the people on the floor of the crater for a sense of its size, is just a minuscule piece of the Etna landscape. You can stroll around the rim, maybe a quarter mile walk.
The colors, though…
My preconception was that everything would be black, pumice-like rock. Notta so much. Red, orange, brown, blue, green were all there, created by combinations of the many minerals present.
