There aren’t too many places you can go hiking to watch a volcano erupt. Stromboli is one.
Stromboli is one of the seven Aeolian islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily. The 12-square-kilometre island has a population of just a few hundred people who inhabit two villages. That’s boosted by an estimated 20,000–25,000 visitors who come to climb its famous volcano each year.
Stromboli is famous for the phenomenon of constant minor eruptions of magma and gas known to volcanologists as Strombolian Activity. And if you know your Jules Verne, Stromboli featured in the ending of Journey to the Centre of the Earth when Professor Lidenbrock and his party were shot out of Stromboli after entering the earth down the unpronounceable volcano in Iceland.
To see the eruptions (and usually a pretty cool sunset) for yourself, you can join a trek to a summit above the volcano’s three craters. The walk is an afternoon-evening trip beginning at around 4pm and returning by about 10pm. It is a steep walk on a dusty trail that climbs 924 metres over six kilometres.
Hikers attempting the summit must be accompanied by a guide. I joined Mario from Magmatrek guides for my hike to the summit in April 2017 while I was travelling on a Sicilian Volcanos tour with Exodus.
Our group was joined by a family with seven-year-old twins who set a fast pace at the front. I figured they would soon hit the wall and demand to be taken home. I should have known better. My record with seven-year-olds in athletic pursuits isn’t great. I once lowered my colours to a seven-year-old in a cross country ski race. He didn’t hit any wall either. These little girls were now bounding ahead up the trail like little Duracell bunnies.
The track climbed steadily as soon as we left the village. I’m not a fast walker, and I admit I wasn’t at the peak of my fitness when I did this trip, so I found the fast pace on the way up a bit quick. We weren’t getting many rest stops on the way either. When we did stop at a ‘chicken’ point about 400 metres up where there is an option to turn back on another path, two members of our group were sent back for failing to keep up.
That left me bringing up the rear and fearing I might be picked off next. With those little girls still looking way too energetic for my comfort, I asked Mario if he wouldn’t mind terribly slowing down the pace just a teeny bit. After all the summit would surely still be there if we took a few minutes longer to reach the top. He agreed but I barely noticed any difference.
At around 500 metres in altitude, or roughly halfway up, the landscape changed when we reached the end of vegetation. From here, the depth of ash and exposure to the wind makes it nearly impossible for any but the smallest plants to survive. The volcano’s slope was now a barren, rocky place; windswept and dusty. The trail was narrow and close to the edge in some places and wouldn’t be nice for anyone who had a fear of heights. Lucky for me I don’t.
“How is the walking pace? OK now?” Mario asked me at our next rest stop.
“OK. Just.” I said.
“Madam, if I go any slower and I will be stopped,” was his hyperbolic reply.
So that, I determined, would be the last anyone heard from me about the walking pace. And I couldn’t let those little twins put me to shame.
The final few hundred metres of the track were the toughest when we started to walk on thick ash. It was a bit like walking uphill on soft sand. You slide backwards a little with each step and walking poles sink straight into the ash and aren’t much help any more. A head wind didn’t help us out either.
But we soon made it to a point just below the summit where we put on our helmets and had a rest. Only 80 people are allowed on the summit at once so we had to wait our turn. We eventually moved up to the summit where we were about 300 metres above Stromboli’s three craters.
We could hear them rumbling like thunder. We were given strict summit rules to follow: leave helmets on, stand in single file facing the craters, no standing behind another person and no bags or poles on the ground behind us.
Within moments there was a loud rumble and a spray of red sparks shot into the air from the left crater. Instinctively, I rocked back on my feet and almost stumbled backwards away from the explosion. The rules made sense then. If there had been something on the ground behind me, or another person standing there, I might have tripped or knocked the other person over. A narrow ridge high above three volcano craters is not somewhere you want to take a fall or get knocked over.
We got to stay about an hour at the summit and the volcano put on a spectacular show for us. The central crater kept bubbling away like a giant witch’s cauldron while the other two craters regularly threw magma and stones high into the air. It got more spectacular as it got darker when the firey red and orange colours were bright against the night sky.
With the wind picking up and temperature dropping, it was time to head back down. We didn’t go down the same way we came up. Instead we ‘skated’ down the ash on the rear slope. You step on the heel of one foot, let is slide until it stops and change feet. We were not allowed to stop on the descent in case we caused a pile up in the dark. It took around three hours to climb up to the summit but we skated halfway back down in under half an hour. We then continued down a path and walked back into the village.
When we returned to the office to give back the helmets and end the trip, Mario gave me a bow and kissed my hand. I’m glad we finished as friends. The twins looked like they could have gone up again.