Before the mountain moved, 2002

Spring 2002, time for excursions to the volcano, whose morphology has been dramatically altered during the eruption in July-August 2001. Scenes of utter devastation, and a dozen of small and large morphological features had been added to the landscape of Mount Etna's southern flank, and to a lesser degree to its northeastern flank (where more dramatic changes would occur later in 2002). I made four visits to these areas in May-October 2002, documenting photographically most of these features, before many of them vanished forever in the 2002-2003 eruption.

Mount Etna's violent baby, 28 July 2001, and revisited, 29-30 May 2002

Violent explosive activity, 28 July 2001

These spectacular scenes are some of the most impressive moments during the growth of that enormous new cone at about 2570 m elevation (pre-eruption surface is reference), immediately to the north of the Montagnola. The photographs are placed here to illustrate the violence of the activity at this site, which in this form lasted only for six days. Flashback: activity at this site began on the afternoon of 18 July 2001, 40 hours after magma broke through the surface some 500 m further downslope and 1.5 km to the south. For one week, until 25 July, the activity there was phreatomagmatic (that is, characterized by the explosive interaction of the rising magma with a shallow aquifer) and no cone was built. Then, on 25 July, the activity became magmatic, and now a cone began to grow very rapidly, due to constant powerful explosions whose noise could be well heard as far as Catania, 25 km away, at rush-hour (!). The climax of activity was on 28 July, when these photographs were taken from only a few hundred meters away (the detonations caused by the explosions would make your ears hurt at that distance). Four days later, the activity diminished notably, and no further significant growth of the cone occurred, which by this time was about 100 m above the pre-eruption surface


Three views of the crater of the large cone at 2570 m elevation, 29 May 2002. The crater is about 150 m in diameter and about 70 m deep, and the peculiar feature at the bottom of the opposite crater wall is a dike with several lateral intrusions, which is seen in more detail in a photograph at the top of this page. Right photograph shows a group of excursionists in the foreground, while another person is on the far rim of the crater (visible only in the large version of this image, which you can obtain by clicking on the thumbnail)


Gorgeous panoramic views from the summit of Monte Josémaria Escrivà on 29 May 2002: left and center photographs show the upper southern flank with the summit crater complex in the background. Dark lavas in the middle ground were erupted from a cluster of vents at 2700 m elevation (a small cone formed at these vents can be seen in the left photograph below the right base of the Southeast Crater cone). Center image shows the northern wall of the newly formed crater in the foreground. Right photograph shows the opposite side of the Monte Josémaria Escrivà. The large cone in the left background is the Montagnola. Ruins of the uppermost ski lift can be seen at the lower hill to its right, and a cluster of volcanologically quite interesting vents, which were also active during the July-August 2001 eruption, can be seen in the foreground. These consist of a 30 m-diameter crater (visible at left) and several dome-shaped features, the most conspicuous of which lies in the center-right of the image, and a well-defined lava flow channel is seen to its right. The whole complex of these minor vents is surrounded by an arcuate subsidence fault


Left: zoom on a peculiar feature, probably a small endogenous dome, formed at the head of an effusive vent active in late July 2001 on the southern base of the large pyroclastic cone at 2570 m elevation (Monte Josémaria Escrivà) Center: a wider-angle view of the same endogenous dome and the spectacular lava flow channel which extends from there over a distance of about 250 m to the southwest. The lava flows which represented the most serious threat to the tourist complex at the Rifugio Sapienza (lying below the crest visible at center right) came from this lava flow channel, including the two minor lobes which led to the destruction of the arrival station of the cable car Right: and this is what remains of the arrival station of the cable car after the 2001 eruption. One lava lobe reached the building on its upslope, northern (right) side, setting a part of it ablaze; another lava lobe surrounded its eastern (left) side on the evening of 30 July and entered into the bar (see the photos at the bottom of this page), causing a more general conflagration and total devastation of the building. Note intact poles of the cable car at left. As of mid-2003 (after the 2002-2003 eruption), the ruin of the building is no longer there, but the poles are still standing


Daybreak on 30 May 2002 has a feeling of eternity in a place that was dramatically altered only ten months earlier, and which would undergo even more dramatic changes five months later. These photographs were taken at the ruin of the second-generation (post-1971 until 1983) arrival station of the cable car, located somewhat higher upslope than its successor (which was destroyed in 2001) and shown in the right-hand photograph. Left image shows Monte Josémaria Escrivà from that location, with the Montagnola in the distance at right. Center photograph is a view to the Madonie mountain range, nearly 200 km to the west. The right photograph shows the tents of an excursion group that slept near the ruin of the pre-1983 arrival station of the cable car, and Monte Josémaria Escrivà is seen in the left background. What is so peculiar about this place is that it vanished without a trace during the 2002-2003 eruption on the southern flank. The lowermost of the new vents formed exactly in the place where the tents and building are standing in the right-hand photograph (see how this place looked like at an early stage of the 2002-2003 eruption). By pure coincidence I was with the last excursion group to sleep in that place, exactly one week before the beginning of the 2002-2003 eruption. At that time, there was virtually nothing that would have indicated a major eruption only one week later


These photos are history. It will never again be possible to take the same photographs, because the places from which they were taken have disappeared, and with them have some of the features seen in these images. Left: the rising morning sun of 30 May 2002 casts a golden hue onto the strikingly similar (from this perspective) cones of Monte Josémaria Escrivà (left) and the 238 years older Montagnola (right). Seen from the pre-1983 arrival station of the cable car (now deeply buried below the lavas of the 2002-2003 eruption) Center: two prominent steep-sided spatter cones (hornitos) are seen in the left foreground, marking the lowermost portion of the second fissure that opened on the first day (17 July) of the 2001 eruption, at about 2690 m elevation. Interestingly, the magma that fed these vents (as well as those higher upslope and closer to the Southeast Crater as well as a small fissure on the upper northeastern flank) came from the central conduit system of Etna (the conduits that lead to the summit craters). The lower vents on the southern flank, including those of Monte Josémaria Escrivà (in the background, only about 1 km from the 2690 m vents), were fed from a different source. The area in the foreground was buried by about 50 m of new pyroclastic material during the 2002-2003 eruption Right: a panoramic view of what once was called Piano del Lago, the Plain of the Lake. Where the lake used to form during the spring snowmelt, there is now the huge cone of Monte Josémaria Escrivà (seen in the distance at right, with the Montagnola immediately behind it). A much smaller cone, only about 20 m high, is visible at left, which has formed at about 2740 m elevation. Monte Josémaria Escrivà is still there after the 2002-2003 eruption, but all other features that are seen in front of it in the photograph at right have vanished without any trace

Summit visit , 30 May 2002

A narrow streak of black lava marks the site of the northeasternmost outpost of the July-August 2001 eruption, in the Valle del Leone, seen here from the eastern rim of the Voragine (one of Etna's four summit craters, and inactive since 1999) on 30 May 2002. The northern wall of the Valle del Leone (which is a kind of side valley of the Valle del Bove, further to the right) and of the Valle del Bove is seen in the center of the image, and Etna's northeastern flank with the Monti Peloritani and the Ionian coast near Taormina in the background. The dark-colored lavas in right foreground were erupted from the Southeast Crater in 2000 and early 2001


These photographs show two places at Etna's summit, which at the turn of the century (or the millennium) were the sites of extremely violent eruptive activity, the Voragine (left and center images) and the Southeast Crater (right photograph). The Voragine produced two of the most powerful eruptive episodes of Etna of the past few centuries in July 1998 and September 1999, and the Southeast Crater holds the world record in the number of lava fountains over a certain time period (Pu'u 'O'o, on the East Rift Zone of Kilauea, Hawaii, had 48 eruptive episodes with lava fountains in three-and-a-half years, the Southeast Crater produced 105 such episodes in less than three years, and 66 of these in a seven-months period in 2000). Both craters are seen very quiet and peaceful at the time of these photographs (30 May 2002). White vapor is seen to escape from a 30 m-diameter pit in the southern side of the central pit of the Voragine (which is seen in the foreground of the center photograph; note persons in left-hand photograph for scale); that pit formed in the spring of 2000 without any eruptive activity. Both the Voragine and the Southeast Crater did not show any activity in the summer of 2002, but the earlier of the two showed some sympathetic eruptive activity at the beginning of the 2002-2003 eruption

The museum that never was, June 2002

Ruin of cable car arrival station, June 2002

Etna played an evil game with the cable car on the southern flank in 2001 (it did so again, this time not only with the cable car, in late 2002). The cable car, or better say, the third-generation cable car (two earlier generations had fallen victim to the eruptions in 1971 and 1983), had just been fully renovated, and should have been reopened in late July 2001, when the eruption began from numerous vents on the southern flank. During the first nine days of the eruption, it suffered little damage, but things changed when lava began to issue from a vent on the southern base of the cone later to be named Monte Josémaria Escrivà. On 26 July 2001, a lava flow entered the arrival station of the cable car from above, causing a fire in its upper portion (seen at right in the left-hand image). Four days later, a small lobe of lava surrounded the eastern side of the building (left) and entered through the windows of the bar in the ground floor. This caused a large fire, which burned all that remained inside the building. However, the lava advanced just enough to set the structure ablaze and then stopped without crushing it - and left a museum to the posterior world. While the ruin was still standing (it was broken down in September 2002 as work for the reconstruction of the cable car and its arrival station was started; this was interrupted a few weeks later by the new eruption), visitors would find a never-ending quantity of objects of all kinds inside, such as the useless fire-extinguisher that Giuseppe Scarpinati holds in the right image


Before the 2001 eruption, visitors to Etna who went uphill with the cable car would, after a 20 minutes' ride, arrive in the main hall of the arrival station of the cable car (seen after the destruction in the left image). The cabins would stop right in the place shown in the center photograph, and a staircase to the right led to the ground floor of the building, where visitors had the chance to buy souvenirs, have a sandwich, or drink a coffee, a juice, or a beer, in the bar, which is shown in the photograph at right. Note how the lava came in through the side windows of the bar, forming three short lobes of equal length that stopped once they had reached the floor. For many months after the eruption and destruction of the building, a wealth of peculiar objects, including numerous deformed bottles, could be found in this location. Someone claimed to have found, shortly after the eruption, a few still-intact bottles of wine amidst the devastation and said to have tasted it, declaring that it was delicious


Scenes from the main hall of the arrival station of the cable car. Left and center images show the huge driving wheel of the cable car, and the first of the two lava flows that reached the building, which stopped immediately behind that structure. Right photograph shows a part of the motor of the cable car

Nearly finished at the time the 2001 eruption began, a new terrace on the western side of the building of the arrival station of the cable car would have invited tourists to relax and tan in the sun

Copyright © Boris Behncke, "Italy's Volcanoes: The Cradle of Volcanology"