Climbing La Soufriere Volcano Caribbean Island: St. Vincent March 3, 2000 by Wayne & Karen Brown

The trail to La Soufriere is through what's known as a secondary rainforest. The original rainforest was disturbed by erupting volcanic lava and ash, hundreds of years ago. This second rainforest overhangs the trail with roots, vines and leaves. In the rainforest we find an old lava flow that cut through the rainforest about 300 years ago. Now we can see the lava has been worn smooth from water and gravel that run over it during a rain.

Two hours after the start of our climb we reach the top of the volcano! We are standing on the rim of a huge caldera cautiously looking down to the caldera floor about 700 feet below. This is not a place you want to be if you are afraid of heights. Strong gusts of winds blow across the rim, composed of volcanic ash and loose under our feet. It drops straight down and there are no guardrails!

Thousands of years ago the center of the volcano collapsed and formed this gigantic crater. At one time the caldera was filled with water, like Crater Lake in Oregon. Then, in 1971, a hiker noticed that a rock was sticking out of the center of the lake. The rock was the top of a volcanic dome that was forming under the crater lake. The dome started getting bigger and bigger and the lake got smaller and smaller. In the last four or five years the water has almost completely disappeared in the crater. A small lake is all that is left of the billions of gallons of water that once filled the crater. Now a large volcanic dome grows inside the caldera. (Remember the huge volcanic dome or plug that was in the middle of Mont Pele's caldera?)

La Soufriere erupted in 1979, and ash and sulfurous gases spewed out. The ash covered not only St. Vincent, but also Barbados, over 100 miles away! Fortunately, scientists gave plenty of warning and the people had left the areas below the volcano where lava flowed through. Today there are special scientific instruments in the caldera to monitor constantly any volcanic activity. Scientists are checking the growth of the volcanic dome, measuring any earthquakes, listening for any sounds deep underground, and taking samples of gases that are coming out of the dome. If there is a future eruption, especially a big one, scientists hope their research will allow them to give people plenty of warning to leave the dangerous areas.

We wish we could climb down into the caldera but we did not bring our special technical climbing equipment with us. We were warned that without ropes we may not be able to get back up because of the loose ash that covers the vertical walls of the caldera. We continue walking along the rim trail until, after about an hour, we start our climb back down the volcano. Join us tomorrow as we explore the rainforest that covers most of St. Vincent and surrounds the volcano.

When we start our climb up La Soufriere we can see its peak in the clouds above the rainforest.

Wayne and Karen with their guide, Trevor Bailey, preparing to start their climb up La Soufriere (sue-FREE-air) volcano. We are frowning at the camera because we thought it was not working.

A 300 year old lava flow in the middle of the rainforest. Can you find Karen standing in the middle of the lava flow?

This is the caldera of La Soufriere volcano! This is the most spectacular volcano in the Caribbean.

Standing on the rim of the caldera, Trevor shows us one of the volcanic rocks that were shot out of the volcano. It is black and red and has lots of holes in it because there were a lot of gas bubbles in it while it was cooling from molten to solid.

Can you see the trail along the edge of the caldera? The caldera is over a mile across.