Iceland Day 6 Askya Volcanic Cone
on our left you see a much slower moving River in less than an hour we will be getting to our location where we can get our have our little meal uh second breakfast and that's also a location where we have nice flushing toilets so if you can hold on that long it'll be a much more pleasant experience so I'll be getting out with you and showing you where the spring is at and but you're free to roam around we'll stay here for about the Icelandic word for lava field so we're now cross going to be crossing the lava field or any flooded Road and that is if you don't know for sure that your car can make it check walk through it first and then always go down river as you go into the river and up River as you're going out because as you're going out your the back of your car will Point down and the most dangerous part of driving through a river is that you get water coming in through your exhaust pipe but when you're going up River you create a wave that will pull the water to the side of the car and create a little dip in in the back of the vehicle and so the exhaust pipe will be more likely to be anyone bring their hand out no well I've got my hand out here and if you gather around you'll be able to see see the diagrams probably um as she was telling us on the bus his is the Dil mountains basically as it's basically the Askya volcano it's called called these drangle mountains uh and it's it's a big volcano that's mostly a shield volcano it's mostly had for basaltic eruptions however it's also had through to his fractional crystallization of magma it's had some very explosive eruptions from RI light uh so that's a much stickier lava and when that erupts because it much more pressure has to build up with all the gases uh much more force is needed for it actually to erupt and when it does erupt it goes bang uh and it makes these huge ash clouds coming up into the sky uh and that's what has formed and and then what happens is with with the magma chamber when enough of it evacuates and just comes out in the eruption all coming out in all these plumes of volcanic ash and parastic flows then the void is left and then uh then everything collaps in on that void now the the first ASA Cera uh the Kia Cera uh it's it's a million years old or so um formed in the fine and on this map you can see it's that little ring there and that little ring there in in the north um northeast corner is this do you see the clip you see the clip all coming around here so so this is this is the um original Cera but then the later ceras are sort of overprinted it you know they've they've cut out you know this portion of it uh and then you had a caldera hat formed in the whole Scene this this this is the main Askya cone is 8 kilometer wide and then amazingly the the the youngest cold era in the middle which actually is all filled by the lake that only formed in the 1875 eruption you know it's formed in historic times so so so that's a big thing I just wanted to tell you and here you can see the caldera wall and uh I want to just remember to take a picture of that before I walk off and then the other uh big story and why I thought just just wait here uh is all of this 1961 lava well it's come from literally just behind us there's there's a volcanic cone and there's a little path going up side of it uh and there's uh more volcanic cones just there and as we walk up The Path and we're just entering into the Cera we're literally Crossing the the 1961 fissure uh and as we go around the corner we might be able to just nip up one of these cones and just look in it um but we won't do it here we do do do the smaller ones just up there so so that's another thing I I just wanted to tell you and then when we get down uh into the main cold area itself well then we'll just be free time and we just do be like anyone else on on the bus and we just walk right across uh to to the to to the new Caldera so that's really what I wanted to tell you um any any questions at all um there was also an eruption in 1921 as well uh which uh it was very very small but um we can when you're at which is this little hydromagmatic crater that we're going to see that form right at the end of the 1875 76 eruption you'll see some fresh lava uh and also this is the site of the 2014 Landslide which caused the 30 m High tsunami so so I think I've already read out most about the 1875 eruption yesterday when we were s seeing those first Asia uh flows and she was telling us on the bus how we the the ash clouds reached all the way to to to to even Poland and Sweden and and and Scandinavia so I'm just going to quickly take we had two just just free time really and walk across and take time looking at and the more um the more Avent interest of you who can walk and see the slopes uh it's worth getting down to the shores of a lake here because you can see pyroclastic flow deposits uh here here on the shores there but it is steep and it is steep for some people so you might just want to hang out sort of circling the crater you can't completely Circle that crater um because it's it's roped off and it's too steep but you can do most of it okay did anyone uh Charles you were just in the restroom what we're going to say is so this is the uh holine uh TR 8 wi is the main Askya crater this is the older scene one what formed in 18756 is this whole massed lake but we're going to be walking to a little small Lake and some people might think oh that's just as no no that's just a little hydr magmatic eruption that formed at the end of the big eruption the big p there is is the big lake anyway let's uh let's uh get B from 1961 and you imagine a big Fountain of lava firing up from it everything splattering down and the lava flow coming out here and there is a little path up this one but there's another one just around the corner but I think uh we just climb up that one and just appear in if you want now I forgot to just see when we were driving she talked about all this pmus well that pmus is riight uh and it it's the product of this very explosive eruption in uh the 1875- 1876 but these 19 uh 61 eruptions this is B saled and you're walking on on the scoria from those 1961 eruptions but as we just walk up here you're going to see the whole big main Askya crater the 88 km across open in front of us this this is this is the Cera that formed um you know some hundreds few 200,000 years ago cold era and then where you can see the path just going up there that's where the little VT crater is it's just there it's just that path there is the top of it and this whole sort of horizon here what you don't realize is just over that Horizon there there's the big lake there is actually the 1875 76 it's just over a little Horizon there between that Horizon and that wall and um what I thought we could just do if you want to but it's not for everyone because it's kind of it's a bit slippy and scree and sharp but if you want to just climb up and have a look into one of those 1961 craters why not and then uh also you can see here this is 1961 lava here so some of the lava started here uh and then but the bigger amounts of it were here it was hotter here this is why the iron is oxidized and when you walk across to um the VT Lake as you walk along it may sound hollow walking along at times and you might think well why the hell is this well that's because there's still snow under there from 1875 so when the eruption happened a lot of this material all fell onto snow uh and it's actually still down there underneath so when you're walking along uh you know it's under some meters of uh volcanic material it all sounds kind of hollow uh like you could break through well maybe maybe people will breakthrough at some point but but but but it is Hollow in places so I've been told by some guides here that you're not allowed to look into creative but then i' been told by others that you are so let's just let's just do it uh don't go too near the edge it can be unstable. thank you James but lava's coming up of this shooting up you know a fountain maybe hundreds of meters into the air and all the material splatters down builds up the cone and then lava can over top it flow out or flow out of the base of it and this is a typical scoria cone okay well this would be similar to what was erupting down near the airport right something a similar size this is the same type of eruption as that and and it's very similar to the airport eruption this whereas whereas the eruptions are something very much bigger scale now take 14,000 years ago the bigger and smaller one then kind of a s of simplified uh a diagram or it's not actually telling us anything we don't already know but uh but just to sort of look at some nice s of so this idea you have have an eruption and then because the mag chamber evacuates out fall back down on it and then the uh the 1875 eruption you made a c there just nested in the bigger one anyway let's get there beautiful in the right it looks like a piece of ice you know is Obsidian can be this actually isn't obsidian though you want you want to do aou go and assemble over I think where our guide is I think there is a better view of the whole lake cuz here you can't see the whole lake you get very close to the edge it's really interesting you get to the top then you so Linda people got all the way down there yeah well they had time to walk all the way around I guess that's Susan and Marcus okay so let's do this together okay so here we are standing right in front of the VD crater and uh we have crater within crater within crater so just chronologically in the far distance when we came in was a placeing uh crater and then at the uh wall here is a Holocene uh a couple few maybe 4,000 that's the outer crator the main outer crater then 1875 produced the big Crater Lake here that we're going to look at in just a second and then off to the side of it there was another eruption the V crater we're not exactly sure but we think that's 1921 could be 1921 there's a a 1961 eruption behind us and uh there's fresh lava back uh this way so we don't see it right here and then in 2014 uh we have a slump so if you can turn around lend have a look in the foreground here is the recent slump this one this Crater Lake here very small Crater Lake very deep and swimmable we're told uh James has actually done it he says is the V crater and it has lots of you look at the layers in the ash there's all kinds of um tough um tefer and uh uh layered in here and then the big lake is the from the 1875 eruption now the 1875 um eruption caused a crater much bigger than just the lake it includes the lake but it actually is the base and floor of this inner crater so quite a lot of creater strategy here unlike the moon it's not due to impact it's all volcanic here okay so here we are at Askya volcano and ashka has had uh many historical eruptions and so a quick history it starts in the place to seene uh where we came in there's a huge Outer Rim uh from several thousand years ago but the things that's most notable in human history is in 1875 there was a huge uh inner crater and part of it is filled with the water but we're looking out over uh 1875 eruption and in the fitt crater this is a just a little small pond um off the big one this eruption may have been the 1921 there is a a slump yeah I here we are at the uh incredible ostria volcano now what makes this so special is that this is a very active volcano all the way from the place to scene to the outer rim which is the holos scene a few thousand years ago to 1875 where there's an inner crater that's partially filled with a very deep lake here and then a subsidiary crater called vidy and then some slumping and eruptions in 1921 there's just a incredible amount of activity and history here and so this volcano is on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and many volcanoes like this are underneath the glaciers and the Glaciers are not that far from here the vanasco glaciers ice cap is about 20 to 30 km south of here and when volcanoes erupt under the glacier they cause the flash floods here this is no longer this volcano is no longer underneath the ice but it has been in previous times
2025-01-03 15:51
