Iceland Day 7 Cinder cones, Mytavin smokers, Basalt caves, Godafoss waterfall
Okay so this is very exciting and even though that this is just one crack it's symbolic of the rift Zone which is where you're Asia and North America are splitting apart here in the rift zone of Iceland where the mid ocean ridge comes up to the surface because of a deep mantle upwelling it's exciting there's volcanic and we're loving it like that one person in front's looking like that but the crack seems to have grown well or more I think that's a creative but if we're going to do any straddling pictures be very careful because you can easy get that wrong and fall down there maybe right but isn't this part of this the crack too yeah that part of the crack does the job much safer you're doing it good do I have You' got some people back there here you want to do you want to we're riding a crack in a rift but we have to remember as exciting as it is to say that one side's North American the other side's your razor that the rift zone is actually a series of rifted zones so it's a Zone but here is a very significant rifted crack thank this way look at look at instant right so if you feel like you've seen the crack feel free to go climb into those caves and have a good look in the caves two different sides oh can you I got to get a picture of that James you're not going to want to miss this this is awfully good that's new I stepped on to the yeah here's the other cave over here yeah Charles and Linda I by The Cave opening if we go down here I'm thinking right as these people emerge perhaps your camera might better sure you know you know your okay here we right here we are right on the plate boundary spreading zone and this is one of the extensional fractures uh in the spreading zone t's being pulled apart uh as the North American Plate goes one way and the Eurasia plate goes the other way and as the material is moving to the sides you've actually got cracks here and you've actually got a cave here in the extension fracture and you have warm fluids coming up that in the past people used to bathe in but now the water temperature is too unpredictable to be able to bathe but if you look down here you can see into Decay and you can see there's lovely uh steaming hot water down there okay then continue for some distance then or is this just the most obviously expression of it right here just the most obvious expression of it so I don't think I'm going to sort of say this is definitely like but what we're looking at here Linda you can see uh those two sides of the mountain were once together and they've literally been rifted apart so it's a very graphic representation of the forces that are dragging the plates apart and of course we've got to remember what's dragging them apart is subduction happening thousands of miles away dragging down the plates on the other side of the planet but uh the force of it means there a pool Force here pulling apart and every now and again there will be an earthquake and things will happen and they will extend and here is extension right on the plate boundary so I tended to take a nice picture on the overview and then come down here and follow it around that's what you can do but maybe you can't do that. maybe You' got to go this way I'm not sure but they changed the layout of the paths so right in front of it's like intermediate between a mud pot and a and a spring because it's muddy water but it's not quite a Mud Pot whereas that is a mud pot and and it's built up a little cone so one of the great things here in Iceland about magma is where water gets cooked and Flash steams and it brings out a lot of minerals from the Rocks so we can smell sulfur and we see all kinds of Reds and yellows and various colors and the steam here coming from behind us is from a well that was drilled so many uh mud pots and just bubbling ferals this one is human assisted by the well but it shows the real power of steam hi this is Linda Sternbach I'm from Syracuse University I graduated in 1981 to say hi to anybody at the department .we're here in Iceland near Myvatin these hot smokers like white smoker Halls. I want to say hi to Jeff Carson who uh has been a good friend and has given us a lot of advice about this trip so if you get time you need to come to Iceland well if it's coming from the steam plan is it like floating around in BL yes exactly it's exactly what it is silica yeah maybe yeah but silica is just s just silica dioxide just so it's going to that in a compound uh this is um a huge eruption that had happened 2,700 years ago you can see we're on uh a fissure eruption and this portion the fissure actually came up through the ancestral Lake which is bigger than the current lake and it caus an huge eruption a huge fissure ruption reacting with the uh with the water I made this cone in one single massive event the you come best seen from below where I am but these are some of the pyroclastic surge deposits pyroclastic surge deposits very niely what is it the surge deposits so as as uh as the material was surging out from the eruption you can see it's really built and The Cone is all built from this all around so I mean perhaps it flowed in pulses I don't know I'm just looking at it it kind of looks like different flows Almost Doesn't it but so the eruption maybe it just wasn't just one big bang it was just in various pulses and surges cuz each one looks like a sort of it's sort of a finding up sort of Co and it fines up and then C and find up like it's different flow units and many so we're looking at the in the center of the crater and we're looking at a series of craters this one's about 2700 years ago but we're all within the greater Krafal crater and there are many sub craters and there's a uh lineation of craters where there have been uh fissures and volcanic eruptions over the history and these have all been uh putting a lot of magma and laava uh flowing down towards Lake mot so it's a really great view up here on the rim of the crater like James just say actually it's only 900 M it's going to take us probably more like 20 minutes so there should and anyway so we're going to do the yellow walk here's the photographs what it looks like here's the picture from the book uh from the handout I actually took a photograph of this board and put it in there um but this shows the U the the lava is Flowing along it's in a sort lava tube it's got solid base and then a break happens there and the red lava hits the the the uh the the the water steam exploding explodes through but because this was much deeper than normal lava flow it was a lava lake that the lake drained away and left these standing up uh like this uh nice geological map of the area it's very similar to what's in the hand out and then here are the Lads for that blow out candles there break tops of these but they're called lava tubes in the uh literature but bway we walk down here it's a dead end down here and then we come back where you are but if if you want to look inside this cave feel free to climb up but if you don't really want to it's there's just was flowing through there well it it had to be flowing through something was here that's gone I don't think it's that now I think about it but what is it if it's not that moreat there was a a little Dyke feeding up that one there can you see send that one there's a little Dike the little narrow one yeah I mean this explanation of how this formed is just you know someone's Theory and that's what they printed on the boards you know you got to remember if you the first person who's ever come here and you're walking around here thinking what the hell caused all this you know this is really very unusual lava field um so this is the explanation it's these cones through a lava lake but it might be wrong it's just it's just what some was but actually you know this whole story that you know steam was erupted through it there you've got layed lava and that doesn't seem to fit that story hey you look like a real pirate I can face but can imagine you could lava cave I don't have anything to say about it but it kind of it ends it's not like a che keep going so I don't have a good explanation on the formation of these um the books I've read don't give them not watch we're going to walk around independently um we're going to leave at 5 4 at the latest we'll go earlier if everyone's finished and you just follow the path around uh and it's uh it's a it's a loop and you climb up this crater so you're going to finish just over there where the eye is and uh and we're just going to do this Loop so you feel free just uh just to start how long um should we allow um we're going to maximum time is 45 minutes so we're going to leave at 5 4 but you probably won't need that much so we're all back we go before yep there's something to learn yes did he say we can do the whole path [ um we're at yeah you you would you can you can walk in pend if you want I just say say uh me I was just going to say a couple of things so this is the peninsula um this is the schnell's yal volcano at the end so it it's one volcanic system this is another volcanic system and this is the other one and we are just here somewhere so uh and then we're going to drive on down uh and have another rest stop here and then re is just there at the very bottom of the map so and then um we're go look at this board here we're just here we're going to come up like this and then you can go either way around it doesn't matter some go some one way some go the other uh and from the highest point here you get good views of his other uh scoria cone that's about the same age uh and then we can come back and there's also a little smaller uh sort of side cone just here as well just just to notice so we just walk independently um I can't tell you much more about it than I've already told you uh and U maximum an hour so uh at one the 25 our latest time go either way
2025-01-04 20:41
