Wow!!
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Wed 18 Sep 2013 23:33
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So, we went up the Yasur volcano last night. The
truck takes you nearly to the crater rim up a hot road with steam squirting out
of the walls of the cuttings. When you get to the top there is about a 50m
vertical climb to the rim and you're then looking down onto this
scene:
 The crater is less than 1km diameter with two main
vents, both with bubling magma pools just out of sight. The right hand vent
spews dirty brown smoke, the left, blue. There are also two smaller vents with
flames coming out of them; these periodically shoot off like a gigantic bunsen
burner with a huge roaring. The main vents just boil away loudly. But every few
minutes one or other of them erupts, flinging large chunks of magma hundreds of
metres into the air:
 The eruption is preceded by an explosion with a big
shock wave in the air, a flash of light and a very loud bang. Each eruption is
different - sometimes more smoke, sometimes more noise, sometimes more ejecta.
The really big ones cause the whole crater rim to vibrate under your feet. And
this is it in a quiet phase.
The bits of magma are flung up into the air
hundreds of metres above your head; they mostly land downwind well away from the
spectators - but some come much closer regularly causing both the crew of
the Vulcan Spirit to grasp each other in fright and stare upwards craning necks
backwards to follow the trajectories of the lava bombs to ensure that we
definitely were standing from under. Apparently they've only lost two
tourists so far, both of whom carelessly stepped backwards off the rim into the
vent when frightened by an eruption. There is no return from that. The bits of
magma that land closest do so with a very satisfying dull thud like wet clay,
and stay glowing red hot for several minutes. It really is quite spectacular.
For scale, the biggest bits you can see in the picture are about one - two
metres across.
 Fantastic. There is only one word to describe it,
albeit one sadly much abused and misused in NZ; this truly is an awesome
experience.
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