Flying over the volcano in Iceland

[Barb T]

Well, how fabulous is this? I've been joking for two months that, if by some miracle the weather was good when we landed in Iceland that we'd go directly to Reykjavik FBO, hire a plane, and fly over Eyjafjallajokull. Believe it or not, the weather was pretty decent when we flew in to Keflavik at 6:30 in the morning a few days ago, and we got right on the Internet to check the Hvolsvellir web cam (which is aimed at the summit of the volcano). For the first time in a couple of weeks, the summit was visible, although the sky was pretty cloudy. So, we zoomed over to Eagle Air at Reykjavik Airport, and just as we walked in, a small plane was taking off. Turns out it was a geologist friend of mine and several colleagues from U of Iceland - they were going up to check out the activity because it was the first clear day in quite awhile. The person at the desk suggested that we come back in two hours, when they were expected to return, to see if it was worth going up.

So, we killed some time by repacking the car, got changed, and waited for them to get back. The weather had gotten cloudier while we were waiting for them, but the web cam looked OK still. We talked with them when they got back, and they said it was pretty good visibility-wise and that there was a lot to see geologically. So, we decided to go! Just three of us and the pilot in a very nice 8-person high wing plane with fabulous visibility and an opening window on the front seat passenger side (which, of course, we gave to Dave because he takes the best pictures!!).

We took off, and it was about half an hour to the volcano. Cloudy sky, but very high ceiling and absolutely perfect visibility. The pilot started out doing a slow circle well above the summit so that we could get the overview, and then he did a slow spiral downward so that, by the time we'd circled around the summit for the 5th time we were _below_ the level of the highest part of the mountain!!! We must have spent nearly a half an hour circling the volcano. We headed back toward R'vik, and the pilot let Dave fly the plane for awhile. While Dave was flying, the pilot looked out the back, and there was a little ash plume over the summit! Not just steam. It had pooped out a little bit of ash!. So we asked the pilot if we could go back, and he said to Dave, "Want to turn it around?" So, Dave turned the plane around and we flew back to Eyjafjallajokull. By the time we got back to the summit, the ash plume had dissipated quite a bit, but the view of the hot lake in the caldera was ten times better. We could see the water churning and all the ash around the lake steaming. We circled so low that we could even smell the sulfur from the solfataras!

It was truly amazing. You would *never know* from a distance that there is a glacier under the black ash. The whole summit region looks like gray rock and dirt. But, once you're right over the summit, you can see how much the glacier has shifted since the eruption - you can look down into white cracks in the black ash.

Anyway, that was probably more detail than you wanted to know. Here are a few pics. The first is of the summit of the volcano - all the gray, smooth stuff is ash covering the glacier. You can just see a little of the glacier on the left hand side of the image.



Here's the crater lake that formed just a week or so ago, steaming away:



The ruin of the glacier under which the eruption occurred:



and



And the gray ash cloud dissipating from the little eruption that we saw. In the other pictures above, as well as the one below, the white clouds are steam.