What I did on my holidays, 2015 Edition - Sicilian Volcanoes
As last year, this was a one-week trip organised by Exodus, based in Canneto on Lipari for the first few nights, then moving to Stromboli, Etna and Catania for one night each (the group flight was so early in the morning that we flew out to Catania a couple of days early; worth the extra days for viewing the Roman ruins alone).
The total distance is 20 miles over 6 days, with a total ascent around 2000 metres. Most of the days are fairly easy; Stromboli is a long ascent and a long descent in the dark (and the guided group we were in had several people turn back at the half-way point, where an escort back down is available), and the last day on Etna is rough underfoot where the paths go across lava flows. There were two small children in the group we were in that day, whose parents were handling them very carefully but who were still quite distressed by part of the route along an exposed crater edge. Still, they coped, so I have to file everything but Stromboli under "doable by accompanied small child with experience and decent boots". The routes are available as Google Earth .kmz files from here, or you can view them interactively on a map from here. You'll need to zoom and pan a lot on that last link to see detail. My photos from the trip are here on Flickr.
Day 2
A bit of a warm-up; four miles and a few hundred metres ascent on mostly good paths, with the odd slightly scrambly bit of rock. Fine views of pumice mines and angry bee zones. This, and the next day, were mid-30s C, which was challenging. Click on the images for larger versions.
More walks after the break
Day 3
The first active volcano; Vulcano, which mainly shows its activity by sulphurous fumaroles at the north-east side of the crater. The standard route is anticlockwise round the crater so that you are descending past the fumaroles, moving more quickly and breathing less hard. The first part of the climb and the crater are wide dusty paths; part of the ascent is on rutted rock where strong boots are more useful.
Day 6
Mainly taken up with the transfer from Stromboli to Etna, a lengthy hydrofoil trip followed by a coach. The weather was dreadful early in the day, with a lot of rain, but cleared by the evening in time for a short walk.
Day 7
Cable-car ride up Etna to 2500m and 4WD bus up to 2900m, followed by a walk up to the main crater then back down to the cable-car terminal, using a private guide. The route went by the point where the lava flowed at the most recent eruption, and round the rim of a recent crater before descending steeply through deep ash, as with the Stromboli descent (except my gaiters were properly tightened this time!). The crater rim was the trickiest bit of the trip; generally the crater rims have been wide, dusty paths, but this was just a rocky edge (which from a distance really didn't look like a path at all) with a strong cross-wind to add to the entertainment. Apparently my head for heights has improved a lot over the last few years.
This trip seemed to be very hard on boots; two people had the soles of one boot come off completely, and the toe of one of my soles started peeling off with only a couple of hundred miles on the boots. You should definitely make sure that your boots are in good shape. Might have been coincidence, might have been the hostile environment around fumaroles affecting the glue.
Technical notes: The first 3 days were recorded on a Garmin Fenix 3, the last two on a Suunto Ambit 2 set in "good" GPS mode (one fix every 5 seconds) to reduce the size of the files. The F3 is a huge improvement on the original Fenix, though its precision isn't great for walking when the sky view is poor (heavy tree cover or in gorges). Then again, the Ambit 2 doesn't have enough memory for long trips in best GPS mode, and even I'm not going to take a computer on holiday to upload as I go. It does handle elevation changes better, though.
All the files were imported to Sporttracks and a few gaps tidied up, then exported as Google Earth files. Contour maps are screencaps from Sporttracks; satellite images are screencaps from Google Earth. Incidentally, the track at the top of Stromboli is about 50m away from the trail and imagery on Google maps, but it's the map which is wrong; Bing maps and OpenStreetMaps show the GPS track to be accurate. MyGPSFiles.com is a great tool for sharing tracks.
The total distance is 20 miles over 6 days, with a total ascent around 2000 metres. Most of the days are fairly easy; Stromboli is a long ascent and a long descent in the dark (and the guided group we were in had several people turn back at the half-way point, where an escort back down is available), and the last day on Etna is rough underfoot where the paths go across lava flows. There were two small children in the group we were in that day, whose parents were handling them very carefully but who were still quite distressed by part of the route along an exposed crater edge. Still, they coped, so I have to file everything but Stromboli under "doable by accompanied small child with experience and decent boots". The routes are available as Google Earth .kmz files from here, or you can view them interactively on a map from here. You'll need to zoom and pan a lot on that last link to see detail. My photos from the trip are here on Flickr.
Day 2
A bit of a warm-up; four miles and a few hundred metres ascent on mostly good paths, with the odd slightly scrambly bit of rock. Fine views of pumice mines and angry bee zones. This, and the next day, were mid-30s C, which was challenging. Click on the images for larger versions.
More walks after the break
Day 3
The first active volcano; Vulcano, which mainly shows its activity by sulphurous fumaroles at the north-east side of the crater. The standard route is anticlockwise round the crater so that you are descending past the fumaroles, moving more quickly and breathing less hard. The first part of the climb and the crater are wide dusty paths; part of the ascent is on rutted rock where strong boots are more useful.
Day 5
Stromboli. This was a little bit disappointing, because of the weather. Stromboli erupts every 20 minutes or so; sometimes this means you'll get a decent view of lava three times an hour, sometimes it's more subdued. (When it's really active, you won't be allowed up to get a view in the first place). The guiding companies take people up in groups, aiming to reach the summit just before sunset. You wait there, about 200m above the crater itself, until you see some activity, then head down via a steep path with ankle-deep ash, allowing you to descend very quickly by sliding down. Unfortunately, the summit was covered in cloud, so we couldn't see the sunset, or anything happening in the crater. You're given a helmet in case an eruption tosses pebbles high enough to reach the summit, and there are concrete shelters for anything more drastic - I doubt they'd be big enough to hold all the people who were up there, though. Well, it was a bit of an adventure anyway - I've never descended anything that long and steep in the dark before. Good views backwards when we paused and looked back at the beads of light descending the path behind us. Top tip: make sure you have your gaiters properly adjusted before the ascent. Pitch dark and in a hurry to move off is no time to do it, and I had one under-boot strap too loose; it kept riding up so that boot ended up full of ash anyway.
Day 6
Mainly taken up with the transfer from Stromboli to Etna, a lengthy hydrofoil trip followed by a coach. The weather was dreadful early in the day, with a lot of rain, but cleared by the evening in time for a short walk.
Cable-car ride up Etna to 2500m and 4WD bus up to 2900m, followed by a walk up to the main crater then back down to the cable-car terminal, using a private guide. The route went by the point where the lava flowed at the most recent eruption, and round the rim of a recent crater before descending steeply through deep ash, as with the Stromboli descent (except my gaiters were properly tightened this time!). The crater rim was the trickiest bit of the trip; generally the crater rims have been wide, dusty paths, but this was just a rocky edge (which from a distance really didn't look like a path at all) with a strong cross-wind to add to the entertainment. Apparently my head for heights has improved a lot over the last few years.
This trip seemed to be very hard on boots; two people had the soles of one boot come off completely, and the toe of one of my soles started peeling off with only a couple of hundred miles on the boots. You should definitely make sure that your boots are in good shape. Might have been coincidence, might have been the hostile environment around fumaroles affecting the glue.
Technical notes: The first 3 days were recorded on a Garmin Fenix 3, the last two on a Suunto Ambit 2 set in "good" GPS mode (one fix every 5 seconds) to reduce the size of the files. The F3 is a huge improvement on the original Fenix, though its precision isn't great for walking when the sky view is poor (heavy tree cover or in gorges). Then again, the Ambit 2 doesn't have enough memory for long trips in best GPS mode, and even I'm not going to take a computer on holiday to upload as I go. It does handle elevation changes better, though.
All the files were imported to Sporttracks and a few gaps tidied up, then exported as Google Earth files. Contour maps are screencaps from Sporttracks; satellite images are screencaps from Google Earth. Incidentally, the track at the top of Stromboli is about 50m away from the trail and imagery on Google maps, but it's the map which is wrong; Bing maps and OpenStreetMaps show the GPS track to be accurate. MyGPSFiles.com is a great tool for sharing tracks.
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