next stop etna

**verbier61** · 05-02-2007, 08:59 AM

I'm just back from a bike trip in sicily. I got a lot of rain, but decided that the etna (more than 3300 m, and the highest volcano in yurp) will be my next rando on the coming winter....

this is what it looks on a sunny day

**verbier61** · 05-02-2007, 09:24 AM

... and this is what I got 3 days ago....

the place we were (south face) was skiable up to 3-4 weeks ago. The north face is still skiable right now, but we were on a bike so had no way to bring sticks. What I didn't realize before is that the area has plenty of old steep inactive craters that might be a lot of fun to ski during the winter...

**hairy** · 05-02-2007, 09:53 AM

that would be killer to ski...

**Plinko** · 05-02-2007, 10:12 AM

literally.

**Ripzalot** · 05-02-2007, 10:22 AM

nice! did you happen catch the eruption? or just miss?

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_New...fiery_display/

**verbier61** · 05-03-2007, 02:07 AM

I was there, but there were too many clouds to see it clearly...

**rungsp** · 05-03-2007, 02:38 AM

Seconds from death on Etna:

1977, I was 16, and we went on our first ever foreign vacation as a family.
Sicily for 10 days.
One day involved a bus trip to Etna. It is a fascinating place as you drive up through the various climate zones until you get onto the barren lava fields that you an see in Francesco's photos above.
So the bus stopped and we got out to look around. We were about 100 metres from the bus when suddenly the ground shook...HARD! It went on for about 15 seconds and smokey fumes were coming out of the ground all around us. People were worried, I was fascinated in that 16 year old way of not appreciating what was going on. Then the tour guide shouted:
"Please not to panic but please to run back to the bus as fast as you can!"

My Mum beat me to the bus...she had put 2+2 together!

The driver gunned the engine and we drove down Etna at a speed Mario Andretti would have been proud of.

About an hour later a new crater opened up right where we had been standing, and what was Etna's biggest eruption for 50 years began!

The next day the local paper had a story how the heroic tour guide had saved the lives of the tourists, along with a geologist's opinion that if the tremor had lasted 5 seconds longer the crater would have opened there and then and that the tourists would have been ashes!

For the rest of the week we could watch the red glow of the lava flow at night from 20 miles away and watch on TV as the lava swallowed half a village.