Janet and I went for a scoot around the Egmont volcano and, in one of our avenues of approach, climbed up through the winding green chloaca, (tunnel), of alpine forest to the 4000’ limits of the road, just below the snowline.
On this brilliant, blue sky day, with the afternoon rays illuminating all in relief, the vast bulk of the volcano loomed above us. Vertical hanging valleys with shiny black flanks of split ignimbrite and basalt glistening in the afternoon light.
The sheer immensity of the brooding giant before us, above us, now quiescent, but not so long ago the scene of gigantic unimaginable carnage where whole sections of the mountain’s flank calved off and plummeted annihilating everything in it’s path. Vast lahars of debris, housing lava boulders the size of a bus, cascading down the mountainside at near terminal velocity travelling up to 30 kilometers, right to and beyond the surfline of the Tasman sea.
The volcano has collapsed innumerable times in the last 2.5 million years only to build itself back to it’s 8000’ height with fresh magmatic and explosive eruptivity.
These andesite volcanos are quite unpredictable. Like now, at this moment standing in the magnificent grandeur of the looming massif, enjoying the vastness of it all, the freezing air and the alpine peacefullness….one never knows what the next moment will bring…..and when they do erupt the violence of these volcanos is beyond anything you can imagine.
But for this moment, there is a pristine peace in the massive larva flows capped with the soft greens of alpine tundra and moss, the cascading, noisy waterfalls in every valley and crevasse. Freezing cold clear fresh water originating in the deep snow above and the dripping ice cornicles which adorn the top geometry of the summit.
There is magnificence here on the Egmont volcano….and we can feel it, deep in our bones.
M@Foxglove,Taranaki,NZ