La Soufriêre
Not just Another Volcano
The adventure to La Soufrière starts with a drive along the rugged Windward coastline, passing Georgetown, once the centre of the sugar industry, and then turning inland through the Orange Hill banana plantation. There, at about a 1,200-ft elevation, a three-mile trail to the rim, at 4,048-ft, begins. It is highly recommended to have an experienced guide along not only for safety, but also to point out the amazing flora and fauna along the route.The approximately two and a half hour hike takes you through bamboo groves, a tropical rain forest, a landscape of scrub-like vegetation and then the final trudge up a rocky lava field. The temperature drops; the wind gusts; you wait a few moments for the cloud cover to pass and then there before you, in all its glory, is La Soufriêre. One of the most awe-inspiring sights on this planet.
Although a trip to La Soufriêre can be attempted along a western (Leeward) trail near Chateaubelair, it is far more challenging than the eastern trek (seven hours of strenuous hiking instead of just four). However, on some tours, ardent enthusiasts who want to cross the rim, use the Leeward trail for their descent from the volcano. This more demanding trail offers the reward of an intensely lush and colourful forest of thick new growth, since the last eruption. Tours are also offered into the crater by rope and to the mineral mud bath in the new crater.
Though inaccessible to many, La Soufrière remains one of St. Vincent's major attractions. And not only to visitors... La Soufrière is ‘one of the most studied volcanoes in the world.' Seismograph stations, and geophysical/geochemical techniques continuously monitor the volcano and scientists who have studied the volcano's past behaviour keep constant watch for any activity.
After La Soufrière's last eruption in April 1979, scientists were able to get inside the volcano and obtain historical records of its past by studying the succession of deposits on the volcano's flanks. It seems that volcanic activity began at least half a million years ago, with intermittent periods of inactivity sometimes lasting thousands of years. By using carbon-14 dating, scientists determined that the present period of activity started about 1300 A.D.~ Written records, however, only go back 284 years when an account of the 1718 eruption was written by Daniel Defoe and published on July 5, 1718 in Mist's journal, an eighteenth century British periodical. This eruption left a mile-wide, 1,500-ft deep crater and a crater lake.
The next explosion came in 1812 and killed 56 people. A second crater formed within the cone, to the northwest of the older one, and was filled with a small lake. La Soufriêre erupted again in 1902, killing 1,565 people. Ash flows and pumice comple -tely filled in the 1812 crater; shortly after, the crater lake was re-established and reached a depth of 600 feet. In October 1971, an underwater eruption caused the crater lake to rise 100 feet above its normal level; the centre of the lake reached boiling temperatures. A few weeks later a Lava island emerged in the centre of the steaming lake and rose 300 feet above the water.
April 1979, was the latest of La Soufriêre's outbursts. There was no loss of life this time due to sophisticated monitoring equipment and emergency evacuationpreparedness The violent explosions, however, blasted the lava island clear out of the crater and that revealed stratigraphic layering- the history of the volcano. The scientists were thrilled! After that eruption new lava flowed to the crater floor and built a dome-like mass in the centre of the main crater. The crater lake disappeared due to the boiling temperatures of the groundwater beneath the crater floor and most of the rock wall. Rainfall into the basin now merely evaporates.
La Soufriêre is an active, but dormant volcano, it is a major attraction for visitors to St. Vincent and a passion for scientists and volcano observers from around the world. To know the history of this phenomenon, to imagine upheavals from hundreds of thousands of years past, is what instills a sense of wonderment and awe for the power and continuance of nature.
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